Bold Women. Change History. Camille T. Dungy

Join us for a special reading and author talk with Camille T. Dungy, author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden. Soil documents Camille’s seven-year journey to resist the policies restricting her ability to diversify her garden in Fort Collins, Colorado. This heartfelt memoir draws intricate parallels between the ongoing struggles of a Black woman existing in a predominantly white neighborhood and the complex relationships of the Black diaspora with land and soil. Camille’s lyrical and poignant words will leave you feeling inspired and motivated to get your hands dirty.

Portions of Soil will be read by Camille, followed by a facilitated author’s talk and book signing. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with author, multi-award winning poet, University Distinguished Professor of Colorado State University, and mother, Camille T. Dungy.

About the Speaker

Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award. She is also the author of the essay collections Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dungy has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, her honors include NEA Fellowships in poetry (2003) and prose (2018), an American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and two Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations. Dungy’s poems have been published in Best American Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems, The Pushcart Anthology, Best American Travel Writing, and over thirty other anthologies. She is University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University.