Kent State University is one of 61 organizations nationwide – and one of four organizations in Ohio – to be awarded a 2021-2022 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Big Read grant. The university’s $20,000 grant will support the Big Read Northeast Ohio, a community reading program and related events focusing on “An American Sunrise” by Poet Laureate Joy Harjo from October 2021 through May 2022. Harjo, the first Native American poet laureate of the United States, will visit Kent State in March 2022 for a keynote event and book reading.

WBUR, Boston’s NPR News Station aired this segment on May 19, 2021. Robin Young produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Karyn Miller-Medzon and Todd Mundt. Serena McMahon adapted it for the web. Contributions for the segment were received from Kent State University May 4 Archivist Elizabeth Campion. Here is a link to the original article as it appears on the WBUR website.

(KENT, OH – March 25, 2021) Kent State University Libraries proudly announces that Library Director Mary Hricko, Ph.D., of the Kent State Geauga Campus and the Twinsburg Academic Center, recently received a Celebrating Ohio Book Awards & Authors (COBAA) Grant for $1002. The grant, which is sponsored by the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services and awarded by the State Library of Ohio, provides federal funding to expand collection development of books about Ohio and written by Ohio authors.

To celebrate Constitution Day, Kent State University Libraries is offering a virtual screening of the documentary And She Could Be Next. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion that will include the filmmakers, Grace Lee, Marjan Safinia and Jyoti Sarda, as well as Kent State faculty members Denise Harrison, Joycelyn Harrison, Ph.D. and Janine Tiffe, Ph.D. This film provides a great opportunity to not only explore our democracy, but also to underscore the importance of voting.