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Great Women Speakers Presents.....Outstanding Women Speakers
Minton Sparks
Poet, Performance Artist, Novelist, Teacher, Essayist
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>>Reviews
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Minton Sparks is an unforgettable experience. She’s a wildly original storyteller backed by world class musicians. Minton has been featured at Lincoln Center’s “Songbook Series” in New York City and is a treasured performer at the prestigious Jonesborough International Storytelling Festival. The Fellowship of Southern Writers will honor her with their Spoken Word award in April of 2011.
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The best thing about Minton Sparks is that she is hilarious and poignant at the same time. She takes audiences on a wild journey of transformation through the door of struggling family stories.
James Bishop
Vanderbilt University workshop participant.
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Before attending a Minton Sparks workshop I wrestled with the voices of my pastoften trying to silence them with alcohol and work. Minton showed me that when family ghosts insist on being heard that in effect they are asking for release.
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I can’t stop thinking about White Lightning and how alcohol can totally obliterate a family. Your accompanist, John Jackson, was world class. The feeling I had of being connected to my own story after the show is still with me.”
Randy, 25,
Inmate at maximum security prison.
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Audience members will leave this 70 minute performance on a first name basis with many of Minton’s relatives and more importantly having a new sense of belonging to their own stories, revisiting memories both bittersweet and joyous. She speaks to the importance of truth telling and knows the power of story song and music. No one leaves without a clearer connection to the people and the place where they were raised. Everyone feels like they are in the middle of their own hero’s journey.
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With a skillful hand, Minton Sparks offers story as a navigational tool for the rugged terrain of the past in order to transform future landscapes. "The truth will set you free" is . . . well, true.
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>> Topics
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Built My House on My Sister's Back
“Built My House on My Sister’s Back” unearths poignant vignettes that reveal dark, and often hysterically funny truths about the people and place that shaped and molded Minton Sparks. Understanding the value of a wildly colorful family, teacher/poet Sparks celebrates the fact that “we only get one life, one story and, at the same time, we stand upon the rich treasure chest containing other women’s hard won victories. Fortunate to be the first female to graduate from college in her Southern family, Minton realized that privilege carried a great responsibility: to harness the inspiration of all those women who came before her.
Accompanied by world-class musician John Jackson, a former Bob Dylan band member, Minton makes a living unearthing stories and poems that originate in the bosom of her family of origin. “Built My House on the Backs of My Sisters” resonates with any woman from any part of the country who grew up wrestling with their family stories.
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Silent No Longer: Mining Family Stories for Mental Health, “an important piece of women's healthcare puzzle.”
Performance poet Minton Sparks stands vigil at the crossroads of Women’s Healthcare and women’s mental health. Recently featured at the TEDX.com event she delivered “Emotional Landscapes of the Southern Family” and revealed in hilarious and meaningful vignettes, the hidden side of family stories. Sparks underscores the importance of naming and claiming the people and the place you come from, in order to experience the fullness of one’s humanity. Former therapist/college teacher/college basketball player/storyteller and poet, Minton’s offers, “the issue of finding one’s voice and mental health are key factors in becoming a whole human being.”
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 Imagine, if you will, Flannery O'Connor and the ghost of Hank Williams having an affair that results in the birth of an illegitimate child . . . . I have seen Minton Sparks. And if she’s not the ghost child of the woman who wrote Wise Blood and the man who sang ‘I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive,’ then cotton doesn’t grow in a cotton field.
— Marshall Chapman, writer for Garden & Gun
Minton Sparks is a wildly original poet, performance artist, novelist, teacher, and essayist born in a Tennessee college town and raised among her Southern family in and around Arkansas. She earned degrees from the University of the South and Vanderbilt University. Her appearances range from the prestigious Jonesborough National Storytelling Festival all the way to the American Songbook Series at Lincoln Center in New York City.
Minton’s books, Desperate Ransom and White Lightning, and her writing have received wide acclaim from NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered and BBC’s Bob Harris Show. Her performances have enthralled audiences across the United States and Europe. Her DVD, Open Casket, and three CD’s, which feature blues sensation Keb Mo’, the legendary Waylon Jennings, and the internationally acclaimed Irish songstress Maura O’Connell, are sought after worldwide. She has appeared on stage with Ben Folds, John Prine, Jacob Dylan, Rosanne Cash, and country legend Pam Tillis. Recently, Minton was chosen to perform at an exclusive TED.com event on Healthcare and the Arts in Nashville, Tennessee.
In addition to writing and performing, Minton teaches a writing/performance workshop, Mining Family Stories for Artistic Value, at universities and professional organizations across the country.
When Minton is not performing, she lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband, two children, and their dog, Jazz.
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