Deborah Hunter

Deborah J. Hunter, a native Tulsan, is a poet, spoken word artist, essayist, actor, teaching artist, workshop facilitator and social justice activist.  She was presented with a Woman of the Year Pinnacle Award in 2018, the Jingle Feldman Artist Award in 2000, and was a 2013 Oklahoma Poet Laureate finalist. Her work has been published in literary journals, magazines, anthologies and other printed media. She was awarded a Tulsa Performing Arts Center grant in 2005 and again in 2011 to present her one-woman performance piece in poetic monologues, Amazons, Gypsies and Wandering Minstrels, a significant and timely message about women living with trauma. A staunch and longtime advocate and educator on issues pertaining to mental illness and homelessness, Hunter’s chapter, “Violence and the Homeless Population: Perpetrators or Victims?” appears in the academic series, Violence and Abuse in Society: Understanding a Global Crisis (Dr. Angela Browne-Miller, Editor). Her most recent essay “Salvation,” appears in the anthology, Voices from the Heartland-Volume II, which has been selected as a 2020 Oklahoma Book Award finalist.

Porches

With her original play, Porches, Deborah J. Hunter moves audiences through a time period spanning from the aftermath of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre through the Civil Rights Movement. Although the show has both male and female characters, Porches features an all-female cast. Hunter centers on the experiences of Black women who were neither wealthy nor high in social status. Through the use of vignettes set in actual neighborhood porches located within the Greenwood District, the performance will fuse dance, video, music, and poetry to explore themes of resilience, community pride, and Black sisterhood.

Porches will be performed live June 18-20 in five shows at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center, 621 E 4th St, Tulsa, OK.