On the first relaunched episode of CookBook, airing December 31st, poet Barbara Fant visits CookBook host Darren C. Demaree to make oatmeal raisin cookies and talk poetry.
An Ohio native who has been writing and performing for 13 years. Barbara Fant integrates poetry and activism, and works at The Columbus Foundation while teaching poetry at Transit Arts and in correctional institutions.
While baking her favorite kind of cookie, Fant touches base on her belief in the transformative power of art and poetry as her ministry. Her and Darren chat about the healing power of writing for the writer, how wrong Hemingway was about the writing process, what it means to be from Ohio, and the power of performance poetry.
Barbara Fant is the author of four poetry collections: Paint, Inside Out (2010), two chapbooks RibCaged and Them Brilliant Suns (both in 2017), and Aligning Water and Bearing Stars (2019). She is also the co-author of two stage productions, Black Staccato (2015) and Inside the Riot (2016). Fant has been commissioned by over ten organizations and has received residencies in Idyllwild, California and Havana, Cuba. She has represented Columbus, OH in 9 National Poetry Slam competitions and placed 8th out of 96 poets in the 2017 Women of the World Poetry Slam. She is a TEDx speaker and is featured in the Greater Columbus Arts Council’s Columbus Makes Art Campaign, the 2017 Columbus Alive People to Watch issue, and 614 Magazine’s 2019 Interview issue. She holds a BA in Literature, a Masters in Theological Studies, and is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry.
Host Darren C. Demaree is the author of eleven poetry collections, most recently “Emily As Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire”, (June 2019, Harpoon Books). He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry.
A 501(c)3 non-profit literary press collective founded in 2000, Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run press that publishes chapbooks and full-length collections in both print and digital formats, and hosts numerous literary journals, an online reading series, and the Best of the Net Anthology.
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