Poet Laureate for the Town of Greenburgh, NY, award-winning
poet, writer and arts-in-education consultant, Brenda Conor-Bey is a
co-founder of New Renaissance Writers Guild, founder of MenWem Writers
Workshop, a member of the Harlem Writers' Workshop and the Poetry Caravan.
In 2002 she was awarded the Outstanding Arts Educator Award from the
Westchester Fund for Women and Girls and is a recipient of a CAPS award
for poetry, four PEN awards for non-fiction, 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 recently completed a chapbook
of poetry, Through the Mists of Remembering, a collection of
poetry, Crossroad of the Serpent, and is currently working
on a novel, The House on Blackwell Lane.
She is an artist roster member with the P/NW BOCES and the Westchester
Arts Council and is affiliated as an independent writing instructor
with the Katonah Museum of Art, the Neuberger Museum of Art, the Hudson
River Museum, the Hudson Valley
Writers' Center, and The Kid's Short Story Connection. She was a
facilitator for the Westchester Library System's literacy program, "People
and Stories/Gentes y Cuentos". Brenda served on the Board of Directors
of the Hudson Valley Writers' Center and is a member of the Advisory
Committees for
Slapering Hol Press and the Westchester Center for Creative Aging.
Art and literacy are the foundation of her work as an instructor and
facilitator in residencies and professional development workshops. For
the past two years, she has collaborated with visual artist, Karen
Sevell Greenbaum, to create a unique series of teaching techniques
for staff development. She has conducted professional development workshops
at the Edith Winthrop Teacher Center of Westchester, The Kennedy Center's
Partners in Education Program at SUNY Purchase, Greenburgh School District
7, the Yonkers School District, The Neuberger Museum, Putnam/Northern
Westchester BOCES, Croton-Harmon School District and the Fairfield School
District in CT.
Brenda is currently an instructor of creative writing at the Hudson
Valley Writers' Center and the Kids' Short Story Connection. She has
also taught at the Scarsdale Young Writers' Conference, BACA Downtown
Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY, The Afrikkan Poetry Theater in Jamaica,
NY, Skidmore College with the International Women's Writer's Guild in
Saratoga Springs, NY, The Hudson Valley Writers' Center and The Dance
Hall Writer's Salon in Westchester. She was an adjunct professor of
creative writing at Marymount Manhattan College Writing Center.
Brenda's work has appeared in numerous anthologies, Confirmation:
An Anthology of African American Women (edited by Amina & Amiri
Baraka, Wm. Morrow & Co.), Working Classics: Poems on Industrial
Life (University of Pittsburgh), Obsidian II: Black Literature
in Review (North Carolina State University), New Rain 7
(Blind Beggar Press), The Writer in All of Us (edited by June
Gould, Ph.D., Dodd Mead & Co.), Sunbury 9 (Sunbury Press),
and literary journals, Main Trend Magazine (Main Trend), Five
A.M. (University of Pittsburgh) and most recently Writing
(Scholastic). Her work has been 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's edited a collection of short stories, "Ibo Landing" by
Ishan Bracy (Cool Grove Press) and co-edited two anthologies of poetry,
en(compass) (Uganta Press) and Tribute: A Rainbow of Praises
(Blind Beggar Press).
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
