The Smothers Dance Troup
About W7AC
Partnerships
Youth Link
Membership
Events
Contact W7AC
W7AC Home
Volunteers
Gallery
News
Updates
Calendar
Contribute
F.A.Q's
Site Map
Grants
Home
About W7AC
Partnerships
Youth Link
Membership
Events
Contact W7AC
W7AC Home
W7AC POET DEIDRE GANTT
An exclusive article about Ward 7 Arts Collaborative Inc. Artist Deidre Gantt.
I’m supposed to write a short article to introduce myself to all of you visitors to the Ward 7 Arts Collaborative website. For almost a year, I have written articles like this for about half a dozen Collaborative artists. Those seem so much easier to write; every time I sit down to tell my own story, it threatens to balloon into a memoir.

So first, the facts. I was born and raised in the Deanwood-Fairmount Heights area. I learned to read by the time I was three years old, and I started writing creatively very early in my life. I was educated in the DC public school system until 1993, when I graduated from Dunbar and moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California. After USC, I went to Atlanta, where I worked as a writer, an editor, a secretary, a waitress, a bartender, a sales clerk, and a data entry operator. I wrote a lot of poems and experimented with a few stories and screenplays, but I didn’t take any of them seriously until I moved to Boston in 2001 to study creative writing at Emerson College.

In 2003, I came back to the DC area for good, and I worked as a desktop publisher before opening my own business, Phenom Community Media www.pcmonline.biz, in 2004. That spring, I finished my thesis and officially graduated from Emerson. That summer, I did my first year at Cave Canem Poetry Workshop and Retreat www.cavecanempoets.org, which led to my first publication in a recognized literary journal. In 2005, I began teaching English at Prince George’s Community College www.pgcc.edu. I also started teaching community writing workshops for children, teenagers, and senior citizens in Ward 7. Through those activities, I hooked up with the Ward 7 Arts Collaborative. In 2006, I won a Young Artists grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities to support Fresh Ideas www.fresh-ideas.org, a poster and creative writing contest I created in 2004 to encourage students in far Northeast to pursue socially conscious arts.

Today, I still teach at PGCC, and I just became the faculty advisor for Reflections, the student literary magazine. I did my second of three years at Cave Canem last summer. Locally, I have performed at the Honfleur Gallery, Macy’s in Prince George’s Plaza, the Folger Theatre, the Pratt Free Library, and during several Arts Collaborative events. In 2007, I rejoined my childhood church, Contee AME Zion www.conteeamez.org. I teach Sunday School and help run the multimedia ministry, and I also provide communications support to an affiliated health initiative, the People Before Profit Community Healthcare Project www.peoplebeforeprofit.org.

Look for “Anatomy Remix: Tapping the Cactus” under my blogs at www.myspace.com/saturnsdaughter.

Upcoming Appearances:

February 5, 2008 – Great Streets Conversations with Don Murray (Panelist). McKinley Technical High School. 12 noon. Sponsored by the Humanities Council of Washington, DC.

February 21, 2008 – “Flowin by the River” spoken word/karaoke night (Co-host). Marvin Gaye Park/Riverside Center. 7 pm. Sponsored by Ward 7 Arts Collaborative.

February 28, 2008 – Cave Canem poets at UDC. University of the District of Columbia, Building 41 A- 03. 7 pm. Sponsored by UDC.

Poet Deidre Gantt
Deidre Gantt's Website.