Coffee and Conversation with Sean Chambers

Join us for coffee and light refreshments and a conversation with poet-in-residence Sean Chambers about ways your writing is influenced by music. He’ll speak particularly about funk music’s influence on his work.

Sean Chambers, MFA, is a writer of creative nonfiction and poetry, and an education leader passionate about the craft of writing, the deconstruction of rhetoric, cross-cultural communication, and interfaith understanding. Chambers earned his graduate degrees from Manhattanville College (MA in Writing and MFA) and his BA from the University of Virginia (Charlottesville). Other writing training has come through participation in Harvard’s Bok Center for Teaching and Learning’s Discussion Leadership Program, two of Princeton Theological Seminary’s Writers Weeks, and, most recently, the Bryn Mawr College Ascending Leaders Program in their Nonprofit Executive Leadership Institute. Prof. Chambers is Assistant Dean for Faculty and Associate Professor of English at Valley Forge Military College and founded Soldiers Theatre, Creative Camouflage Arts Society, and College Press Corps. He also is a PhD candidate in the ASPECT program at Va. Tech. 

He has been an editorial consultant on projects including the instructional kit (reader and teacher manual) “Real Men: Urban Minority Boys Write about Manhood” and “The Struggle to Be Strong: Teens Write about Resilience,” both by Youth Communication/New York Center, Inc. His reviews of nonfiction by Black authors appear on Booklistonline.com. He presented at the 2020 National MLA Conference in Seattle on “Poetry for Scientists and Welders: Teaching the Liberal Arts at Two-Year Colleges” and twice judged the annual PA State HS Oratory Contest, “Poetry Out Loud.” He co-facilitated the 2021 Summer Teen Writing Workshop (Theme: “Writing about Race”) for Youth Communication/NYC, Inc., an award-winning youth development organization where he also was a magazine editor for their two award winning publications and Teacher Development Director for five years. In 2022, he co-facilitated a well-attended online statewide conversation between a Democrat and Republican member of the PA House of Representatives about talking across political lines. He hosts the community public access talk show “Men on the Main Line” airing monthly on Radnor TV Channel 21 (Wayne, PA in the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area). As host, Chambers facilitates discussions with local experts on topics ranging from preventing domestic violence to preparing high school students for the SATs to exploring the pastries men consume at Super Bowl parties. In the virtual learning space, Chambers co-designed projects of deep interest, related to helping others with differences coexist harmoniously and with self-knowledge. He co-created with the American Jewish Committee the Temple University Dialogue Institute’s 2020 weeklong series about cultural competency and Black-Jewish relations for an AP Social Studies class at Philly’s Northeast HS. He also has taught cultural competency and communication skills to students in Russia, the Middle East and the US through the DI’s 2021 work with Citizen Diplomat Academy. His digital oral history project “Black Schooling: Educators Talk Shop across the Generations” won a 2021-22 PA Council on the Arts Grant. Early career teachers interview retired educators who recount stories from as long ago as the 1940s. The teachers speak about black school but it is American schooling, informative for all.