Our speaker for International Women’s Day is Denise Sweet, an Anishinaabe poet. Denise will give a short presentation on Native Women’s Leadership and will read some of her poems.

From 2004 to 2008, Denise served as the Wisconsin Poet Laureate. She is faculty emerita, having taught Humanistic Studies, Creative Writing, and First Nations Studies for the University of Wisconsin―Green Bay. She has performed in theater and film productions (both a full-length feature and various documentaries), and has given over 100 readings in North and Central America, Canada and Europe. In 1998, her collection Songs for Discharming won both the Wisconsin Posner Award for Poetry, and the Diane Deborah Award, given by the North American Indigenous Writers Circle of the Americas.