Join us at Haymarket House for an outdoor reading, featuring poetry by H Melt, Tarik Dobbs, and George Abraham!

Given the difficulties of the pandemic, poets H Melt (author of There Are Trans People Here) and George Abraham (author of Birthright & co-editor of Haymarket's forthcoming Palestinian global anglophone poetry anthology) never held in-person launch parties. Join us for a reading celebrating these two pandemic releases, followed by a reception with book cake! We are also lucky to be celebrating alongside newly local poet Tarik Dobbs, author of two poetry collections forthcoming with Haymarket Books: NAZAR BOY (2024) and DEARBORNISTAN (2026)! Note: backup rain location is indoors at the Haymarket House.

Featuring:

H Melt is a poet, artist and educator whose work celebrates trans people, history and culture. They are the author of The Plural, The Blurring and editor of Subject to Change: Trans Poetry & Conversation. H. Melt was an artist in residence at the Newberry Library, researching the Chicago Protest Collection. They've attended the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat and the Tin House Writers Workshop. Their latest collection, There Are Trans People Here, includes a study guide for trans youth, educators, and artists, available for free online.

Tarik Dobbs is a writer and artist. Tarik is a 2022 finalist for the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Their poems appear in the Best New Poets and Best of the Net anthologies, as well as Guernica Magazine and Poetry. In 2022, Tarik received an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Minnesota, and is a first-year M.F.A. fellow in art,theory,practice, at Northwestern University. Tarik’s debut poetry collections, NAZAR BOY (spring 2024) and DEARBORNISTAN (2026) are forthcoming from Haymarket Books.

George Abraham (they/هو) is a Palestinian American poet. Their debut poetry collection Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020) won the Arab American Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. They are a board member for the Radius of Arab American Writers, and a recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, The Arab American National Museum, Sewanee Writer’s Conference, National Performance Network, and more. They are currently co-editing a Palestinian global anglophone poetry anthology with Noor Hindi (Haymarket Books, 2024) and are a Litowitz MFA+MA student at Northwestern University.