Pamela Laskin is a 2022 Freedom Through Literacy Board Option Award winner.
Pamela L. Laskin, director of The City College of New York’s 50-year-old Poetry Outreach Center, is the recipient of a 2022 Freedom Through Literacy Board Option Award for her work to enable children to unload their grief and to empower voices through poetry.
The international award was established by the Pennsylvania-based Judith’s Reading Room in 2015 to identify and honor individual champions of literacy from all disciplines around the world — teachers, librarians, authors, researchers, educators — anyone who has done exemplary work to instill in others a love of reading.
“Pamela’s compassion to help disenfranchised youth to vocalize their fears through poetry which also fosters a love of reading, defines our mission,” said Cathy Leiber, President and Co-Founder of Judith’s Reading Room.
An award-winning poet, children’s book author, and English lecturer at CCNY, Laskin’s latest outreach is entitled “Poetry at the Border.” She plans on collaborating with the foundation Immigrant Families Together in helping children of recently arrived immigrants -- bused to New York from Texas -- write about their trauma. Immigrant Families Together is dedicated to reuniting and supporting families separated at the US/Mexico border.
“Poetry at the Border” will encourage children whose families are seeking asylum to write poetry about their experiences,” said Laskin. “Poetry enables children to understand trauma following events like hurricanes, children who are escaping atrocities, and children who are surviving life while housed in camps at the border. We might even go to Poland to work with children traumatized by the Ukraine war.”
Laskin is the editor of two anthologies, “Life on the Moon: My Best Friend's Secrets” (Linus Publications, 2009), and “The Heroic Young Woman” (Clique Calm, 2006). She is the author of two young adult novels, “Ronit and Jamil” (Harper Collins, 2017), and “Why no Goodbye?” (Leapfrog Press, 2019). The latter won the International Fiction Prize.
About Judith’s Reading Room
A nonprofit literacy organization based in eastern Pennsylvania, Judith’s Reading Room was founded in 2010 in memory of Judith F. Krug, a librarian and cousin to the organization’s founders. To date, the organization has dedicated 103 libraries in 22 countries. Krug served as Director of Intellectual Freedom for the American Library Association where she protected the freedom to read.
About the City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Emsi puts at $1.9 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 16,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Jay Mwamba
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jmwamba@ccny.cuny.edu