Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf Press 2018), as well as a previous poetry collection, SEAM (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014), winner of a VIDA Award, a GLCA New Writers’ Award, a Milton Kessler First Book Award, Drake University Emerging Writer Award, and other honors. Her poems are published widely in periodicals and anthologies both in the United States and abroad, including Poetry Magazine, Guernica, Tin House, and The Nation, are translated into Persian, Chinese, Bengali, Tamil, and Spanish, have been featured at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere. In 2016 she was recognized by Harvard Law School as one of 50 Women Inspiring Change. In Fall 2018, she will join the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a Visiting Writer in Residence.

Raena Shirali is the author of GILT (YesYes Books, 2017), winner of the 2018 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. Her honors include a Pushcart Prize, a VIDA Scholarship for Sundress Academy for the Arts’ residency program, the Philip Roth Residency at Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry, and poetry prizes from Boston Review, Gulf Coast, and Cosmonauts Avenue. Shirali earned her MFA from The Ohio State University in 2015, and has since taught creative writing at several high schools, MFA programs, and colleges, including Indiana University, College of Charleston, Wright State University, Mississippi State University, University of Wisconsin, Drake University, & elsewhere. Serving currently as an editor for Muzzle Magazine and Vinyl, she is also a co-organizer for We (Too) Are Philly, a summer poetry festival highlighting voices of color in Philadelphia.

This event will take place at Penn Book Center, 130 South 34th St, Philadelphia PA.