Office of the Poet Laureate  Dolores Kendrick  DC Poet Laureate  Photo by Steve Lewis Native Washingtonian, Dolores Kendrick, was appointed Poet Laureate of the District Columbia, on May 14, 1999 with a mayoral proclamation declaring it ‘Dolores Kendrick Day’. Ms. Kendrick is the second person honored with that title. The first DC Poet Laureate was Sterling Brown, appointed in 1984. Ms. Kendrick authored the award-winning poetry book The Women of Plums, in 1989. A recording consisting of music based on The Women of Plums was released in 1996. Ms. Kendrick adapted her book for theatrical performance in Cleveland, and later at the Kennedy Center, in Washington, DC. The author of two other books, Through the Ceiling and Now is the Time to Praise, Ms. Kendrick has been noted as one of the top African-American poets writing today. She was commissioned to write two poems for the Red Line station at New York and Florida Avenues. Another poem is included in a sculpture at the Pepco Building in downtown Washington. She has also contributed to the Forward to Growing Up in Washington, DC, published by the Historical Society of Washington, DC. Her latest book is entitled Why the Woman is Singing on the Corner. Dolores Kendrick has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Award, the George Kent Award for Literature, the prestigious Anisfield-Wolf Award and is the first Vira I. Heinz professor emerita at Phillips Exeter Academy. Ms. Kendrick has been chosen by Chicago State University to join the International Literary Hall of Fame for writers of African-American decent. Most recently, she was invited by the educational community in Aix-en-Provence, France and the American Embassy in Paris to do a program of readings and conversations with high school students, student-teachers and university professors. The outcome of this vision is the establishment of a sister city initiative between Aix-en-Provence, France and the District of Columbia. A poem written in Shanghai, China during her teaching assignment at the Shanghai School of Foreign Languages was recently presented in both English and Mandarin to a Chinese delegation that requested it while visiting Washington, DC.