2021 UW Poetry MFA Graduates Reading
Presented in partnership with the UW Program in Creative Writing, a reading from the graduating MFA cohort in poetry. This event will feature the work of Gabriella Balza, Adrienne Chung, Miriam Huettner, Itiola Jones, Alison Thumel, Ajibola Tolase. Join the event at: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/2021-uw-poetry-mfa. Before the event begins, you will see a countdown and the event image.
Gabriela Balza
Gabriella Balza is a poet from Venezuela and South Florida. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Waxwing, River Styx and Colorado Review.
Adrienne Chung
Adrienne Chung’s poetry and prose have appeared in The Yale Review, Diagram, Joyland, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of UW-Madison’s MFA program and the recipient of fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, MacDowell, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Based in Berlin, she teaches at the Berlin Writers’ Workshop and is an editor at Sand Journal.
Miriam Huettner
Miriam Huettner is an M.F.A. candidate in poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review and peripheries. She likes to think about religion and the body in grocery stores and museums.
Itiola Jones
Itiola Jones is an American Nigerian poet and music journalist. She is a Graduate Fellow with The Watering Hole and holds fellowships from Callaloo, BOAAT Writer’s Retreat (pronounced "Boat"), and Brooklyn Poets. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, Washington Square Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hobart Pulp, The Rumpus, The Offing, Shade Literary Arts, Blood Orange Review and elsewhere. Her work was chosen by Khadijah Queen as a finalist for the 2020 Sublingua Prize for Poetry. She is an MFA candidate in Poetry at UW–Madison as well as the Inaugural 2019–2020 Kemper K. Knapp University Fellowship recipient.
Alison Thumel
Alison Thumel’s poems have appeared in Poetry, the Adroit Journal, New England Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in poetry at Stanford University, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and the Martha Meier Renk Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she completed her MFA. Her first poetry collection, Architect, won the 2024 Miller Williams Poetry Prize.
Ajibola Tolase
Ajibola Tolase is a Nigerian poet and essayist. His writing has appeared in LitHub, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, and elsewhere. He is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and has received a creative writing grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. He is the 2023–2024 Olive B. O’Connor Fellow in Poetry at Colgate University and graduated from the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.