Lisa Gillard, Mississippi native, educator and poet, created the Gillard Institute, Inc. in 1997. The Gillard Institute serves Chicago public schools, colleges and agencies. Its purpose is to educate and motivate children, thereby impacting families. The Gillard Institute's primary mission is to teach at-risk, temporarily poor children how to write—creative and technical. Gillard's poetry has appeared Nommo 2: Remembering Ourselves Whole, Literary X-press, Kaleidoscope, Columbia Poetry Review and Mississippi Poetry Review.

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