Join us for a live virtual reading with Suzanne Buffam and her student Fatima Eldigair, and CM Burroughs and her student Chad Morgan. The Open Door series presents work from Chicago’s new and emerging poets and highlights the area’s outstanding writing programs. Each event features readings by two Chicagoland writing program instructors and two of their current or recent students.

Poetry Foundation’s events are completely free of charge and open to the public. This reading will include live captioning. If you require any other accessibility measures, please contact us by emailing events@poetryfoundation.org. To find out more about Zoom’s own built-in accessibility features, please visit https://zoom.us/accessibility.

Suzanne Buffam was born in Montreal and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. She earned an MA in English literature from Concordia University in Montreal, and an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently A PILLOW BOOK, which was named one of the ten Best Poetry Books of 2016 by THE NEW YORK TIMES. Her other books are THE IRRATIONALIST, a finalist for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize, and PAST IMPERFECT, winner of Canada’s 2006 Gerald Lampert Award. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jeannette Heian Ballard Writers’ Trust, and the Canada Council for the Arts. She has taught Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the University of Chicago, and Columbia College Chicago, and frequently serves as a mentor in the University of Guelph’s MFA Summer Mentorship Program in Guelph, Ontario. She has lived in Chicago since 2003.

Fatima Eldigair is a writer, thinker, and student from Chicago. She recently graduated with a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Chicago. Her poetry thesis “I Remember Running into the Arms of a Man Who Wasn’t My Daddy” was awarded departmental honors, alongside the Elsie Filippi Memorial Prize. Her poetry has appeared in APOGEE JOURNAL, ARGOT MAGAZINE, and various UChicago publications. Fatima invests in poetry that explores the subterranean complications, and oftentimes contradictions, of race and sexuality.

CM Burroughs is Associate Professor of Poetry at Columbia College Chicago. She is the author of two collections: THE VITAL SYSTEM (Tupelo Press, 2012) and MASTER SUFFERING (Tupelo Press, 2020.) Burroughs has been awarded fellowships and grants from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Cave Canem Foundation. She has received commissions from the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum to create poetry in response to art installations. Burroughs’ poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies including POETRY, CALLALOO, JUBILAT, PLOUGHSHARES, VOLT, BEST AMERICAN EXPERIMENTAL WRITING ANTHOLOGY, and THE GOLDEN SHOVEL ANTHOLOGY: NEW POEMS HONORING GWENDOLYN BROOKS. Burroughs has been a featured reader and has given poetry lectures and writing workshops at institutions and reading series across America and internationally.

Chad Morgan’s work has appeared in THE ADRIOT JOURNAL, COLUMBIA POETRY REVIEW, ANALECTA, and elsewhere. He lives in Chicago, where he is competing his MFA in Poetry at Columbia College.

A Zoom link will be provided to Eventbrite registrants the day of the event.

More information: https://bit.ly/30iA5K0

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Tags: Chad Morgan, Chicago, CM Burroughs, Fatima Eldigair, Near North Side, Open Door Series Online, Poetry Foundation, Suzanne Buffam