Jourdan Imani Keith is a playwright, naturalist, educator, and storyteller whose work blends the textures of political, personal and natural landscapes to offer voices from the margins of American lives. Keith has performed nationally and internationally, giving over 250 performances from Zimbabwe to Philadelphia, from Yellowstone and North Cascades National Park to Seattle. Jourdan Keith has received awards from 4 Culture, Artist Trust, and Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs for Coyote Autumn and 2004 for the play and solo performance of The Uterine Files: Episode I, Voices Spitting Out Rainbows. She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, Voices of Our Nations (VONA), and Jack Straw Writer’s program. Her poems, essays and articles have appeared in magazines, newspapers, radio, television and video, including The Seattle Times, Labyrinth, PUSH, Floating Bridge Press, Colors NW, Seattle Woman, and the anthology, Ma-Ka, Diasporic Juks, writings by Queers of African Descent. Jourdan Keith is Founder and Director of Urban Wilderness Project.
Jourdan Imani Keith

Lay of the Land

A Taste of Plastic
Though I live on Seattle’s Puget Sound, I am truly connected to the waters around me only when I’m reading a menu that names the local bay where my appetizer was harvested. Continue reading
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Desegregating Wilderness
I SAW SEVERAL BISON the other morning as I followed the usual left and right turns that take me to the rural outskirts of Enumclaw, a town forty-five minutes from my Continue reading
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Homophobia’s Hidden Carbon Count
OUR SUBARU sat on the grass plot in front of our house gathering pollen next to the certified “Backyard Wildlife Habitat” sign we’d posted to explain the condition of our yard. Continue reading
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At Risk
THE TORRENTIAL RAIN in the first week of September pummels the youth crew’s tents at night, depositing mud and sediment in the creek where they pump water for drinking. For seventeen Continue reading