Lurlynn Franklin is a creative writer, visual artist, teaching artist, arts advocate, art curator and an arts educator having taught on the elementary, middle school and high school levels in both public and charter schools. She is the 2023 recipient of the ArtsMemphis Emmett O’Ryan Award for Artistic Inspiration, the 2024 recipient of the Stone Award for Artistry and Visual Art in the Community, and at one point earlier in her art career was awarded the titles of Emerging Artist of Memphis by both the Memphis Arts Council (now known as ArtsMemphis) and Memphis Arts in the Park.

She holds three Masters Degrees: a MFA from Memphis College of Art where she concentrated in Studio Painting, a Masters in Art Education(K-12) from Memphis College of Art, and as of the Fall of 2025 a Masters in Art History with a concentration in African American and Art of the African Diaspora. She received her Bachelor's of Arts Degree from Minot State University in North Dakota and attended LeMoyne Owen College in Memphis, majoring in English and Art. She has published a three-volume collection of books featuring a total of 43 self-portraits and 48 poetic essays entitled Fabled Truths. At present, she is an Intro to Art History instructor at the University of Memphis and a part time teaching artist with the ABC program at the Brooks Museum of Art. She connects art learners to community through finding public opportunities to display their artworks, as well as cultivating exhibitions within the school community through the formation of publicly accessed in-school galleries.

She does not knock the concept of Arts for Arts Sake, but has embraced a view of creating as a fluid yet tangible vehicle not easily defined, a vehicle that she has used to heal herself mentally and emotionally and embraces to ground herself spiritually. In this vein, her major focus has always been to design, to teach and to develop arts programming that speaks to the mental and emotional wellness of learners (of every age) as it pertains to their self-actualization and their social interactions to one another. Learn more about Lurlynn at Lurlynn Franklin