YouTube Recording of "Bearing Witness and the Endurance of Voice"

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"Bearing Witness and the Endurance of Voice"

Shanta Lee Gander, is an award winning author and MFA candidate in Creative Non-Fiction and Poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

{This program was made possible by a grant from the New Hampshire Humanities "Humanities to Go" program.}

Lucy Terry Prince was born in Africa, where she was kidnapped by slave traders and transported to Rhode Island. While still enslaved in 1746, she wrote “Bars Fight,” the oldest known poem in the United States written by an African American. Prince later regained her freedom and moved to Vermont with her husband, Abijah Prince, and fought for her family’s land rights all the way to the highest court in Vermont. In this presentation, Shanta Lee Gander illustrates Prince’s importance as a poet and orator, and as one unafraid to fight for her rights within the landscape of early Vermont, New England, and America. Gander will also perform Lucy’s only surviving poem, “Bars Fight.”

Shanta Lee Gander's work can be found in PRISM, ITERANT Literary Magazine, Palette Poetry, BLAVITY, DAME Magazine, The Crisis Magazine, and the Ms. Magazine Blog. Shanta Lee is the 2020 recipient of the Arthur Williams Award for Meritorious Service to the Arts and 2020 and was named as Diode Editions 2020 full-length book contest winner for her debut poetry compilation, GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues, out in June 2021. Shanta Lee is an MFA candidate in Creative Non-Fiction and Poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has an MBA from the University of Hartford and an undergraduate degree in Women, Gender and Sexuality from Trinity College. To see Shanta Lee’s photography and writing, visit Shantaleegander.com.