Open Door Series: Patrick Durgin & Kristiana Rae Colón
Poetry Foundation
61 West Superior Street
Free admission, register in advance here
At 30 minutes before event start, guests with Eventbrite tickets will have priority entry to the performance space on a first-come, first-served basis. At 15 minutes prior to event start, the performance space is open to all guests. Seating capacity is limited. Eventbrite reservations do not guarantee entry or reserved seating.
The Open Door series presents work from Chicago’s new and emerging poets and highlights the area’s outstanding writing programs. Each hour-long event features readings by two Chicagoland writing program instructors and two of their current or recent students. January's Open Door reading series features Patrick Durgin and student Alex Karsavin, and Kristiana Rae Colón and student Neiyah Villegas.
Patrick Durgin is the author of PQRS: A Poets Theater Script and a collaboration with Jen Hofer entitled The Route. He has also published the artist's books Zenith, Singles, and Daughter. For several years he cocurated the Festival of Poets Theater in Chicago. He has published Kenning Editions since founding the press in 1998. Durgin teaches in three departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Kristiana Rae Colón is a poet, playwright, actor, educator, Cave Canem Fellow, creator of #BlackSexMatters, codirector of the #LetUsBreathe Collective, and inaugural Burrell Fellow in Playwriting at Columbia College. Her play Tilikum was nominated for seven 2019 non-equity Joseph Jefferson Awards, and won three, including Best New Play. In 2017, she was awarded Best Black Playwright by The Black Mall.
Alex Karsavin is a writer in Chicago, and an editor at Homintern Magazine, and occasionally the Zahir Review. Their work has appeared in The New Inquiry among others. They explore the channelways in between poetry of witness, Marxism, and environmental history.