3 - Public Reading and Forum

Cory Hutchinson-Reuss (she/her) grew up in Arkansas, received her PhD in English from the University of Iowa, and now lives and writes in Iowa City. Her poems have appeared in Timber, Slice, The Offing, Crazyhorse, the Missouri Review online, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the 2021 Levis Prize from Four Way Books for her manuscript The Way a Koan is an Oak, and a chapbook of poems and visual art made in collaboration with Giselle Simón is forthcoming from PromptPress. She currently serves on the advisory council for the non-profit Iowa City Poetry and as a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal.

Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey is an author, performer, and producer. His debut book, Look, Black Boy, was awarded first prize in the North Street Book Prize, and his second book, Heart Notes was published in 2019. He released two spoken word albums and in 2023, as a part of the Brucemore Artisan in Studio program, Caleb produced his first short film, Willing to Grow. He is the winner of several slams across the United States, and competed in the 2023 UNESCO Slam-0-Vision global poetry slam where he ranked 7th worldwide. He has shared the stage with spoken word titans such as Siaara Freeman, Denice Frohman, Javon Johnson, Ebony Stewart, Anthony McPherson, Danez Smith and Patricia Smith, and videos of his performances can be found on his YouTube channel, Write About Now, and Button Poetry.

JJ Alberhasky (he/him) is an artist and educator who was born and raised in Iowa City. He has a BFA in Painting and an MA in Special Education and Teaching from the University of Iowa. His creative work has included songwriting, singing, playing guitar, painting, and woodworking. As part of the duo The Sidehillwinders, he released the album Tumblehome, and later as a member of Sleeping Planes, he co-wrote and recorded the album I Could, in addition to writing and recording a solo project, Only the Bony. He currently teaches at Hoover Elementary.

Micah Bateman (he/they) teaches, writes, and presents on poetry, digital media, libraries, and creative writing out of the University of Iowa's School of Library and Information Science. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop; co-author of Mapping the Imaginary: Supporting Creative Writers through Programming, Prompts, and Research (ALA Editions: 2019); and author of a chapbook of poems, Polis (Catenary Press: 2015).  Other work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books Blog, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review Online, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency.