An award winning poet, writer, and arts-in-education specialist, Brenda Connor-Bey is the first Poet Laureate Emeritus of Greenburgh, NY and creator of Learning to See ™ The Brenda Connor-Bey Legacy Workshop Series. She is the founder of MenWem Writers Workshop, a co-founder of New Renaissance Writers Guild, a member of the Poetry Caravan and the Slapering Hol Press Advisory Committee. In 2008, the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center honored Brenda for her contribution to literary arts in Westchester and for being instrumental in establishing the creative writing program for teens at the Center. In 2002, she received the Outstanding Arts Educator Award from the Westchester Fund for Women and Girls. She is a recipient of a CAPS award for poetry, a NYFA for fiction and is a MacDowell, YADDO and Cave Canem Regional Fellow. Her first book, Thoughts of an Everyday Woman/An Unfinished Urban Folktale, is a collection of prose and poetry. She is an artist roster member with P/NW BOCES and ArtsWestchester.
She is the co-curator for the Port Chester Fest bi-lingual poetry readings and co-editor of One Word/Many Voices, a bi-lingual poetry anthology. She has been an instructor of creative writing with the Kid’s Short Story Connection, the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center, the Ethnic Pen in Bay Shore, NY, BACA Downtown Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY, and with International Women's Writer's Guild at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. She was an adjunct professor of creative writing at Marymount Manhattan College Writing Center. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary and on-line journals and performed by the Lincoln Center Performance Ensemble; Black Women in Theatre and included in the production of Her Talking Drum, produced by Vinie Burrows at the American Place Theatre in NYC. She resides in Greenburgh, NY with her husband, James E. Miller.
Go to the Teaching Experience
tab for additional details on Teaching Experience and Residencies.
Grants/Awards/Fellowships
2006-2008 - Poet Laureate of Greenburgh, NY
2002 - Outstanding Arts Educator-Westchester Fund for Women & Girls
2002-Cave Canem Regional Fellowship
1993 - Semi-Finalist - Novel-In-Progress - Heekin Group Foundation
1988-89 - NYFA Fellowship/Fiction
1982, 1987 MacDowell Colony
Fellowship
1987, 1984 - Author's League Fund
1984 - PEN Writers Fund Grant for Non-Fiction
1982-83 - NYS CAPS Award/Poetry
1981 - YADDO Fellowship
1980 - PEN Writers Fund Grant for Poetry
Professional Organizations
Harlem Writing Workshop
New Renaissance Writers Guild
The Academy of American Poets
Poets House, Inc.
Cave Canem
Teachers & Writers Collaborative
Hudson Valley Writers' Center
Poets & Writers, Inc.
NY State Alliance for Arts Education
National Writers Union
Poetry Caravan
Poetry Society of America
The Westchester Arts Council
Westchester Center for Creative
Aging
