M.E. Wakamatsu was born in the border town of San Luis R.C. Sonora, Mexico. The daughter of a Mexican mother and Japanese father, she writes from the border between cultures, between patterns of discourse, between first and third worlds. Her work appears in the anthologies, Southwestern Women New Voices and Cantos al Sexto Sol. She produced From the Lair, A Spoken Word Poetry CD and Speakwater: Regando La Frontera--A Multimaterial Visual Poetry Installation. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Desert View High School and is a member of Mujeres Que Escriben, a Latina Writer’s Group in Tucson. She graduated from Arizona State University.
Announcing the winner of the 2007 Mary Ann Campau Fellowship
MARIA ELENA WAKAMATSU
MARIA ELENA WAKAMATSU
Reading
with Maria Elena Wakamatsu
Thursday, March 6, 8 p.m.
at the Poetry Center
We are pleased to announce the winner of the Mary Ann Campau Fellowship, recognizing Southern Arizona Writers who strengthen and inspire our literary landscape. Maria Elena Wakamatsu, local poet and teacher at Desert View High School, was chosen because of her lifelong devotion to poetry and education.
Wakamatsu has won several awards in recognition of her dedication as a teacher, including the 2006 Scarlet and Gray Award for Southern Arizona Teacher of the Year, and the 2005 Sunnyside School District Star Teacher Award. She is President of the Ocotillo Literary Endeavors Board and has taught poetry workshops at the Latina Writer’s Summer Retreat since 2002.The Mary Ann Campau Memorial Fellowship provides a $1000 stipend. Wakamatsu will also read for the Poetry Center Reading Series on March 6, 2008 at 8 p.m. at the Poetry Center.
The Poetry Center received several exceptional nominations for the Mary Ann Campau Fellowship. In addition to the Mary Ann Campau Fellow, our judges selected poets Judy Ray and Rita Magdaleno for honorable mention. We congratulate them and all of our nominees and thank them for contributing to the literary arts in Southern Arizona.
What others say about Maria Elena Wakamatsu
“As an English teacher at Desert View since 1986, she advocated for and helped to realize Creative Writing as an English Elective. Students blossom in her classes as they discover how to express themselves. Her students annually receive top awards in regional poetry contests… and she arranges for her students to give regular public readings of their work at Borders.” Brenda Semanick, as quoted from the nomination application.
“Maria Elena Wakamatsu is among those poets dedicated to affirming the perilously beautiful complexity at the core of our human family. In the tradition of Mary Ann Campau, Wakamatsu is a teacher-poet who has inspired and helped countless students and fellow poets in Tucson in order that their voices be heard. We are pleased to be able to recognize her efforts and her talent with the Mary Ann Campau Fellowship.” William Pitt Root and Pamela Uschuk, Fellowship judges
History of the Fellowship
A resident of Tucson for forty years, Mary Ann Campau was a devoted supporter of poetry and poets in our community. She began to take workshops at the Poetry Center and at the Writing Works Center in 1989. Mary Ann hosted writing classes with guest poets in her own home; provided "grants" to writers who could not otherwise afford to attend these and other workshops; she attended, supported, and participated in numerous local reading series; and through her own enthusiasm she cultivated new audiences for poetry. Her poems were published in local journals, and in 2001 she published a full-length collection of her own poetry, Like a Waterwheel Ghost. In the spirit of Mary Ann Campau, this Fellowship is offered to recognize poets who work actively and consistently to support poetry in the Tucson area
