Margaret Chew Barringer

Margaret Chew Barringer
Born	1946 Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania

Margaret Chew Barringer founded the American Poetry Center in 1983 as a statewide nonprofit organization that brought storytelling and The Spoken Word to a wide range of audiences across Pennsylvania. The organization sponsored readings, classes and symposia in Philadelphia and coordinated all literary events for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, providing a statewide model for the creation of National Poetry Month. Barringer is an American poet and filmmaker born in 1946. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in America and Russia.

Under Barringer's management, the American Poetry Center initiated a seven-year cultural exchange with the USSR Union of Writers. The Center also hosted a series of annual symposia that brought poets and writers from around the world to Philadelphia and attracted national and international media attention. In addition to creating a statewide hotline for literary events in Pennsylvania, Barringer also united the Pennsylvania library and school systems in a statewide poetry contest for all schoolchildren. Theatrical events that featured the winning young poets accompanied this annual contest, and brought to the stage corporate CEOs, government officials, artists, scholars, reporters, and media moguls, to recite their favorite poems.

In 2005, the organization changed its name to American INSIGHT as it prepared to reach new audiences through the latest advances in all-digital historic archival research, video production techniques, and Internet-based delivery systems.

Regional authors, educators, scholars, artists, and civic leaders have been featured in both long and short form historical documentaries about Philadelphia. American INSIGHT is staffed by university students from the Greater Philadelphia area.

After six years of sustained research into the historical origins of Free Speech, Barringer developed the concept of an Internet-based Free Speech Film Festival to acknowledge the ongoing personal and political need for respect, recognition and freedom worldwide. The Free Speech Film Festival is a program of American INSIGHT, an educational resource that has featured Free Speech and The Spoken Word for the past three decades.

Barringer is the chairman of American INSIGHT, and oversees all aspects of the organization and its Internship Program.

External links

• American INSIGHT
• Free Speech Film Festival

Persondata
Name	Chew Barringer, Margaret
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1946
Place of birth	Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
Date of death
Place of death