Lyceum Series: Quraysh Ali Lansana

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!

Whether a print culture poet, spoken word/performance poet or rapper/emcee, a versatile command of language is the most important element of your craft. This workshop will explore a variety of modes and exercises to help writers enhance their tool kits in writing, revision and new approaches. Great ideas often emanate from unusual sources, from pop culture to old encyclopedias. We will explore unorthodox, as well as traditional, research methods to disrupt and challenge your normal, in an effort to inspire fresh ideas. Exploration of the balance of message and craft, and when & how & why to disrupt that balance, will be addressed. Athletes stretch. Writers also must stretch. If writers don’t continuously challenge themselves, whether it’s a thematic challenge or a craft challenge, we write the same poem repeatedly.

Quraysh Ali Lansana is author of over twenty books in poetry, nonfiction and children’s literature. Lansana is Applied Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing and Media Studies at the University of Tulsa, where he is also Director of the African American Studies program and the Media Lab.

Lansana is Executive Producer of KOSU/NPR’s Focus: Black Oklahoma monthly radio program, which is a recipient of a 2022 duPont-Columbia Award, a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2022 Oklahoma Society of Professional Journalists Award and was a Peabody Award nominee. Lansana is also the recipient of a 2022 Emmy Award, among others, for his roles as host and consultant for the OETA (PBS) documentary film “Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later.” Lansana is a three-time International Regional Magazine Award-winning Contributing Editor for Oklahoma Today Magazine. He is a founding member of Tri-City Collective and serves on the Board of Directors of Oklahoma Humanities and the Tulsa Press Club. Lansana is an alumnus of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship.