Faculty: Francine Ringold

Francine Leffler Ringold (Johnson), Ph.D., was the Poet Laureate of Oklahoma 2003-7 and a 2003 winner of the “Writers Who Make A Difference” award from the nationally distributed Writer Magazine, a Katie Westby Lifetime Award from the Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa, and a “Sadie” and “Newsmaker” Award from Women in Communications. Her name is also synonymous in the minds of many with Nimrod, the international literary journal that she has edited and championed for over 40 years.

Ringold’s published work ranges from poems to plays to guides for creative writing and includes: Still Dancing: New & Selected Poems, 2004, The Trouble with Voices, 1996, both winners of the Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry; Every Other One, 2001, a collaborative venture with her husband, poet Manly Johnson; Voices, 1981; prize-winning plays, including one-woman presentations based on the lives of Mercy Otis Warren and Isadora Duncan; and two volumes detailing her creative writing approach, with examples from her students: A Magic Journey: Writing and Painting at Gatesway (a school for persons with developmental disabilities), and Making Your Own Mark: A Guide to Writing and Drawing for Senior Citizens (with art therapist, Madeline Rugh, Ph.D.) She is currently working on a play called “Family Theater.” Another play “Kicking Up Her Heels” in 2009.

Francine Ringold has taught literature, creative writing, and theatre at the University of Tulsa, and in the Oklahoma State Arts in Education and Artists in the Schools programs. She has also held several grants from the Oklahoma Humanities Council designed to develop an audience for literature through performance and by organizing literary materials around specific themes, for example: banking, labor, science, history, and others.

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