Talks

Is Is Enough by Lauren Camp

Talks & Presentations

Begging a Memory: Poems on Dementia

This talk and reading focuses on valuing the present moment—one of the powerful lessons of Alzheimer’s Disease. Drawing from Is Is Enough, her ninth collection, Lauren haunts her family’s past, reweaving and reorienting against her father’s ongoing vanishing. Ordinary situations begin to seem like joy in reverse.

Previously presented at

  • Oklahoma Center for the Humanities, Tulsa, OK, 2019
  • The University of Tulsa
    Oxley College of Health Sciences, 2019
  • Alzheimer’s Association
    Caregiver Conference, Albuquerque, NM, 2018
  • Grand Rounds Lecture at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN 2018

In Old Sky by Lauren Camp

Poetry Under the Stars

This program takes place outdoors. Grand Canyon National Park’s fourth Astronomer-in-Residence Lauren Camp will read a selection of night sky, star and moon poems from across time and cultures while participants listen and notice phenomena in the wide open sky. Following the reading, you will be treated to a laser-guided constellation talk. The perfect chance to slow down, look and listen.

Previously presented at

  • Grand Canyon National Park Star Party, 2024 & 2025
  • Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, AZ, 2025
  • Death Valley National Park Dark Sky Festival, CA, 2025
  • Jemez Historic Site Star Party, Jemez Springs, NM, 2024
  • Los Alamos Nature Center Planetarium, 2023

 * * * 

Sensing the Sky

Lauren describes how it felt to be enveloped by the Grand Canyon’s pristine natural darkness and to shape this experience into poems. Throughout, Lauren will read poems from her book In Old Sky (Grand Canyon Conservancy, 2024) and advocate for preserving dark skies.

Previously presented at

  • Grand Canyon National Park Star Party, 2024 & 2025
  • The Astronomical Society of Las Cruces, 2025

One Hundred Hungers by Lauren Camp

Discovering Baghdad:
How Writing My Father’s Story Took Me to the Tigris

In this presentation, Lauren Camp discusses and reads poems from her book, One Hundred Hungers (Tupelo Press, 2016), which depicts her family’s emigration from their homeland of Baghdad to suburban New York in the mid-20th century.

This story of fleeing and freedom is interwoven with an American daughter’s childhood, loosely based on Camp’s youth and told as myth. The collection, which won the Dorset Prize, mixes personal reflection and family details with cultural, religious and political heritage, social conflicts and commentary.

Previously presented at

  • Lit Youngstown, Youngstown, OH, 2025
  • Washington & Lee University, Lexington, VA, 2019
  • Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID, 2019
  • Bridgewater College, Bridgewater, VA, 2018
  • University of Minnesota-Rochester, MN, 2018
  • Georgetown University, Washington D.C., 2017
  • International Studies Institute
    University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 2017
  • University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, 2016

Painting a Poem: 8 Takeaways from Georgia O'Keeffe

Painting a Poem: 8 Takeaways from Georgia O’Keeffe

Learn to think about the writing process from a visual art perspective. This innovative talk offers a way to glean writing techniques by studying the works of one of the most important modernist artists.

Previously presented at

  • The Stafford Challenge, 2024