Serenity Sundays

Clinnesha Sibley, a native of McComb, Mississippi, is a published author, community leader, and educator. She promotes creative-mindedness—believing that visual, performing, and literary arts can change the way we think about some of life’s most important questions.

A writer of plays, blogs, poetry, prose, essays and creative non-fiction, Clinnesha has received numerous honors including the Holland New Voices Award, the Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, Mississippi Theatre Association Adult Playwriting Award, A.I.M. Award for Creative Writing, and a 2021 Vance Fellowship from the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration. Her work has appeared on national theatre stages and in national literary journals, anthologies/ publications including Penumbra Literary and Art Journal, HerStry, Poetry South, The Maine Review, Feels Blind Literary, Quince Magazine, In Full Color, Black Masks Magazine, and Muzzle Magazine. She has also authored numerous essays including ‘How to Survive Predominately White Academic Theatre: Cause a Disruptive Innovation’, published by Howlround in 2016; and “Remembering, Rewriting and Re-Imagining: An Afrocentric Approach to Directing New Work for the Theatre”, featured in Black Acting Methods and published by Routledge Books. She is also a blog contributor on TheWriteAddiction.com, where her “Serenity Sunday” beat goes live every week.

Clinnesha received her B.A. at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi, where she was a 2003 initiate into the Gamma Psi Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and was the 2005-2006 Miss Tougaloo College. She received her Master of Fine Arts Degree (MFA) from the University of Arkansas (U of A) in Fayetteville, becoming the first African-American to earn such a degree from that institution. As both a student and an Assistant Professor at the U of A, Clinnesha was a diversity champion and a key woman educator in the arts. She proudly served the College of Charleston in South Carolina as an Assistant Professor of Playwriting where her mission was to empower students to cultivate their unique voice and write fearlessly, without limits. After teaching at the college/university level for seven years, she moved into secondary residential education. She has taught at The Historic Piney Woods School and is currently the Literary Arts Instructor at Mississippi School of the Arts.

Her plays have been called feminist, protest, political, southern, and circular. Her widely known works include Tell Martha Not to Moan, Naked: What Women and Their Bodies Represent to America, Bound by Blood, Search Team, Thorns, The Cleaning Ladies, Uprooted, and Love Be Like…— all of which have received national recognition by reputable organizations including Penumbra Theatre, TheatreSquared, Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, Kentucky Women Writers Conference, Fade to Black Reading Series, Blackboard Reading Series, Spark Creative Works, New Circle Theatre, New Stage Theatre, The Union For Contemporary Art, and NYCPlaywrights. She is also known for authoring numerous essays including “How to Survive Predominately White Academic Theatre: Cause a Disruptive Innovation”, published by Howlround in 2016; “Remembering, Rewriting and Re-Imagining: An Afrocentric Approach to Directing New Work for the Theatre”, featured in Black Acting Methods and published by Routledge Books, and ‘“I Am Speaking” and Why Black and Brown Voices Matter’, featured in the anthology 2020: The Year that Changed America alongside Nikki Giovanni. Her work breaks stereotypes in the American theatre and contributes authentic narratives about Mississippians, southerners, and Black women to the contemporary literary canon.

Clinnesha was selected as one of twenty-four change-makers across the United States for the 2017-2018 National Arts Strategies Creative Communities Fellow Program. This program was her springboard into the non-profit sector and social entrepreneurship. A 2019 recipient of a “Rise Grant” from Women on the Rise Network, she is the Executive-Artistic Director for the Southwest Mississippi Multiplex for Early Innovative Intervention Studies.

Clinnesha is married to her high school sweetheart, Keith Sibley, and they have three children: Kaylee, Karlee, and Keith Jr.

Tune in to http://www.TheWRITEaddiction.com weekly for Clinnesha’s Serenity Sundays.