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Join poets Kemi Alabi, I.S. Jones, and Meredith Nnoka for a reading and conversation in celebration of Black August, a 50-year tradition that began in U.S. prisons and jails to commemorate key events in the ongoing movement against incarceration. This event is free and open to the public.

Kemi Alabi is the author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award. The collection was a Kate Tufts Discovery Award finalist, Chicago Review of Books Award winner, and one of New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2022, among other honors. Alabi’s poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry, Boston Review, the Grammy-nominated album Difficult Grace, and elsewhere. Alabi is co-editor of The Echoing Ida Collection (Feminist Press, 2021), an anthology of Black reproductive justice writing. They've spent over a decade building narrative power for trans and queer bodily autonomy, most recently as the 2024-2025 Feminist in Residence at Northwestern University. Alabi is currently the inaugural Beloit Poetry Journal Iron Mouth Curatorial Fellow. Born in Wisconsin on a Sunday in July, they now live in Chicago, IL.

I.S. Jones is the author of Bloodmercy and the chapbook Spells of My Name. Alongside the poet Yazud Brito-Milian, she founded Canto-Kójo, a featured reading series and open mic at Call and Response Books. Currently, she is a Senior Editor for Poetry Northwest, where she runs her column, The Legacy Suite, a three-part interview documenting the journey of writers publishing their debut poetry collections. In 2025, The New York Times Review of Books named Bloodmercy one of the Best Poetry Books of 2025. While she has lived in many places across the U.S., she gratefully calls Chicago home.

Meredith Nnoka is a Chicago-based poet, teacher, and prison abolitionist. They are the author of Les Portes, winner of the 2025 CAAPP Book Prize, and the chapbooks I Could Never Be Your Woman and A Hunger Called Music. A member of the FireHorse Collective, Meredith teaches poetry in carceral facilities and has received fellowships from Illinois Humanities, Lambda Literary, and the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project. Twice nominated for Best of the Net, their poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Four Way Review, Diode Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.