2019 National Youth Poet Laureate Kara Jackson to Present at Eureka College

EUREKA — For its first event of 2020, the Eureka College Arts and Lectures Board will host a reading by 2019 National Youth Poet Laureate Kara Jackson at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 17 at Becker Auditorium of the Donald B. Cerf Center.

Admission is free for Eureka College students, faculty and staff, and open to the public.

Jackson, an award-winning poet, published author and student at Smith College, will share selections from her poetry and vocal collections, including her 2019 book debut Bloodstone Cowboy and 2019 musical debut EP “A Song for Ever Chamber of the Heart.”

Also the 2018 Youth Poet Laureate of Chicago, Jackson’s work investigates a trail of language that leads from the South to the North. Through a multidisciplinary approach, Jackson attempts to document her lineage of divine womanhood in a country that demands its erasure. She is a product of the literary bloodline created by women like Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Joan Baez.

Jackson is an alum of the solo voice jazz ensemble at Merit School of Music, an alum of the Spoken Wood Club at Oak Park River Forest High School and an Adroit Journal mentee. She represented her school in the Louder than a Bomb festival from 2016-2018, and in her final year, performed on the final stage at the Auditorium Theatre, where she was granted the Literary Award by Patricia Smith.

Jackson also received a national Scholastic Art and Writing Award for her short story “Nursery Rhymes.” Her poems have appeared in POETRY, Frontier Poetry, Rookie Mag, Nimrod Literary Journal, and Saint Heron. She has two articles published in Blavity. She has two poems featured in the latest anthology edited by Kevin Coval, The End of Chiraq. Jackson is a TEDx speaker.

For more information or to request accommodations, contact the Office of Student Life at 309-467-6420.

The Arts and Lectures Board at Eureka College is a student-driven committee that works to bring nationally known educational and cultural events to campus through diverse programming that strives to further support the mission of Eureka College in the areas of learning, service, and leadership.

Located in Eureka, Illinois, and chartered in 1855, Eureka College cultivates excellence in learning, service and leadership while providing students uniquely personalized and custom educational opportunities.