Triptych Annual Reading Series
Founded in 2023, Triptych is an annual reading series featuring three award-winning authors in conversation with UDM’s poet-in-residence Stacy Gnall.
Gnall is the author of the poetry collections Dogged (winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry from The University of Massachusetts Press) and Heart First into the Forest (Alice James Books). Her poetry has appeared most recently in Five Points, New Letters, TriQuarterly and Bennington Review. Her fiction has appeared in New Letters.
Gnall holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California and is also a graduate of the University of Alabama’s MFA program in Creative Writing and Sarah Lawrence College. Originally from Cleveland, she is currently poet-in-residence at Detroit Mercy.
Triptych events are held via Zoom on the third Thursdays in January, February and March, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. They are free and open to the community.
2026 Triptych Series
Detroit Mercy’s English Department welcomed poets Cate Marvin and Ross Gay this winter. Next up are Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris on March 19.
Ilya Kaminsky
Ilya Kaminsky is the author of the poetry collections Deaf Republic and Dancing In Odessa, and is co-editor and co-translator of many other books, most recently Letters of the Alphabet Go to War: Poems by Lesyk Panasiuk. His work — which has been translated into more than 20 languages — is the winner of many awards, including the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEA Fellowship.
Odesa, Kaminsky’s collaboration with the photographer Yelena Yamchuk, was listed by Time Magazine among The 20 Best Photo Books of 2022. He has worked as a law clerk for San Francisco Legal Aid and the National Immigration Law Center. In 2019, Kaminsky was selected by the BBC as “one of the 12 artists that changed the world.”
Katie Farris
Katie Farris is the author of the memoir-in-poems, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, as well as the hybrid-form text boysgirls, and the chapbooks A Net to Catch My Body in its Weaving, Thirteen Intimacies and Mother Superior in Hell. Most recently she is winner of the Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation and Poetry, and has been commissioned by MoMA.
She is the co-translator of several books of poetry, most recently Letters of the Alphabet Go to War, Translations of Lesyk Panasiuk and The Country Where Everyone's Name is Fear, Translations of Lydmila and Boris Khersonsky. She is currently an associate professor of poetry at Princeton University.
Cate Marvin -- January 15
Read about the event on Between the Pages
Cate Marvin is the author of four award-winning books of poetry: World’s Tallest Disaster (Sarabande), Fragment of the Head of a Queen (Sarabande), Oracle (Norton) and Event Horizon (Copper Canyon). She also co-edited the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century.
She holds two M.F.A.s — one from the University of Houston in Poetry and the other from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in Fiction. She also holds a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from the University of Cincinnati. Marvin teaches poetry writing in the Stonecoast M.F.A. Program at the University of Southern Maine and is professor of English at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. She lives in Scarborough, Maine.
Ross Gay -- February 19
Read about the event on Between the Pages
Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding (winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award) and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award).
In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays—The Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller; Inciting Joy was released in 2022; and his newest collection, The Book of (More) Delights was released in September 2023.
