CCAC Professor Emerita Doralee Brooks Named Poet Laureate by City of Asylum
Doralee Brooks
Pittsburgh
Doralee Brooks, professor emerita of Developmental Studies at the Community College of Allegheny County, has been named Poet Laureate of Allegheny County by City of Asylum. The organization builds a just community by protecting and celebrating freedom of creative expression. City of Asylum also provides sanctuary to endangered writers and artists so that their voices are not silenced and they can continue to create. In addition, it offers a broad range of free literary, arts and humanities programs in a community setting to build social equity through cultural exchange.
Ms. Brooks holds a Master of Education from the University of Pittsburgh and a Master of Fine Arts from Carlow University. In 1995, she became a fellow of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, a national writing project for teachers of kindergarten through college who endorse the practice of writing instruction in every discipline. In 1997, she led a community group for girls in Homestead who called themselves The Spice Writers.
In 1997 and 1999, Ms. Brooks received fellowships to Cave Canem, a home for Black poetry located in Brooklyn, New York. Currently, she facilitates writing workshops in poetry at Carlow University, and her poems have appeared in several journals, including Voices from the Attic, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Uppagus, Dos Passos Review and Paterson Literary Review. Her collection of poems, "When I Hold You Up to the Light," won the 2019 Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Contest sponsored by Main Street Rag Publishing Company.
Ms. Brooks hopes to bring her lifelong journey and love for writing and reading to her new role as laureate. She also wants to highlight local poets and emphasize poetry's connection with other forms of artistic endeavor such as music, dance and drama and the visual arts.
"I think we have such a rich heritage in Pittsburgh of poets," Ms. Brooks said. "I want to highlight what we have, and I want to promote that. I also want to show how the other arts are also a part of the poetry. I'm very interested in those connections."