UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Rapper/musician and poet Dessa will discuss “Creativity in Music, Writing, and Art” at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 12 in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium at University Park. The event is free and open to the public.
Dessa has performed at Lollapalooza and Glastonbury, co-composed works for a hundred-voice choir, performed with the Minnesota Orchestra, and made artistic contributions to the top-selling album “The Hamilton Mixtape” and the Oscar-nominated documentary “RBG.” She has published a memoir, “My Own Devices” (Dutton, 2018), and several genre-spanning literary collections. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times and National Geographic Traveler as well as literary journals around the country.
Dessa has delivered keynote speeches and presentations on art, science, and entrepreneurship at colleges and universities and elsewhere across the United States. She was also the host of “Deeply Human,” a radio program created by the BBC and American Public Media.
Dessa’s visit is co-sponsored by the Josephine Berry Weiss Chair of the Humanities, the Center for Democratic Deliberation, the Humanities Institute, the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, and the departments of English, Philosophy, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in the College of the Liberal Arts; and the Department of Film Production and Media Studies in the Bellisario College of Communications.