The Open Door Readings: Hannah Gamble & Jonah Mixon-Webster
Poetry Foundation
61 West Superior Street
Free Admission
The Open Door Reading series presents work from Chicago’s new and emerging poets and highlights the area’s outstanding writing programs. Each monthly hour-long event features readings by two Chicagoland writing program instructors and some of their current or recent students. September's Open Door Reading presents Hannah Gamble and her students Sonya Ellis and Melissa Blount, and Jonah Mixon-Webster and his student Kayla Shannon.
Hannah Gamble is a poet, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, and director. Her first book of poems, Your Invitation to a Modest Breakfast, won the National Poetry Series in 2011. She received the 2014 Ruth Lilly/Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg fellowship. She is the writer and director of Rad Program and is currently working on a web series called Choose Me: An Abortion Story.
Sonya Ellis is a trans poet, educator, and screenwriter. Born in Oklahoma and now residing in California, she attended UC-Irvine for an MFA in creative writing where she was awarded a Strauss Fellowship.
Melissa Blount is a licensed clinical psychologist, writer, and artist who creates quilts that explore the notions of trauma and white supremacy. Through community sewing circles she cultivates unique opportunities for people to bear witness to the unjust and violent loss of life in communities of color.
Jonah Mixon-Webster is a poet-educator and conceptual/sound artist. His debut collection Stereo(TYPE) was selected by Tyrone Williams for the 2017 Sawtooth Poetry Prize from Ahsahta Press. He is the recipient of fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, The Conversation Literary Festival, and Callaloo Writer’s Workshop. His poetry and hybrid works are featured or forthcoming in Muzzle, Callaloo, Spoon River Poetry Review, Assaracus, Voluble, Best New Poets 2017, and Best American Experimental Writing 2018.
Kayla Shannon recently received a silver medal for spoken word at the 2018 National NAACP ACT-SO competition. In January of 2019, she will be releasing a book entitled Genesis.