Jourdan Keith
WITS Writer
The City of Seattle’s 2019-2021 Civic Poet, Jourdan Imani Keith is a storyteller, essayist, playwright, naturalist and activist. Her TEDx Talk, “Your Body of Water,” the theme for King County’s 2016-2018 Poetry on Buses program won an Americans for the Arts award. Keith’s Orion Magazine essays, “Desegregating Wilderness” and “At Risk,” were selected for the 2015 Best American Science and Nature Writing Anthology (Houghton Mifflin). Her ekphrastic poems and stories were commissioned by the Northwest African American Museum to be featured as over-sized text on its walls during the Glass Orchidarium exhibit. Keith’s creation myth, ” We Were All Water,” was commissioned by Seattle Art Museum for a featured performance at the REMIX in November 2015. A keeper of culture and history in the Griot (gree-oh) storytelling tradition, she has been awarded fellowships from Hedgebrook, Wildbranch, Santa Fe Science Writing workshop, VONA, and Jack Straw. She’s received multiple commissions and awards from University of Washington, Artist Trust, 4Culture and Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture. Her memoir in essays, Tugging at the Web is forthcoming from University of Washington Press.