Marshallese poet, spoken word artist, and activist, Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner is visiting the UW on Wednesday, April 11, in an event hosted by the campus Pacific Islander community. Click here to visit the Facebook event page.
An activist focused on issues of social justice, climate and the environment, Jetñil-Kijiner performed a poem at the United Nations Climate Summit in 2014 and spoke at the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris in 2015.
From Jetñil-Kijiner’s official website:
Her writing and performances have been featured by CNN, Democracy Now, Mother Jones, the Huffington Post, NBC News, National Geographic, Nobel Women’s Initiative, and more. In February 2017, the University of Arizona Press published her first collection of poetry, Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter.
Kathy also co-founded the youth environmentalist non-profit Jo-Jikum dedicated to empowering Marshallese youth to seek solutions to climate change and other environmental impacts threatening their home island. Kathy has been selected as one of 13 Climate Warriors by Vogue in 2015 and the Impact Hero of the Year by Earth Company in 2016. She received her Master’s in Pacific Island Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Jetñil-Kijiner will do a poetry reading, talk, and engage with the audience in dialogue around nuclear testing and climate change.
The talk will be held at the UW “wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ” Intellectual House (4249 Whitman Court, University of Washington), from 5 to 9 p.m. Admission is free.