In celebration of MQR’s “Poetry at Michigan” Special Issue, U-M writers will read from their work at Literati Bookstore on Monday, April 9 at 7 PM. MQR’s new Editor, Khaled Mattawa, will introduce the event.
MQR 57:1 offers an in-depth look at some of the poets, past and present, who have made significant contributions to the growth and cultivation of poetry at the university, including Robert Frost, Seamus Heaney, and Donald Hall. Former MQR poetry editor Keith Taylor curated the issue’s content, including poetry by Lorna Goodison, Paisley Rekdal, and Laura Kasischke, as well as essays and interviews.
Readers will include Scott Beal, Paul R. Dimond, Laurence Goldstein, Zilka Joseph, Khaled Mattawa, Thylias Moss, Elizabeth Schmuhl, Keith Taylor, and Cody Walker.
Refreshments will be served.
Event address:
Literati Bookstore
124 E. Washington St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Scott Beal (1996, MFA) is the author of Wait ’Til You Have Real Problems (Dzanc Books, 2014) and The Octopus (Gertrude Press, 2016). His poems have appeared recently in Diode, Vinyl, Pleiades, Cincinnati Review, and other journals, and have received awards including a Pushcart Prize. He teaches in the Sweetland Center for Writing at the University of Michigan and co-hosts the monthly Skazat! reading series in Ann Arbor. Find out more at scottbeal.com, or on Facebook @scottwbeal.
Paul R. Dimond (1969, JD) served as Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under Law, Special Assistant to the President of the United States for Economic Policy, and Director of the National Economic Council. His policy books include Beyond Busing (1985, reprinted in 2005), winner of the Ralph J. Bunche Book of the Year; and The Supreme Court and Judicial Choice (1989). Recent published fiction includes a fantasy for tweeners, North Coast Almanac (2012), and a historical novel, The Belle of Two Arbors (Cedar Forge, 2017). Find out more at belleoftwoarbors.com.
Laurence Goldstein, after earning a BA at UCLA (1965) and a PhD at Brown University (1970), served as a professor of English at the University of Michigan from 1970 to 2017. A specialist in the literature of Romanticism and Modernism, he authored, edited, or co-edited fifteen books. In this century he published a volume of poetry, A Room in California; two collections of texts, Writing Ann Arbor: A Literary Anthology and Robert Hayden: Essays on the Poetry; and a book of literary criticism, Poetry Los Angeles: Reading the Essential Poems of the City. He was Editor of Michigan Quarterly Review from 1977 to 2009.
Zilka Joseph (2009, MFA) has been published in Poetry, Kenyon Review Online, Mantis, Rattle, Review Americana, and Quiddity, and in anthologies such as Cheers to Muses: Works by Asian American Women. Lands I Live In and What Dread, her chapbooks, were nominated for a PEN and a Pushcart award respectively. Her book Sharp Blue Search of Flame (WSUP) was a finalist for the Foreward Indie Book Award. She teaches creative writing workshops in Ann Arbor and is an editor and manuscript coach. Find out more at zilkajoseph.com.
Khaled Mattawa is the Editor of MQR. He is the author of four books of poetry, Tocqueville (New Issues Press, 2010), Amorisco (Ausable Press, 2008), Zodiac of Echoes (Ausable Press, 2003), and Ismailia Eclipse(Sheep Meadow Press, 1996). He is also the author of Mahmoud Darwish: The Poet’s Art and His Nation, a critical study of the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, published by Syracuse University Press. He has translated nine books of contemporary Arabic poetry by Adonis, Saadi Youssef, Fadhil Al-Azzawi, Hatif Janabi, Maram Al-Massri, Joumana Haddad, Amjad Nasser, and Iman Mersal, and has co-edited two anthologies of Arab American literature. Mattawa has been awarded the Academy of American Poet’s Fellowship Prize, the PEN-American Center award for poetry translation, a Guggenheim fellowship, the Alfred Hodder fellowship from Princeton University, an NEA translation grant, and three Pushcart prizes. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Antioch Review, Best American Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies.
Thylias Moss taught at the University of Michigan from 1992–2014. She has published fourteen books, most recently a romance novel, New Kiss Horizon. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she was twice nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Pyramid of Bone (University of Virginia Press) and Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler (Persea Books). Her latest collection of poetry is Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code (Persea). Follow her on Twitter @4orkergirl or on Facebook @thyliasrmoss.
Elizabeth Schmuhl (2006, BA) is a multidisciplinary artist and the author of Premonitions (Wayne State University Press, 2018). Her work appears in Gramma, Hobart, Paper Darts, Pinwheel, and elsewhere. She illustrates essays for The Rumpus, has taught writing at the University of Michigan’s Residential College, and currently works at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. Find out more at elizabethschmuhl.com, or follow her on Twitter @schmuhlface and Instagram @schmuhlface.
Keith Taylor is the former Poetry Editor of MQR. He taught at the University of Michigan from 2000 to 2018, after adjuncting for a decade. He serves as Director of the Bear River Writer’s Conference, and his most recent book of poems is The Bird-while (Wayne State University Press, 2017). Find out more at keithtaylorannarbor.com, or follow him on Twitter @keithtaylora2.
Cody Walker has taught English at the University of Michigan since 2009. He’s the author of three poetry collections—The Trumpiad (2017), The Self-Styled No-Child (2016), and Shuffle and Breakdown (2008), all from Waywiser—and the coeditor of Alive at the Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwest (Ooligan, 2013). Find out more at codywalker.net.
