Mitchell L. H. Douglas and Heather Derr-Smith will read from their poetry.

Mitchell L.H. Douglas will read from his recent collection, dying in the scarecrow’s arms. “ Douglas depicts the assault on people of color in America’s increasingly divided Heartland. A devotee of American popular culture, from rock ’n’ roll to Star Wars to Marvel comic books, Douglas is a poet of “scrutinizing intellect, imagination, and soul.” — Terrance Hayes

Mitchell L. H. Douglas is also the author of  \blak\ \al-fə bet\, winner of the Persea Books Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award, and Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem, an NAACP Image Award and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominee. He is a cofounder of the Affrilachian Poets, a Cave Canem graduate, and Associate Professor of English at IUPUI.

Writers’ Workshop graduate Heather Derr-Smith will read from her poetry collection Thrust, which revisits a backwoods Virginia girlhood marred by sexual violence. “In a world shaped by violence, by the casual male assumption of authority, and part of ‘a family of seekers, pick ax and lust,’ she's a girl pursuing the intensity of experience on her own terms” —Library Journal, starred review

Heather Derr-Smith is the author of the poetry collections Each End of the World, The Bride Minaret, and Tongue Screw. She lives in Des Moines, Iowa.