Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton is an internationally-known writer, librettist, educator, activist and performer. She began as a slam poet, competing regularly in national poetry slams, and was even voted one of the top performance poets in the world. In 2017, she was the first African American to be appointed as Poet Laureate of Houston, In 2019 her poetry collection, Newsworthy, won huge acclaim, and her memoir, Black Chameleon, is out this week from Harold Holt. Deborah has also taken her poetry and artistry into other artforms – opera, ballet and most recently visual arts - using those new opportunities to lift up women and to celebrate their stories, whether those stories were well known or not.
International Women's Day is celebrated today, March 8th, 2023, and is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The first National Women's Day was celebrated in the US in 1909, and it became International Women's Day in 1911. To mark the centenary in 2011, March was declared as Women's History Month by US President Barack Obama.
Buy Deborah's new memoir, Black Chameleon: Memory, Womanhood, and Myth, from Kindred Stories, Brazos Bookstore, or the Bookshop.org.
Watch Deborah's Poet Laureate response to Hurricane Harvey on BBC World News in 2017.
Deborah's book recommendations were:
Chrome Valley, a poetry collection by Mahogany Brown
Interior Chinatown, a novel by Charles Yu
A little devil in America, by Hanif Abdurraqib
You can find Deborah at:
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