SPP, ModLangs Grad Sarah Oso Receives ArtsXChange Emerging Leader Award

Posted September 29, 2020

Sarah Oso, a 2019 graduate of the School of Public Policy and School of Modern Languages who was also a walk-on Stamps President's Scholar, was named Emerging Leader during this year's Ebon Dooley Art and Justice Awards from ArtsXchange, part of the Southeast Community Cultural Center.

The Ebon Dooley Art and Justice Awards, named after the late community activist who founded ArtsXchange in 1983, are given to community members who "practice art for the people's sake" or are an "organizer/organization whose toolbox includes the practice of art integration - using culture and creativity in the service of a defined community as part a social or economic goal," per the organization's website.

As an Emerging Leader, Oso was recognized as someone under the age of 35 who "demonstrates a commitment to a body of work that supports the ways art can tell a story or illuminate the social condition." Oso has been an active and widely published poet in recent years, with her poems being nominated for the Pushcart Prize, an award recognizing works from small publishers and that appear in magazines including the New Ohio Review and Helen Literary Magazine. Oso won the inaugural School of Literature, Media, and Communication Creative Writing Award in 2017 for her poem "Heritage."

"The ways in which we share story through communion and through art are no longer a luxury we can go without – they become essential," Oso said in her acceptance speech for the award. "Storytelling gives us a way to illuminate an experience without repeating it. Story is resistance, an actual instrument of change, and that's a lot of power to wield. But as born storytellers, it's a power that's in each of us inherently, that we deserve."

You can read more about Oso's award and the Ebon Dooley Art and Justice Awards at this link.