Educator
Currently, DéLana R.A. Dameron is Alumni Program Coordinator for the TEAK Fellowship, a college prep, access and success program for underserved students in New York City.
DéLana holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from New York University where she was a Goldwater Hospital Writer’s workshop fellow. An equal lover of English, creative writing and history, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Third World/Non-Western History from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A native of Columbia, South Carolina, DéLana currently resides in Brooklyn.
Since moving to New York City in 2007, DéLana has immersed herself in transformative educational, cultural and artistic work with regards to voice, literacy and access. She has worked with learners all over New York City and Newark, NJ, with students from Adult Learner, High School, Undergraduate, and Graduate levels, and primarily those who identify as students of color from underserved communities.
In addition to classroom teaching, DéLana has designed curriculum for supplementary educational programs geared towards college access and success, including: 9-12th grade writing and grammar, SAT prep, Regents Prep, & college application essay writing workshops.
Administratively, she has coordinated college transition programs and served as an advisor for a multiplicity of populations: GED recipients, those who are academically at-risk, and high-achieving students at Lehman Adult Learning Center, LIU Brooklyn, Sponsors for Educational Opportunity and The TEAK Fellowship.
Writer
DéLana R.A. Dameron’s first book of poems How God Ends Us (University of South Carolina Press, 2009) won the 2008 South Carolina Poetry Book Prize as selected by Elizabeth Alexander, and was a finalist for Foreword Magazine’s Book of The Year Award.
Her poetry has been performed across the United States and internationally: DéLana represented the United States in February 2012 for the Granada International Poetry Festival in Nicaragua, and in Spring 2011 traveled to Bamberg, Germany to conduct a series of workshops and readings for students and family members of those stationed on base. In the Fall of 2010 she was a featured reader at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark, NJ, and in the Spring of 2010, the Ackland Art Museum commissioned original pieces written in response to a newly-acquired print series, “The Legend of John Brown,” created by Harlem Renaissance Painter Jacob Lawrence. In 2009 she presented her own lecture and reading on “The Art of Risk in Poetry” along with poets Rosanna Warren and Sharon Olds for the South Carolina Poet’s Summit.
DéLana’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications including African American Review, ESSENCE Magazine, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, PMS, Pedestal Magazine and others. Her non-fiction and critical work is widely published, and recently received a Pushcart Nomination. She is assistant Poetry Editor for Willow Books, an imprint of Aquarius Press.
Because she believes in the transformative powers of creative writing as a tool for literacy, self-empowerment and as personal historical story-telling, DéLana has conducted workshops and lectures for adolescents, teens, adults, undergraduate and graduate students.
