School of Education alumna Erika Dickerson-Despenza is a recipient of a 2022 Forward Award from the Wisconsin Alumni Foundation.
The Forward Award acknowledges rising stars in various fields who exemplify the Wisconsin Idea through an emphasis on service, discovery, and progress. Young alumni within 15 years of graduation who have demonstrated exceptional early-career achievement and a positive impact on their professions or communities are eligible for this award.
Dickerson-Despenza graduated from UW–Madison in 2014, earning a bachelor’s degree in English education from the School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction, and a certificate in gender and women’s studies. An award-winning poet and playwright, Dickerson-Despenza says she writes with the Black, Queer, feminist lens, calling attention to how communities can organize to liberate Black women and girls around the globe.
An example is her play “cullud wattah,” which debuted at New York’s prestigious Public Theater in 2022 and won the respected Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. “cullud wattah” is an Afro-surrealist play about the racism and politics of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and its devastating effects on three generations of women. Dickerson-Despenza says that more than any award, she hopes to move audiences to take action.
“We get to raise awareness, we get to politicize folks, we get to radicalize them, we get to point them in the direction of direct ways that they can help,” Dickerson-Despenza said in a Public Theater video about the making of the play.
Offstage Dickerson-Despenza is an environmental activist, and in 2019 served as a National Arts & Culture Delegate for the U.S. Water Alliance’s One Water Summit.
“Water justice is not an American issue, it is not a Black issue or a white issue or an Indigenous issue,” Dickerson-Despenza said in the Public Theater video. “It is a global issue.”
Read more about Dickerson-Despenza’s work and accomplishments in this story at uwalumni.com.