Margaret Chew Barringer
| Margaret Chew Barringer | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1946 Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania |
Margaret Chew Barringer is an American poet and filmmaker. She is the founder of American INSIGHT, an educational resource that has featured Free Speech and The Spoken Word for the past three decades.
In 1983, Barringer founded the American Poetry Center to bring storytelling and The Spoken Word to a wide range of audiences across Pennsylvania. This nonprofit organization was granted both its 501 c 3 status in Pennsylvania and its federal EIN in 1985. In 2005, the organization legally changed its name to American INSIGHT, as it prepared to reach new audiences through the latest advances in all-digital historic archival research, video production techniques, and Internet-based delivery systems.
The American Poetry Center sponsored readings, classes and symposia in Philadelphia and coordinated all literary events for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, providing a statewide model for the creation of National Poetry Month. Under Barringer's management, the American Poetry Center initiated a seven-year cultural exchange with the USSR Union of Writers. The Center also hosted a series of annual symposia that brought poets and writers from around the world to Philadelphia and attracted national and international media attention. Authors included E.L. Doctorow, Edward Albee, Joseph Brodsky, Susan Sontag, Galway Kinnell, Allen Ginsberg, Grace Paley, Etheridge Knight, Gerald Stern, Czeslaw Milosz, R.D. Laing, Amiri Baraka, Robert Bly, Dennis Brutus, John Ciardi, Marge Piercy, Amy Clampitt, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Haas, Stanley Kunitz, Cynthia Ozick, Donald Hall and Yevgeny Yevtushenko.
During the past decade, in its expanded capacity as a film production company staffed by university student Interns from the Greater Philadelphia area, American INSIGHT has featured regional authors, educators, scholars, artists, and civic leaders in both short and long form documentaries. During this time, six years of research into the historical origins of Free Speech led to the inauguration of American INSIGHT's most recent programs: an international Free Speech Film Festival and Free Speech Blog.
Barringer is the chairman of American INSIGHT, and oversees all aspects of the organization and its Internship Program. She has served on the Board of Advisors to the American Poetry Review, the Pew Fellowships’ Regional Council, the Mayor’s Cultural Advisory Committee for Philadelphia, and the Governor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts in Pennsylvania. Her poems have appeared in eight journals and two anthologies in America, and in four journals and three anthologies in Russia, reaching over 25 millions people.
