Come gather to hear poems and celebrate the release of Katie Willingham's debut poetry collection UNLIKELY DESIGNS (University of Chicago Press)! There will be wine and several amazing wordsmiths. Details below!

KATIE WILLINGHAM recently relocated from Ann Arbor where she taught writing at the University of Michigan. She holds an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers Program where she received a Hopwood Award, a Nicholas Delbanco Thesis Prize, and a Theodore Roethke Prize. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, Bennington Review, Poem-A-Day, Third Coast, and elsewhere. Find out more here: http://katiewillingham.com/ 

She will be joined by incredibly talented SPECIAL GUESTS including:

ADEEBA SHAHID TALUKDER is a Pakistani American poet and translator. She translates Urdu and Persian poetry, and cannot help but bring elements from these worlds to her own work in English. Her chapbook, What Is Not Beautiful, is forthcoming through Glass Poetry Press and her book Shahr-e-jaanaan: The City of the Beloved is a winner of the Kundiman Prize and is forthcoming through Tupelo Press. A Best of the Net finalist and a Pushcart nominee, Adeeba's work has appeared in Glass, Anomaly, Solstice, Washington Square Review, and PBS Frontline among other publications. Adeeba holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan and is a Poets House 2017 Emerging Poets Fellow.

RYAN DZELZKALNS is a Midwestern boy at heart. He has work appearing or forthcoming with Assaracus, DIAGRAM, the HIV Here and Now Project, Midwestern Gothic, Revolver, and others. He completed a BA at Macalester College where he received the Wendy Parrish Poetry Award and an MFA at NYU where he was an instructor of creative writing. He works for the Academy of American Poets and he is the tallest man in New York.

GALA MUKOMOLOVA earned an MFA from the University of Michigan. Her poetry and essays have appeared in POETRY, Pen America, The Billfold, and elsewhere. In 2016 Mukomolova won the 2016 Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize. Gala writes astrolo-inspired love letters under the name Galactic Rabbit. Lots of people believe in her.

ANANDA LIMA's work has appeared or is upcoming in The American Poetry Review, Rattle, The Offing, Birmingham Poetry Review, Sugar House Review, PANK and elsewhere. She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and is pursuing her MFA in fiction at Rutgers-Newark. She was selected for the AWP Writer to Writer program and has attended workshops at Bread Loaf, Tin House, the Community of Writers as well as Sewanee (where she returned to serve as staff). She is from Brazil and lives in New Jersey with her husband and their son.

YUXI LIN is a second year MFA candidate in the Creative Writing Program at NYU, where she received the Lillian Vernon Fellowship. She has also been awarded scholarship from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Her writing has been featured in The Washington Post and Voices de la Luna.

K. R. MILLER is a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan, and has been published in Indiana Review and West Branch. She also makes stop-motion animations. She is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio.