Guest Speaker: Keynote by Yalie Saweda Kamara and Reading by María Ocon Murillo

Yalie Saweda Kamara

Yalie Saweda Kamara, Ph.D. is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, educator, and researcher from Oakland, California and the 2022-2023 Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate (2-year term). She is the Director of Creative Youth Leadership at WordPlay Cincy and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati. She is also the executive editor of the anthology What You Need to Know About Me: Young Writers on Their Experiences of Immigration, published by the Hawkins Project in 2021. In the forthcoming video, we will share Dr. Kamara’s keynote address at the Celebration of Student Writing event on April 19, 2023. 

Maria Ocon 

Maria Ocon is the author of the essay “A New Beginning,” which appears in What You Need to Know about Me: Young Writers on Their Experiences of Immigration. Born in Nicaragua, she currently resides in Indianapolis, Indiana. In the video below, María reads her essay aloud and discusses how her goals have continued to evolve since the publication of the book in 2021.