Spoken & Heard is a seasonal series of literary events hosted by Kari Gunter-Seymour, Poet Laureate of Ohio, featuring award-winning authors, poets and singer/songwriters from across the country. May’s event will feature Hanif Abdurraquib, Wondra Chang, and Chuck Salmons.

Hanif Abdurraqib

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, was released in June 2016 from Button Poetry. It was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. He released Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest with University of Texas press in February 2019. The book became a New York Times Bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, A Fortune For Your Disaster, was released in 2019 by Tin House, and won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. In 2021, he released the book A Little Devil In America with Random House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the The PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. The book won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction and the Gordon Burn Prize. Hanif is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

Hanif Abdurraqib books

Wondra Chang

Wondra Chang is the National Book Award nominated author of Sonju, her debut novel, which is listed in the 100 Best Indie Books of 2021 by Kirkus Reviews. Wondra was extensively featured in San Antonio Express News and San Antonio Report. She was a featured author of 2021 San Antonio Book Festival and the June 2021 featured author of The Big Texas Read. Born in South Korea, Wondra has lived in the U.S. since 1970. Her writing discipline began at age ten, writing five short stories a day under the tutelage of a writing teacher. She won first place in a province-wide in-person writing competition, and her short story was published in Daejon Ilbo, the daily newspaper of Chungnam Province. She studied journalism at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea. She currently lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband, Bernard Rauch.

Sonju

Chuck Salmons

Chuck Salmons is a native of Columbus, Ohio, a poet and past President of the Ohio Poetry Association. His poems have appeared in several journals and anthologies, including Evening Street Review; The Ekphrastic Review; The Fib Review; Shot Glass Journal; Everything Stops and I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices. His chapbook, Stargazer Suite, was released in December 2016 and is available from 11th Hour Press. His second chapbook, Patch Job, was published by NightBallet Press . His poetry has been exhibited artistically in several places, including three features for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources “Art in the Lobby” program and in the 2021 After Hours exhibition at the Riffe Gallery in Columbus. He is a recipient of an Ohio Arts Council‘s Individual Excellence Award.

Patch Job

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