The Open Door Reading Series

The Open Door series presents work from Chicago’s new and emerging poets and highlights the area’s outstanding writing programs on a monthly basis. Each hour-long reading features two Chicagoland college and graduate writing program instructors and two of their current or recent students. The Poetry Foundation presents the Open Door series on the third Tuesday of every month, September through May.

CM Burroughs serves as assistant professor of poetry at Columbia College Chicago. Burroughs has been awarded fellowships and grants from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Cave Canem Foundation, Callaloo Writers Workshop and the University of Pittsburgh. She has received commissions from the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum to create poetry in response to art installations. A Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist for the 2009 Gift of Freedom Award, her poetry has appeared in journals including Callaloo, jubilat, Ploughshares, VOLT, Bat City Review, and Sou’wester. Burroughs is a graduate of Sweet Briar College and the MFA program at the University of Pittsburgh. The Vital System is her debut collection of poetry from Tupelo Press. She is senior editor for Tupelo Quarterly and co-editor for Court Green. 

Andre Price attended Carnegie Mellon University and graduated with a BA in creative writing. Originally from Baltimore Maryland, he is currently pursuing a MFA in poetry at Columbia College Chicago.

Ruben Quesada is the author of Next Extinct Mammal (2011) and Luis Cernuda: Exiled from the Throne of Night (2008). He is poetry editor for Codex Journal and The Cossack Review. He teaches creative writing and literature at Eastern Illinois University.

Currently a graduate student in English at Eastern Illinois University, Tana Young lives in her grandmother's farmhouse in Washington State. She revels in that golden hour. Being out-of-doors constitutes bliss.