This event is co-hosted with the NEOMFA Visiting Writers Series

Robyn Schiff is the author of four poetry collections: Worth (University of Iowa Press, 2002), Revolver (University of Iowa Press, 2008), A Woman of Property (Penguin, 2016), and most recently, Information Desk: An Epic, released by Penguin in August 2023. A professor at the University of Chicago, Schiff co-edits Canarium Books, an independent small press dedicated to publishing exceptional books of poetry, and was the recipient of the 2023 Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome. Her work has been published in Harper’s, The New Yorker, Yale Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago with her family. 

Alyssa Perry is a writer, editor, and teacher. She is the author of Oily Doily (Bench Editions, 2024). Her writing appears with Annulet, The Canary, Fence, Mercury Firs, River Styx, the Experimental Sound Studio, and other venues. Perry is poetry editor at the Cleveland Review of Books and an editor at Rescue Press. She teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art. 

Samuel Ace is a trans/genderqueer writer and sound artist. His most recent books are I want to start by saying (CSU Poetry Center, 2024), Our Weather Our Sea (Black Radish), and Meet Me There: Normal Sex & Home in three days. Don’t wash. (Belladonna*). Ace is the recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writer Award and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in Poetry, as well as a repeat finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the National Poetry Series. Recent work can be found in Personal Best: Makers on Their Poems that Matter Most, Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry, Fence, BathHouse, The Texas Review, Poetry, We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetry, Best American Experimental Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies.

Julie Patton is the author of The Flower Poem (Tender Buttons) and Teething on Type (Rodent Press). A special issue of Chicago Review devoted to Julie’s poetic/performative/visual and land main/tenance project launches October 2024. Her work has appeared in About Place Journal, ((eco (lang)(uage(reader)),  Other Influences: An Untold History of Feminist Avant-Garde Poetry, and the seminal Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Julie is a recipient of a 2012 Doan Brook Association Watershed Hero Award, the Cleveland Arts Prize, a Museum of Fine Arts Houston Core Resident Fellowship, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Her sound/text installation, Womb Room Tomb, was a 2018 Front Triennial hit. Julie, a sound-poet that composes with non-conventional instruments, has performed at Arts for Arts, the Stone, Artists Space, Center for Book Arts in NYC and in other noted venues here and abroad. She enjoys collaborating with Abou Farman, Janice Lowe, drummer Nasheet Waits. An award-wining educator,  Julie has taught at NYU, the Jack Kerouac School/Naropa, Schule fur Dichtung, and in her own backyard. Wherever that may be. 

Zach Savich is the author of nine books of poetry and nonfiction, including the poetry collection Momently (Black Ocean, 2024) and the memoir Diving Makes the Water Deep (Rescue Press, 2016). His work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. He teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Guggenheim Fellow Joyelle McSweeney is the author of ten books of poetry, drama and prose. McSweeney's recent book Toxicon and Arachne (Nightboat Books, 2020) was called "frightening and brilliant" by Dan Chiasson in the New Yorker and earned her the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America. Her essay collection The Necropastoral: Poetry, Media, Occults is widely regarded as a visionary work of eco-criticism. With Johannes Göransson, McSweeney is a co-founder of Action Books, an international press which has built readerships for vital poets from around the world. McSweeney teaches at Notre Dame, lives in South Bend and joins us to celebrate the release of her newest poetry collection, Death Styles.

Hussain Ahmed is a Nigerian poet and environmentalist. He holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Mississippi and is currently a PhD student at the University of Cincinnati. His poems are featured in Poetry magazine, the Kenyon Review, A Public Space, American Poetry Review and elsewhere. He is a winner of the 2022 Orison Poetry Prize, the Gordon Square Review Contest, finalist for Auburn Witness Poetry Prize and several others. He is the author of Harp in a Fireplace (Newfound, 2021) and Soliloquy with the Ghosts in Nile (Black Ocean Press, 2022).

Stella Corso is the author of Green Knife (Rescue Press, 2023) and TANTRUM (Rescue Press, 2017) along with chapbooks Taboo Vivant (Blush, 2022) and Wind & the Augur (Sixth Finch, 2021). She is a founding member of the Connecticut River Valley Poets Theater (CRVPT) and is currently the Managing Editor of Denver Quarterly.