When singer-songwriter-frontwoman Tasha Golden left years of full-time touring with her band Ellery (ellerymusic.com) to study poetry, she also began leading creative writing workshops for young women in juvenile detention facilities. Week after week, Golden watched as her students bravely shared poems about difficult histories. Eventually, she promised them she'd follow their example; that she too would share her work--poems haunted by domestic violence and conservative evangelicalism. That promise became Once You Had Hands. For this event, Golden will discuss how song and poetry writing interact. She’ll also discuss her experience working with incarcerated young women. Currently a PhD student at the University of Louisville, Golden researches the impact of the arts on stigmatized issues. Her songs have been heard in major motion pictures, TV dramas, and radio, and her prose and research have been published in Ploughshares, Pleaides, and Ethos Journal, among others.
