Glenis Redmond

Glenis Redmond was born on August 27, 1963, on Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, South Carolina. She received her BA from Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina, and an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College.

Redmond is the author of six books of poetry: Praise Songs for Dave the Potter, which features artwork by Jonathan Green (University of Georgia Press, 2023); Listening Skin (Four Way Books, 2022), which was long-listed for the Julie Suk Award and the PEN America Open Book Award; The Three Harriets and Others (Finishing Line Press, 2022); What My Hand Say (Press 53, 2016); Under the Sun (Main Street Rag, 2002); and Backbone (Underground Epics, 2000).

Redmond is the recipient of numerous awards, honors, and fellowships, including the South Carolina Governor’s Award, the Charlie Award from the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival, a North Carolina Literary Fellowship, and the Peacemaker Award by the Upstate Mediation Center. She was also inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors.

Redmond helped create the literary program Peace Voices at the Peace Center, where she mentored youth poets and curated a program titled Poetic Conversations, wherein she hosted award-winning poets, such as Elizabeth Acevedo, Joshua Bennett, Paige Hernandez, Alicia Jo Rabins, Danez Smith, Jacqueline Woodson, and Javier Zamora. 

Redmond has spent almost three decades touring the United States while performing and facilitating poetry workshops for churches, school districts, teacher and student workshops, juvenile detention centers, conferences, prisons, pre-schools, school districts, festivals, teacher institutes, performing arts centers, and colleges and universities worldwide. She is on the Speaker’s Bureau for the United States Department of State, presenting programs in Muscat, Oman, and for the U.S. Embassy of Guatemala.

In the nineties, Redmond founded the first poetry slam in Greenville, South Carolina. She was the first to take an all-women team to nationals and was the Southern Fried Slam Champion twice and ranked twice in the top ten at the National Poetry Slam. She helped found Word Slam, a poetry slam for teens in Asheville, North Carolina, and helped to create the first writer in residence program at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock, North Carolina. She served as the poet in residence for the Peace Center in Greenville, South Carolina, and for the State Theatre of New Jersey in New Brunswick. For seventeen years, Redmond served as a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist. In that role, she created and facilitated poetry workshops for school districts across the country. Since 2014, Redmond has served as the mentor poet for the National Student Poets Program through Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.

Redmond is the first poet laureate of Greenville, South Carolina. In 2023, Redmond received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.