September Watershed Reading | Arts + Literature Laboratory | Madison Contemporary Arts Center

September Watershed Reading

Join us on Saturday, September 21, 2024 at 7:00 PM for our September Watershed Reading featuring Dr. Kimberly Blaeser, Sadia Hassan, and Hussain Ahmed. Followed by a short Q&A, the authors will be signing and selling their books.

Poet Kimberly Blaeser

Kimberly Blaeser, past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of In-Na-Po—Indigenous Nations Poets, is a writer, photographer, and scholar. She is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Copper Yearning, the bilingual Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance, and the 2024 volume Ancient Light. Blaeser edited Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry and wrote the monograph Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition. Her photographs, picto-poems, and ekphrastic pieces have appeared in exhibits such as “Visualizing Sovereignty,” and “No More Stolen Sisters.” An Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, she is an enrolled member of White Earth Nation. The 2024 Mackey Chair in Creative Writing at Beloit College and a Vassar College Tatlock Fellow, Blaeser is a Professor Emerita at UW–Milwaukee and an MFA faculty member for Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Her accolades include... Read More

Portrait of Sadia Hassan

Sadia Hassan is the author of Enumeration (Akashic Books, 2020), part of the New-Generation African Poets chapbook set. Hassan has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Mesa Refuge. You can find more of her work in Longreads, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and the American Academy of Poets Poem-A-day. She is a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. 

portrait photo of author, wearing a black jacket and black cap

Hussain Ahmed is a Nigerian poet and environmentalist. He is the author of Soliloquy with the Ghosts in Nile, a 2023 poetry award honoree by the Society of Midland Authors, and a finalist of the Luchei Prize for African Poetry. Ahmed’s second collection Blue Exodus won the 2022 Orison poetry prize. Ahmed’s poems have been featured in Poetry Magazine, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, Electric Lit, A Public Space and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from University of Mississippi where he was awarded The Bondurant Prize and the Barry and Susan Hannah Award. He is completing a doctoral degree in creative writing (poetry) from the University of Cincinnati.

PLAN YOUR VISIT

Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.

Our galleries are open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.

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