Join us for poetry and stories of the collective breath held by a grieving world and to celebrate Elsewhere: An Elegy with author Faisal Mohyuddin. 

"Faisal Mohyuddin’s Elsewhere: An Elegy is a memory palace of rooms filled with riversongs and baited fishhooks, where longing transforms into birds. This is a moving collection which touches on faith, grief, and fatherhood. It is challenging to know how to talk to our children about 'their impossible wish for deathless tomorrows,' but reading Mohyuddin’s poetry encourages us to embrace this world of secrets for a moment and just listen." — Greg Santos, author of Ghost Face

In addition, this event will also feature Osama Alomar, CM Burroughs, Matthew Kelsey, and works by artist, Linda Abdullah.

**We ask that all in-person attendees wear masks in the event space during the program for the health and well-being of the speakers and other guests. We will have a reception afterwards with light refreshments and books available for purchase.**

Faisal Mohyuddin is the author of Elsewhere: An Elegy (Next Page, 2024), The Displaced Children of Displaced Children (Eyewear, 2018), and The Riddle of Longing (Backbone, 2017). The recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award and a Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award from the Illinois State Library, he teaches English at Highland Park High School in suburban Chicago and creative writing at Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies. He is also a visual artist and serves as a Master Practitioner with the global not-for-profit Narrative 4.

Linda Abdullah is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, poet, and daughter of Historic Palestine. Linda majored in Visual Communications at the American University of Sharjah (UAE) and received an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art Media and Design from OCAD University in Canada. Her critical graphic design practice examines social, cultural, and political identity through the lens of diaspora, displacement, and intellectual exile. Linda exhibits her work regularly and recently had a visual poem about Gaza featured in the Chicago Reader; she currently resides in Chicago.

Born in Damascus, Syria, Osama Alomar is one of the most well-respected Arabic poets writing today, and a prominent practitioner of the Arabical-qisa al-qasira jiddan, the “very short story.” He is the author of Fullblood Arabian in English, and three collections of short stories and a volume of poetry in Arabic. Alomar’s first full-length collection of stories, The Teeth of the Comb, was published by New Directions in April 2017. His short stories have been published in The New Yorker (online), Noon, Conjunctions, The Coffin Factory, Electric Literature, and The Literary Review. Currently, Alomar is working on a new novel about the Syrian War tentatively called The Womb, as well as another project called The Book of Meditations . He was recently writer-in-residence at City of Asylum Pittsburgh, and now lives in Chicago.

CM Burroughs is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago and author of The Vital System and Master Suffering, which was longlisted for the National Book Award, Lambda Book Award, and the LA Times Book Award. Burroughs’ poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies including Poetry, Ploughshares, Cave Canem’s Gathering Ground, and Best American Experimental Writing.

Originally from Glens Falls, New York, Matthew Kelsey is a poet and actor based in Chicago. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. He has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a teaching fellowship from the Kenyon Review Young Writers Program, and an Idyllwild Arts Writers Week Fellowship.

This event is sponsored by The Guild Complex and Haymarket Books. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work.