Kiki PETROSINO is the author of four books of poetry: White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia (2020), Witch Wife(2017), Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013) and Fort Red Border (2009), all from Sarabande Books. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Best American Poetry, The Nation, The New York Times, FENCE, Gulf Coast, Jubilat, Tin House and on-line at Ploughshares. She teaches at the University of Virginia as a Professor of Poetry. Petrosino is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Al Smith Fellowship Award from the Kentucky Arts Council.

BJ SOLOY is the author of Our Pornography and other disaster songs, selected by Ocean Vuong as winner of the Slope Editions Book Prize, and Selected Letters, out with New Michigan Press. He has work in places like FIELD, Forklift, Ohio, Colorado Review, New American Writing, and Court Green, and lives and teaches in and around Kansas City, MO.

This event was made possible by generous contributions from the KCAI Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice and the Creative Writing Program at the Kansas City Art Institute.