Reading: Erica Dawson and Dora Malech

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Erica Dawson is the author of the book-length poem When Rap Spoke Straight to God (Tin House, 2018), and two previous collections of poetry: The Small Blades Hurt (Measure Press, 2014), winner of the 2016 Poets’ Prize, and Big-Eyed Afraid (Waywiser, 2007). Her work has won a Pushcart Prize, and has appeared in three editions of Best American Poetry, Bennington Review, Blackbird, Harvard Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review. She is Associate Professor at University of Tampa and Director of the University of Tampa low-residency MFA program.

Dora Malech is the author of four collections of poetry, including Stet (Princeton University Press, 2018) and the forthcoming Flourish (Carnegie Mellon, 2020). Her work regularly appears in such journals as Bennington Review, Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, Tin House, and The Yale Review. The recipient of a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and a Baker Artist Award, as well as residencies from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the Amy Clampitt Fund, she is the co-founder and former director of the Iowa Youth Writing Project, and is an assistant professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.