The Open Door Readings: May
61 West Superior Street
Free Admission
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. May's Open Door Reading presents Eastern Illinois University's Charlotte Pence and her student Derick Ledermann along with DePaul University's David Welch and his student Laura Wagner.
Charlotte Pence’s poetry collection, Many Small Fires, explores her father’s chronic homelessness while simultaneously detailing the evolutionary changes that enabled humans to form cities, communities, and households. A professor of English and creative writing at Eastern Illinois University, she is also the author of two award-winning poetry chapbooks and the editor of The Poetics of American Song Lyrics.
Derick Ledermann will be graduating from Eastern Illinois University in the spring of 2015 with a BA in English Studies and minors in Creative Writing and Communication Studies. He plans to pursue an MFA in writing.
David Welch received the 2014 Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and is the author of a chapbook of poems, It Is Such a Good Thing to Be In Love with You. He teaches in the English Department of DePaul University, serves as poetry editor of ACM, and volunteers in various capacities at 826CHI.
Laura Wagner received her Master's in Writing from DePaul University. She teaches English at her former high school in the Northwest suburbs and writes while her two young sons sleep.