Contact: Carolyn Parker, (202) 724-5613

Join The DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, for the tenth Anniversary Celebration for DC Poet Laureate, Dolores Kendrick, Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 7 pm at the Heritage Center at the Navy Memorial (701 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.) 

This free celebration, hosted by Carl Cole, Emerita Commissioner, will highlight the success of Dolores Kendrick’s illustrious career through a Toast from 20 of DC’s Top Literary, Arts and Political Figures, dedications from literary activist, E. Ethelbert Miller and Guggenheim Fellowship Winner and Poet, A. Van Jordan and a performance by Dolores Kendrick and the Capital City Symphony Quartet.

Native Washingtonian Dolores Kendrick, was appointed Poet Laureate of the District Columbia, on May 14, 1999 with a Mayoral proclamation declaring it Dolores Kendrick Day. Ms. Kendrick is the second person honored with that title.

Ms. Kendrick authored the award-winning poetry book The Women of Plums, in 1989 and released in 1996 in a music based. The author of two other books, Through the Ceiling and Now Is the Time to Praise, Ms. Kendrick has been noted as one of the top African-American poets writing today. She was commissioned to write two poems for the Red Line station at New York and Florida Avenues, included in a sculpture at the Pepco Building in downtown Washington.

Dolores Kendrick has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Award, the George Kent Award for Literature, the prestigious Anisfield-Wolf Award and is the first Vira I. Heinz professor emerita at Phillips Exeter Academy. A poem written in Shanghai, China during her teaching assignment at the Shanghai School of Foreign Languages was recently presented in both English and Mandarin to a Chinese delegation that requested it while visiting Washington, DC.

Doors open at 5:45 pm. Reception at 6 pm.