Amelia Blossom Pegram

Amelia Blossom Pegram is a writer, poet, teacher, and performer born in Cape Town, South Africa. After earning a BA in history and English, she began a career as a teacher but was forced to leave South Africa for political reasons in 1963. Ultimately settling London, England, she studied acting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She also began writing poetry, incorporating jazz influences into her readings to create a performance style that combined elements of spoken-word poetry, music, and dance.
 
In 1972, Pegram moved to the United States, where she continued to perform and write poetry. Her work has received several awards and grants, including the Louisville Board of Alderman Literary Award and a research grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women.
 
Pegram’s poetry reflects social consciousness and responsibility. Having experienced apartheid in South Africa, she uses her writing as a means to raise cultural awareness of social inequity in an effort to eradicate racial discrimination in the United States and other parts of the world. She teaches English part-time at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.