Join Us for the Shirley Verrett Award Ceremony, February 11, 2015
The Women of Color in the Academy Project is proud to announce that the 4th Annual Shirley Verrett Award will be presented to Lorna Goodison on February 11, 2015 from 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm at Stamps Auditorium on North Campus. This event will feature a performance by the acclaimed opera singer, Marcia Porter (cousin and former student of Shirley Verrett). A reception honoring Professor Goodison will take place in the lobby immediately following the program.
Lorna Goodison, the 2015 Shirley Verrett Award winner, is an internationally acclaimed author of twelve award winning books of poetry, three books of short stories and a prize-winning winning memoir, From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and her Island. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, and her work, which has been translated into many languages, appears in the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, as well as the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry and the Harper Collins World reader.
A shuttle bus will be available at 5:10 pm in front of Hill Auditorium. The shuttle will make two return trips: one at 6:45 pm following the event and one at 7:15 pm following the reception.
This event is free and open to the public, however registration is requested at:
http://tinyurl.com/ShirleyVerrett-2015
The Shirley Verrett Award was established in honor of the late University of Michigan James Earl Jones Distinguished University Professor of Voice, Shirley Verrett; a teacher who “would have walked the world over for her students.” An internationally acclaimed opera singer who performed over 40 roles all over the world during the course of her illustrious four decade career, Ms.Verrett was one of the pioneering leaders in the generation of black singers after Marian Anderson’s historical Metropolitan Opera debut in 1955. The Shirley Verrett Award was established in 2011 by the former University of Michigan Office of the Senior Vice Provost and is administered by the Women of Color in the Academy Project (WOCAP) at the Center for the Education of Women (CEW).