KINGSTON, JAMAICA, November 07, 2019 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Marquis Who's Who, the world's premier publisher of biographical profiles, is proud to present Opal Palmer Adisa, PhD, with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. An accomplished listee, Dr. Adisa celebrates many years' experience in her professional network, and has been noted for achievements, leadership qualities, and the credentials and successes she has accrued in her field. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Dr. Adisa is an expert in gender studies and literature who began serving as the university director at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies-RCO, University of the West Indies, in her native Kingston, Jamaica, in 2017. Accumulating more than 40 years of professional excellence in education, she came from the California College of the Arts where she was a distinguished professor of Diversity Studies and the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing. Dr. Adisa also held faculty appointments at Stanford University, the University of California Berkeley, San Francisco State University and several other institutions across the country. Prior to her years in academia, she was a curriculum writer for the Oakland Museum of California, teacher and counselor for the Lucinda Weeks Center in San Francisco, head teacher at the Booker T. Washington Child Development Center in San Francisco and an Education Officer at The Educational Broadcasting Corporation in Kingston, Jamaica.
Developing a passion for the written word while still in grade school, the stories Dr. Adisa grew up listening to really shaped her career years later. But it wasn't until she began her undergraduate work that she had the opportunity to meet writers from Africa and the Caribbean and that would impact the focus of her writing. Now an award-winning author, Dr. Adisa has published over twenty-two volumes of poetry and prose, including Dance Quadrille, Play Quelbe (Pulmeria, 2018), Loves Promise (CaribbeanReads, 2017), Look! A Moko Jumbie (Plumeria, 2016), 4-Headed Woman (Tia Chucha Press, 2013), Incantations & Rites (with Devorah Major, 2013), Painting Away Regrets (Peepal Tree Press, 2011), Caribbean Erotic (co-edited with Donna Aza Weir-Soley, 2010); What a Woman Is (poetry with paintings by Shyam Kamel, 2010), Amour Verdinia (The Literary Leaf/Deconstructed Artichoke Press, 2009), Conscious Living (The Literary Leaf/Deconstructed Artichoke Press, 2009), I Name Me Name (Peepal Tree Press, 2008) and Playing Is Our Work (WWWAC Press, 2008). Dr. Adisa's books, from her first story collection, Bake-Face and Other Guava Stories (Kelsely Street Press, 1985), which was laudably reviewed in The New York Times, have always explored gender issues such as sexual violence, child physical and sexual abuse and issues of masculinity and men's relationships with their mothers. Throughout her career, she has also contributed articles on parenting to the Healthy You website and many journals and magazines, and edited and hosted the Parenting Show on KPFA radio in Berkeley, and on poetry for the Virgin Islands Daily News' St. Thomas edition.
Dr. Adisa was awarded residencies around the world, including at El Gouna, Egypt the Sacatar Institute, Brazil, the Headlands Center for the Arts, California and the McColl Center for Art + Innovation, North Carolina. To share her expertise, she has served on various committees, as a consultant and judge for various organizations and events and as a faculty mentor at San Francisco State University and the California College of the Arts. Dr. Adisa was also responsible for co-founding the children's theater group, Watoto Wa Kuumba, and for helping out in her local community. She has served in a variety of capacities with the Fine Art Museum of San Francisco, the Chabot Parent Teacher Association and other organizations. She remains a consultant for the Families Learning Together project through Musical Mayhem Productions in San Francisco since 1995.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Dr. Adisa made her way to the United States at the age of 15, graduated high school in New York City and began her college education at Hunter College, New York. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications in 1975 and then returned to Jamaica where she worked for three years. Next she attended San Francisco State University where she completed a Master of Arts in English/Creative Writing in 1981 and a Master of Arts in Drama in 1986. She later acquired a Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies and Literature at the University of California Berkeley in 1992.
Maintaining affiliation with several industry-related organizations, Dr. Adisa is a member of the California Poets in the Schools, where she previously served as the chair of the employment committee and on the board of directors. Among other organizations, she is also a member of the National Association for Ethnic Studies and the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, and still is a Board member of The Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars (ACWWS).
Recognized for her achievements, Dr. Adisa has received several poetry and short story awards, including a Canute A. Brodhurst Prize for one of her stories. She was also named Master Folk Artist for Storytelling by the California Arts Council and received a Distinguished Bay Area Woman Writer Award and a California Legislature Assembly Certificate of Recognition. A celebrated Marquis listee, she was previously featured in the 27th edition of Who's Who in the West.
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