Lyceum Series: April Sojourner Truth Walker – Re-Imaging Urban Revitalization Through Haiku

Welcome to the lyceum. These free, monthly workshops are held on the third Saturday of the month, and offer writers of every genre and skill level an opportunity to learn, experiment and develop their craft. We hope you’ll join us!

“What place, what words, what memories should I trust? Which direction will take me home?
From Camille T. Dungy’s Writing Home

There is a fine line between revitalizing and gentrifying urban communities – often the latter wins, re-housing, re-packaging and re-moving the original residents and their stories. In this workshop, we underscore the vital in re-vitalization – the people who call these communities home in spite of blight.

The brevity of haiku allows us to focus on showing rather than telling. We’ll use haiku paired with photography to unearth buried histories and re-image Dallas through the lens of all its citizens. By the end of the workshop, participants will have created a communal collage piece as a new monument to the urban Dallas landscape.

April Sojourner Truth Walker is a Dallas native, who studied at Emory University in Atlanta and Hollins University in Virginia. Before starting her writing coaching company – A Little More Truth, LLC – in April of 2020, she worked for seven years as a Senior Project Manager at AT&T. April also served as an Adjunct Professor at Oklahoma City Community College teaching a myriad of classes in the Humanities from 2016-2022. A perfect day for April is one spent in nature with a good book, a cup of tea and nowhere to be.