Visiting Writers Series readings to feature award-winning poets, essayists Oct. 12

Northwest Missouri State University’s 2023-24 Visiting Writers Series continues this month with a night of readings by poets Anna Leahy and Jessica Reed.

The event begins at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 12, in the J.W. Jones Student Union Living Room. It is free and open to the public.

Anna Leahy’s latest books are poetry collections, “What Happened Was:” and “Aperture,” in addition to a nonfiction book, “Tumor.” Her chapbook, “Gloss,” was a co-winner of the Laurel Review Midwest Chapbook Contest. A winner of top prizes from the Mississippi Review, Los Angeles Review, Ninth Letter and Dogwood, she also is the co-author of “Generation Space” and “Conversing with Cancer.” 

Leahy directs the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Chapman University in Orange, California, where she is the founder and co-director of the health humanities interdisciplinary minor and edits the international Tab Journal. She earned her Ph.D. from Ohio University and her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Maryland. Additionally, she has been a fellow at MacDowell, the American Library in Paris, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

Jessica Reed is the author of an ecopoetics chapbook, “Still Recognizable Forms,” as well as “World, Composed,” which was a finalist for the Etchings Press Whirling Prize.

Her work has appeared in Scientific American, Conjunctions, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Quarterly West, Colorado Review, North American Review, Bellingham Review, New American Writing, Waxwing, Pank, Inverted Syntax, Exposition Review, The Journal, The Fourth River, Diagram, The Indianapolis Review, and Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing, among others. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, two-time Best New Poets nominee and a Best of the Net nominee. She also was a finalist for the Omnidawn Revealed Identity Poetry Book Prize and the Quarterly West chapbook prize, and she was a semi-finalist for the Cleveland State University First Book Prize.

She has a Master of Fine Arts in poetry and a Bachelor of Science in physics and has taught science poetry in Saudi Arabia and China as well as throughout the United States. She currently teaches a seminar at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, on physics and the arts.

The Visiting Writers Series is designed to enrich Northwest’s educational mission while promoting the values of community, civil discourse and self-expression. Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing Corporation, Green Tower Press and the Department of Language, Literature and Writing sponsor the series.

The Visiting Writers Series concludes its fall lineup with poet and novelist Kazim Ali on Nov. 2.

For more information about the Visiting Writers Series, contact Daniel Biegelson, the series director and a senior instructor of English, at dbiegel@nwmissouri.edu or 660.562.1266.