Teaching Artist Forum

Glenis Redmond
Keynote speaker
Poet, Teaching Artist, and Imagination Activist

Glenis Redmond is the first poet laureate of Greenville, South Carolina. She is a 2023 Poet Laureate Fellow selected by the American Academy of Poets. Glenis received the highest arts award in South Carolina, the Governor’s Award, and was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors in 2022. Glenis has published six books of poetry. Her latest books are The Listening Skin (Four Way Books), Praise Songs for Dave the Potter, Art by Jonathan Green, and Poetry by Glenis Redmond (University of Georgia Press). The Listening Skin was shortlisted for the Open Pen America and Julie Suk awards.

Glenis has performed nationally and internationally, from Hawaii to Haiti and Maui to Mauldin. She has toured in England: London, Liverpool and Luton. She speaks for the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). She presented in Muscat, Oman, in 2016 and virtually for students in Guatemala and El Salvador for Juneteenth in 2023. 

She spent three decades touring the country as a poet and teaching artist. As a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, she has created and facilitated poetry workshops for school districts nationwide for seventeen years. Since 2014, she has been the mentor poet for the National Student Poets Program through the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. In the past, she has prepared these exceptional youth poets to read at the Library of Congress, the Department of Education, and for First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House. 

Her poetry has been showcased on NPR and PBS and recently published in Orion Magazine, storySouth, and The New York Times; This is the Honey and Anthology of Contemporary Black Poetry, and numerous literary journals.

Glenis is a mother of twin daughters, Amber and Celeste. She is a grandmother (Gaga) to Julian, Paisley, and Quinn. Glenis believes poetry is the mouth that speaks when all other mouths are silent.