GV Writers Series to showcase multiple poets

The Grand Valley Writers Series is once again offering a two-for-one showcase with authors Jamaal May and Tarfia Faizullah discussing their works on Monday, February 16, from 7:30-8:45 p.m. in the University Club, located in the Richard M. DeVos Center on the Pew Grand Rapids Campus.

May is a poet and author of “Hum,” which received the 2012 Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books, the American Library Association’s Notable Book Award, and an NAACP Image Award nomination. Originally from Detroit, May mentors young writers, teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program, and co-directs the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook and Video Series with Faizullah.

Faizullah is the Pushcart Prize winning author of “Seam,” winner of the 2012 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in many publications, such as American Poetry Review, Oxford American, jubilat and New England Review. Faizullah’s honors include scholarships and fellowships from Kundiman, the Fulbright Foundation, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and Vermont Studio Center. She has collaborated with rapper and emcee Brooklyn Shanti, composer Jacob Cooper, and photographer Elizabeth Herman. She is also the Nicholas Delbanco Visiting Professor of Creative Writing in Poetry at the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program.

For more information about the Grand Valley Writers Series, contact Oindrila Mukherjee, Writers Series coordinator, at (616) 331-8034 or [email protected].