Featured Readers
Adrian Matejka is the author of The Devil’s Garden (Alice James Books, 2003) which won the New York / New England Award and Mixology (Penguin, 2009), a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series. His third collection of poems, The Big Smoke (Penguin, 2013), was awarded the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. The Big Smoke was also a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, 2014 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and 2014 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. His fourth book, Map to the Stars, was published by Penguin in 2017 and his mixed media project in collaboration with Nicholas Galanin and Kevin Neireiter inspired by Funkadelic, Standing on the Verge & Maggot Brain (Third Man Books) was published in 2021. His most recent collection of poems, Somebody Else Sold the World (Penguin, 2021), was a finalist for the 2022 Rilke Prize. His first graphic novel, Last On His Feet, will be published in 2023 by Liveright. Among Matejka’s other honors are the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Julia Peterkin Award, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and a Simon Fellowship from United States Artists. He served as Poet Laureate of the state of Indiana in 2018-19 and is Editor of Poetry magazine.
Teresa Dzieglewicz is an educator, Pushcart Prize-winning poet, and part of the founding team of of the Mní Wičhóni Nakíčižiŋ Wounspe (Defenders of the Water School) at Standing Rock Reservation. Her first book, Something Small of How To See a River, was selected by Tyehimba Jess as the winner of Tupelo Press’s 2021 Dorset Prize and is forthcoming in 2023. She received her MFA from Southern Illinois University, where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize. She is the winner of the 2018 Auburn Witness Prize and the 2020 Palette Poetry Prize and has received fellowships from New Harmony Writer’s Workshop, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the NY Mills Arts Retreat, and Brooklyn Poets. Her poems appear in the Pushcart Prize XLII, Best New Poets, Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, Ninth Letter, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere.
Joy Young is a Chicago-based poet and educator, who holds a BA in Fiction from Columbia College and MA in Writing and Publishing from DePaul University. Her work has appeared in Poetry East and Lunch Ticket’s Amuse-Bouche: A La Carte Series. She also volunteers as a writing coach for Open Books’ Publishing Academy Program. She is the Chicago Poetry Center Poet-in-Residence at Mary Gage Peterson Elementary School and Beulah Shoesmith Elementary School.