The Open Door Readings: October

The Open Door Readings 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 college and graduate writing program instructors and two of their current or recent students. October's Open Door Reading features Columbia College's Tony Trigilio and Natalia Kennedy along with School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Calvin Forbes and Valerie Wallace. 

Tony Trigilio’s recent poetry collections include The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood), Book 1 (BlazeVOX Books, 2014) and White Noise (Apostrophe Books, 2013). He is editor of Elise Cowen: Poems and Fragments (Ahsahta Press, 2014). He directs the program in Creative Writing/Poetry at Columbia College Chicago and is a co-founder and co-editor of Court Green.

Natalia Kennedy is a current MFA candidate at Columbia College, where she is also an editor for Columbia Poetry Review. She lives and works in Chicago. In addition to pursuing a degree in creative writing, she is a bartender at the Girl and the Goat. 

Calvin Forbes teaches writing, literature, and jazz history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Blues and jazz inform both the rhythm and content of his poetry. He often uses ballads to tell family stories or the ups and downs of romance. But Forbes updates the tradition with surreal techniques, epigrammatic humor, and changing voices. He described his work as “simplicity shacked up with complexity.” His first book, Blue Monday, appeared in 1974 and his most recent, The Shine Poems, a book that resurrects the African-American folk character, was issued in 2001.

Poet, editor, and teacher Valerie Wallace was born in California and lives in Chicago. She earned her MFA in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Wallace is an editor at RHINO and on the advisory board of the Afghan Women’s Writing Project. She was selected for the Atty Award by Margaret Atwood and has received an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award and the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference Poetry Award. Her chapbook The Dictators’ Guide to Good Housekeeping is available from dancing girl press.