Meredith Nnoka '14
Celebrating/Commemorating Juneteenth - Abolition Then and Now
By centering the voices of currently and formerly incarcerated people through poetry, Meredith Nnoka '14, carceral justice advocate and published poet, commemorates (celebrates) Juneteenth, with a virtual talk that outlines the history of mass incarceration and the current national debate around criminal justice reform in the U.S.
Meredith Nnoka is a Chicago-based writer, educator and carceral justice advocate originally from southern Maryland. She currently works for the Illinois Humanities Council on their statewide Envisioning Justice initiative and volunteers with Parole Illinois and the Defund CPD (Chicago Police Department) campaign.
Nnoka is also a published poet. Her work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, HEart Online, Mandala Journal, The Collapsar and elsewhere. Her poem "Prelude to Your Leaving" was nominated for inclusion in the 2017 Best of the Net anthology. Her first chapbook, A Hunger Called Music: A Verse History of Black Music, won C&R Press's Winter Soup Bowl Competition.
She has a BA from Smith College, Class of 2014, and an MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, both in Africana studies.
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