Sharon Bridgforth

Please join Merry Gangemi as she welcomes Sharon Bridgforth to Woman-Stirred Radio, today at 5pm (Eastern). Merry and Sharon will discuss Bridgforth's work and her creative process, her roots in African American culture and how her work is vital to lesbian culture.

Sharon Bridgforth is the Lambda Award winning author of the bull-jean stories (RedBone Press), and love conjure/blues a performance/novel published by RedBone Press. Bridgforth has broken ground in the creation and presentation of the performance/novel and in doing so has advanced the articulation of the Jazz aesthetic as it lives in theater.

Bridgforth’s work has fostered the study of Black lesbian performance literature in academic settings. Some of the professors who have taught her work are: Lisa Anderson at Arizona State, Phoenix; Elmo Terry-Morgan at Brown University; Laura Harris at Pitzer College; Daniel Banks at New York University, Tisch School For The Arts; Lisa Hernandez at St. Edward’s University; Mattie Richardson at University of California, Berkeley; Lisa Arnold at University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Kirsten Gardner at University of Texas, San Antonio; Carol Guess at Western Washington University; Lisa L. Moore, Daniel Alexander Jones, Jafari Allen, Mattie Richardson, Dr. Joni Jones at University of Texas, Austin. Bridgforth has developed a method of facilitating creative writing that she calls, Finding Voice. With the Finding Voice method Bridgforth mentors/and or facilitates writers through a creative process, encouraging them to use the page as a canvas; to use identity-culture-memory-family histories-dreams to articulate and examine the socio-political realities of their lives in a form that is part poetry, part oral history, part performance art; to examine their creative process; to work in community as they use art as a vehicle for social justice.

Bridgforth uses the Finding Voice method in her work as Anchor Artist for The Austin Project (sponsored by The Center for African and African American Studies, U. T. Austin) for past five years. Bridgforth’s Finding Voice Facilitation Manuel will be published in 2007 by University of Texas Press in a book, The Austin Project Archive: Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic, edited by Dr. Joni Jones, Acting Director, Center for African and African-American Studies, Associate Professor, Department of Theater and Dance U.T. Austin; Dr. Lisa L. Moore, Associate Professor, English and Women’s and Gender Studies, U.T. Austin; and Bridgforth. Bridgforth is an Affiliate Faculty member at The Center for African and African American Studies, University of Texas, Austin, where she teaches an undergraduate course that focuses on art as a vehicle for community organizing.

Widely anthologized, Bridgforth has received support from the National Endowment For The Arts Commissioning Program; The National Endowment For The Arts/Theater Communications Group Playwright in Residence Program; National Performance Network; and the Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Arts Production Fund Award.Widely anthologized, Her work has presented nationally at venues including:the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, MN., The Theater Offensive Out on The Edge Festival in Boston, MA., LaPena in Berkeley, CA., The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, Penumbra Theater Company in St. Paul, MN.

So. 5pm eastern. Sharon Bridgforth. Air studio phone = 802.454.7762.

And of course my weekly chat with Nicki Hastie. This week: the LWord.