Brenda M. Greene
Brenda M. Greene is Professor of English and Executive Director of the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York. Professor Greene’s research and scholarly work includes composition, African American literature, and multicultural literature. Greene is editor with Fred Beauford of Meditations and Ascensions: Black Writers on Writing, Third World Press (2008) and author of “Beside Still Waters: Memories of the Paden Institute and Retreat for Writers of Color” in Black Issues Book Review July-August 2005. She is Editor And Then They Heard Our Thunder 2003 and 2004 Proceedings from the National Black Writers Conference. She is also co-editor of Redefining Ourselves, Black Writers in the Nineties, Peter Lang Publishers (1999) and co-editor of Rethinking American Literature, National Council of Teachers of English, (1997). She has extensive publications, grants and presentations in English Studies. Her most recent grants were from the National Endowment for the Arts for the National Black Writers Conference and the Nathan Cummings Foundation for the North Country Institute and Retreat for Writers of Color. Greene was a featured scholar on the award-winning Annenberg/PBS video production, Teaching Multicultural Literature in the High Schools. She is also a Leadership Associate for the National Network for Educational Renewal. Greene holds a Ph.D. in English with a concentration in Education from New York University.
In her role as Executive Director of the Center for Black Literature, Greene has continued the tradition of holding the National Black Writers Conferences (NBWCs) that have been given at Medgar Evers College since 1986. Since the Center’s inception in 2003, Greene has directed four NBWC conferences: Literature as Access; The Life and Work of John Oliver Killens, Writer, Activist, and Mentor; Black Literature: Expanding Conversations on Race, History, Identity and Genre; and Black Writers: Reading and Writing to Transform Their Lives and the World.
Currently, Greene serves as project director for several literary programs which provide high school students with access to the black literary arts. In addition, she has collaborated with various organizations to produce author programs such as the Brother to Brother Literary Symposium, the Gwendolyn Brooks Symposium and the North Country Institute and Retreat for Writers of Color.
Greene also hosts a weekly radio program, Writers on Writing, which features writers from the African diaspora discussing their work and their lives. The show is broadcast in the studios of Medgar Evers College and airs over WNYE, 91.5 F.M.
Center for Black Literature website. www.mec.cuny.edu/blacklitcenter
National Black Writers Conference website. www.mec.cuny.edu/nbwc
For information about the Center contact:
Dr. Brenda M. Greene, Executive Director
Center for Black Literature
bgreene@mec.cuny.edu
www.mec.cuny.edu/blacklitcenter