Nancy Louise Cook
Projects
The Witness Project

https://www.facebook.com/witnesswriting/
The Witness Project’s goal is to create opportunities for traditionally silenced voices to be heard and thereby serve as catalysts for cross-cultural understanding. The main program consists of free monthly generative workshops of three hours’ duration. More....
The Witness Project’s goal is to create opportunities for traditionally silenced voices to be heard and thereby serve as catalysts for cross-cultural understanding. The main program consists of free monthly generative workshops of three hours’ duration. More....
We Are

This is a project to support an urban neighborhood’s re-appropriation of cultural identity, using poetry and literary prose to publicize a range of community perspectives about recent impactful events, including the killing of George Floyd.
Urban Eco-Narratives

Fifteen writers and scientific researchers are collaborating to draw attention to ecological relationships between humans and nature and to promote solutions to existing systemic racial and economic inequities. The collaborative is co-producing literary narratives focused on regional ecological issues. In addition to a collection of literary narratives, the collaborative will produce a handbook of guidelines and writing prompts for future interdisciplinary projects. Project goals are to make science more meaningful to our community, to make science more aware of community perspectives, and to inspire writers to use their skills in service to the community. The project operates on the principle that people develop different ways of seeing, listening, and interpreting in their work. Members of the group are looking for ways to share our different “witnessing” and “researching” processes and discover how to incorporate these other ways of knowing into our respective practices.
Community residents, with support and guidance from writers and artists from The Witness Project, are creating group “chapbooks” in poster form exploring themes of community pride, preservation, and development. Chapbooks of approximately 20 poster-pages will contain a hybrid of poems, flash fiction, and micro-essays authored by participants at three or four drop-in workshop events. Each 18” x 24” page will include visual images and collage as well as text. Completed posters will be displayed as turning “pages” on a freestanding poster display rack.
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Literary Documentary

https://www.minneapolisparks.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Phase-1-Community-Engagement-Part-2.pdf
This past year, the Witness Project undertook to compile a “literary documentary” of several regional parks, interrogating the past, present, and future of the parks through a literary lens. As lead artist, I curated a compilation of essays and poems about the parks which was then presented to the Minneapolis Parks & Rec Board as evidence of important perspectives on the parks. More....
This past year, the Witness Project undertook to compile a “literary documentary” of several regional parks, interrogating the past, present, and future of the parks through a literary lens. As lead artist, I curated a compilation of essays and poems about the parks which was then presented to the Minneapolis Parks & Rec Board as evidence of important perspectives on the parks. More....
Meet the Farmers

To aid in development of sustainable agriculture nonprofits, I'm interviewing and writing the stories of immigrant and refugee farmers. The stories will soon be appearing on social media sites and in promotional materials.