Bryan Byrdlong: Strange Flowers
@ Seminary Co-op Bookstore
5751 S Woodlawn Ave, Chicago, IL 60637
Opening Saturday, July 19th, from 3PM - 4PM
Bryan Byrdlong will discuss his debut poetry collection Strange Flowers. He will be joined in conversation with Kemi Alabi. A Q&A and book signing will follow the conversation and reading.
At the Co-op
About the Book: Bryan Byrdlong’s debut Strange Flowers fashions a kind of suit, an armor, a disguise out of the folk and pop cultural creation of the zombie. In response to historical prejudice, but more specifically in response to fear of Black people in America, the poetry in this collection uses the idea of the zombie to offer an unbiased view of Black struggle, the zombie being a suit sometimes forced upon Black people and sometimes worn willingly.
About the Author: Bryan Byrdlong is a Black poet from Chicago, Illinois. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the Helen Zell Writers Program. He has been published in Guernica Magazine, The Kenyon Review, and Poetry Magazine, among others. Bryan received a 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. He is currently a PhD student in Creative Writing at USC in Los Angeles. His collection of poems, Strange Flowers was published by Yes Yes Books.
About the Interlocutor: Kemi Alabi is the author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award. The collection was a Kate Tufts Discovery Award finalist, Chicago Review of Books Award winner, and one of New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2022, among other honors. Alabi’s poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry, Boston Review, the Grammy-nominated album Difficult Grace, and elsewhere.
Official Website
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Tags: Bryan Byrdlong, Chicago, Hyde Park, Kemi Alabi, Seminary Co Op Bookstore, Strange Flowers
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