Poets From the Midwest

Patricia Clark is the author of five volumes of poetry, including The Canopy and, before that, Sunday Rising. She has also published three chapbooks: Deadlifts (New Michigan Press), Wreath for the Red Admiral and Given the Trees. Her work has been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and has appeared in The Atlantic, Gettysburg Review, Poetry, Slate, and Stand. She was a scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and has completed residencies at The MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Tyrone Guthrie Center (in County Monaghan (Ireland), and the Ragdale Colony. Awards for her work include a Creative Artist Grant in Michigan, the Mississippi Review Prize, the Gwendolyn Brooks Prize, and co-winner of the Lucille Medwick Prize from the Poetry Society of America. From 2005-2007 she was honored to serve as the poet laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is Poet-in-Residence and Professor in the Department of Writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

Catherine Esther Cowie is a 2017 Callaloo Writing Workshop graduate. Her work has appeared in Moko Magazine: Caribbean Arts and Letters, The Penn Review, Forklift Ohio, Glass: A Journal of Poetry and is forthcoming in Potomac Review, Portland Review and Southern Humanities Review.. She is MFA candidate at Pacific University’s low residency program. Originally from St. Lucia, she currently resides in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Ricki Cummings is trans writer currently living in Chicago whose most recent chapbook, Hypersigil, was published in 2019 as a limited release by Midge Books. Their work is upcoming or has been published in Poetry, Vallum, Calibanonline, Solstice Literary Magazine, Columbia Poetry Review, and has been shortlisted for Vallum’s Award for Poetry. They received their MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago.

Virginia Konchan is the author of the poetry collections Any God Will Do (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2020) and The End of Spectacle (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2018); the short story collection Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017); and three chapbooks, Empire of Dirt (above/ground press, 2019), The New Alphabets (Anstruther Press, 2019), and Vox Populi (Finishing Line Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, and Best New Poets. She teaches at Concordia University.

Susanna Lang is a longtime Chicago resident. Her third poetry collection, Travel Notes from the River Styx, was published by Terrapin Books (2017). Her chapbook, Self-Portraits, is forthcoming from Blue Lyra Press (2020).  Her poems have appeared in such publications as Little Star, Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry and The Slowdown.  Her translations of poems by Nohad Salameh and Souad Labbize will soon appear in New Poetry in Translation and The Literary Review.

Johanny Vázquez Paz is the winner of the 2018 Paz Prize for Poetry given by the National Poetry Series in partnership with the Miami Book Fair. The winning book, I Offer My Heart as a Target / Ofrezco mi corazón como una diana, was recently published by Akashic Books. Among her other publications are Sagrada familia (winner of the International Latino Book Award, 2015), Querido voyeur, and Streetwise Poems /Poemas callejeros. She also co-edited the anthology Between the Heart and the Land / Entre el corazón y la tierra: Latina Poets in the Midwest. She currently teaches at Harold Washington College in Chicago.

Nina Corwin — WMG Literary Events Curator.
Nina Corwin is a published poet, Founding Editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal and psychotherapist/advocate for victims of sexual assault. She is the author of two books of poetry, The Uncertainty of Maps and Conversations With Friendly Demons and Tainted Saints. Her work has appeared in ACM, Forklift OH, Hotel Amerika, New Ohio Review, Southern Poetry Review, Verse and has been nominated for the Pushcart prize. Corwin is an Advisory Editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal and co-edited Inhabiting the Body: A Collection of Poetry and Art By Women. She has read and performed her work across the country, at times set with musical or choreographic compositions.

Jennifer Steele – WMG Literary Events Outreach Coordinator.
Jennifer Steele is a published poet and educator and serves as Partnerships Coordinator for Teen Services at Chicago Public Library.  She served as co-founder and co-curator of the Revolving Door Reading Series. Her work has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Callaloo Journal, Columbia Poetry Review, Warpland Journal, So To Speak, and others, and is a Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop fellow. She has taught creative writing and digital media arts across Chicago since 2008 and has collaborated with numerous youth organizations and cultural institutions, designing innovative arts programming.

Kurt Eric Heintz – WMG Literary Events Audio Recordist.
Kurt Eric Heinz once taught computer graphics programming at Columbia College, and worked as an independent web developer. He’s since become the lead video director at Britannica. Heintz is known for his poetry videos, begun in the early 1990s. He also videoconferenced his colleagues’ poetry in the late 1990s — years before Skype and the iPhone. He was a technical adviser to the Electronic Literature Organization in its earliest years, and is the video content editor for Another Chicago Magazine.

Thank you Angela Narciso Torres, for your wonderful work and support for WMG and our Literary Program!