The Open Door: Elise Paschen and Mark Turcotte

The Open Door is a new MFA reading series from the Poetry Foundation highlighting the teacher-student dynamic, presenting exciting work from Chicago’s new and emerging poets, and celebrating the area’s outstanding writing programs. Each hour-long reading will feature two Chicagoland college and graduate writing program instructors and two of their current or recent students.

Elise Paschen (Osage) is the author of Bestiary (Red Hen Press, 2009); Infidelities, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize; and Houses: Coasts. Her poems have been published in numerous anthologies and magazines, including The New Republic, The Hudson Review and Ploughshares. Former executive director of the Poetry Society of America, she has edited many anthologies, including Poetry Speaks and Poetry in Motion. She teaches in the MFA writing program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Mark Turcotte (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) is the author of four poetry collections, including The Feathered Heart and Exploding Chippewas. He is a recipient of a Lannan Foundation grant, two literary fellowships from the Wisconsin Arts Board and a Josephine Gates Kelly Memorial Fellowship from Wordcraft Circle. He currently serves as a visiting assistant professor in English and Creative Writing at DePaul University.

Originally from South Florida, Britney Lipton lives and writes in Chicago, where she received her MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She writes poems about places she’s been and people who populate them.

Queer writer M. Quinn Stifler is pursuing degrees in creative writing and gender studies at DePaul University. Stifler has worked with Threshold, DePaul’s student-run literature and arts journal, and is a co-founder and editor of No Assholes Literary Magazine. Stifler was a finalist for the 2013 Gwendolyn Brooks Open-Mic Poetry Award, and regularly participates in and organizes house readings around Chicago.