Melissa Prunty Kemp

HOMETOWN -- Salem, VA (adjacent to Roanoke)

HIGH SCHOOL -- Salem High, home of the "Pride of Salem" -- the Salem High School Marching Band (I was a flag girl and then played bells and marimba).

UNDERGRADUATE COLLEGE -- Hollins University (then Hollins College). I majored in Clinical Psychology; sang in the Hollins Chapel Choir, learned to play the carillon, played flute, was president of the Black Student Alliance, and slept in two chairs while studying all night in the Dana Science building.

BEFORE GRADUATE SCHOOL -- I thought to take up a career in politics, so I completed two preparatory summer programs at the University of Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey School of Government and at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.  I was supposed to attend Carnegie Mellon University for graduate school, but I defected and returned to fight for a career in English as apoet.  I didn't discover how to do that until . . . .

GRADUATE SCHOOL -- Virginia Tech -- Blacksburg, VA.  There I learned that I loved the modernist literary period--Virginia Woolf and poetry of the Harlem Renaissance--I was introduced to the poetry of Angelina Weld Grimke by Nikki Giovanni in her Advanced Poetry Writing class.

AFTER GRADUATE SCHOOL -- I was an art and history curator at the Harrison Museum of African American Culture in Roanoke VA.  The first show I curated was Murals by Africobra Artist - James Phillips.  I also edited a long oral history project on African Americans in Roanoke, and created my own oral history called "The Nurses Station" to capture the life and times of the nurses of Burrell Memorial Hospital -- the only African American hospital between Washington, DC and Atlanta, GA.

PLACES I'VE LIVED -- Canton OH, Atlanta GA, Charlotte NC

COUNTRIES I'VE VISITED --  Ontario, Canada

Professional Work and Publications