Past Triptych Series
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2025
Brandon Som
Read about the event on Between the Pages
Brandon Som is a Chicano and Chinese American poet. His most recent poetry collection Tripas was awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the author of The Tribute Horse, which won the 2015 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He lives in San Diego, on the traditional and unceded territory of the Kumeyaay Nation, and teaches Literature and Creative Writing at UCSD.K-Ming Chang
Read about the event on Between the Pages
K-Ming Chang is a Lambda Literary Award winner, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and an O. Henry Prize Winner. She is the author of the New York Times Book Review Editors’ choice novel Bestiary, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the Otherwise Award. In 2021, her chapbook Bone House was published. Her story collection Gods of Want won a Lambda Literary Award, and her books have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Korean, German, Turkish and other languages. Her latest books are Organ Meats and a novella titled Cecilia. Her next two books, a novel and short story collection, are forthcoming from Simon & Schuster. Her writing is most frequently described as “not for everybody” and occasionally described as “for the freaks.”Aracelis Girmay
Read about the event on Between the Pages
Aracelis Girmay is the author of three books of poems: Teeth, Kingdom Animalia and the black maria. For this work she was a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Her books have also been named finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Connecticut Book Award. She has received fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Cave Canem Foundation, among others. Girmay is the author of the forthcoming chapbook, and was a flower, made in collaboration with book artist Valentina Améstica. Other recent work includes a picture book collaboration with her sister entitled What Do You Know? and the picture book collaboration with artist Diana Ejaita entitled Kamau and Zuzu Find A Way. Girmay is also the editor of How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton and So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion and Birth. She is on the editorial board of the African Poetry Book Fund and is the editor-at-large of the Blessing the Boats Selections from BOA Editions. She teaches at Stanford University. -
2024
Srikanth Reddy
Read about the event on Between the Pages
Srikanth Reddy is a poet, editor and critic. He is the author of Facts for Visitors, recipient of the 2005 Asian American Literary Award for Poetry; Voyager, which was named one of the best books of poetry in 2011 by The New Yorker, The Believer and National Public Radio; and Underworld Lit, which was a finalist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize, the Poetry Society of America's Four Quartets Prize and a TLS Book of the Year for 2020. His work has been supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Creative Capital Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His poetry, criticism and translations have appeared in Harper’s, The Guardian, The New York Times, Lana Turner, and Poetry. As a scholar, his research interests include modern American poetry, theories of global and transnational literature and contemporary Asian American writing. His book of criticism, Changing Subjects: Digressions in Modern American Poetry, was published by Oxford University Press in 2012, and The Unsignificant: Three Talks on Poetry and Pictures was published by Wave Books in 2024. He has taught at the University of Chicago since 2003.Donika Kelly
Read about the event on Between the Pages
Donna Kelly is the author of The Natural Order of Things (Copper Canyon); The Renunciations (Graywolf), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf book award in poetry; and Bestiary (Graywolf), the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Kelly’s poetry has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Publishing Triangle Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards and longlisted for the National Book Award. A Cave Canem graduate fellow and member of the collective Poets at the End of the World, she has also received a Lannan Residency Fellowship and a summer workshop fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center. She earned an M.F.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review and elsewhere. Donika lives in Iowa City with her wife, the nonfiction writer Melissa Febos, and is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches Creative Writing.Farnaz Fatemi
Read about the event on Between the Pages
Farnaz Fatemi is an Iranian American writer and editor in Santa Cruz, Calif. She is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective, which presents a weekly radio show and podcast in Santa Cruz County and hosts readings and poetry-related events, and was Santa Cruz County’s Poet Laureate for 2023 and 2024. She was formerly a writing instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her debut book, Sister Tongue, won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, from Kent State University Press. Farnaz is a recipient of a Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets and an Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council. Among other awards, she has been honored by the International Literary Awards, Best of the Net and Pushcart. Farnaz’s poems and lyric essays appear or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, No Tokens Journal and many others. Her work has also been anthologized, most recently, in Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora, My Shadow Is My Skin: Voices of the Iranian Diaspora and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me. -
2023
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is the author of Children of the Land: a Memoir; Cenzontle, which was the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Prize; and Dulce, winner of the Drinking Gourd Prize. He is a founding member of the Undocupoets, which eliminated citizenship requirements from all major poetry book prizes in the U.S, and was recognized with the Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers award. He was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. He currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at St. Mary’s University and the Ashland Low-Res M.F.A. Program, as well as in poetry workshops for incarcerated youth in northern California as the Yuba and Sutter County poet laureate.Paisley Rekdal
Read about the event on Between the Pages
Paisley Rekdal is the author of a book of essays, The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee; the hybrid photo-text memoir, Intimate; and six books of poetry, including Animal Eye, a finalist for the 2013 Kingsley Tufts Prize and winner of the UNT Rilke Prize, Imaginary Vessels, finalist for the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Prize, and Nightingale, which won the 2020 Washington State Book Award for Poetry. Her work has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Civitella Ranieri Residency, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Pushcart Prizes (2009, 2013), Narrative's Poetry Prize, the AWP Creative Nonfiction Prize and various state arts council awards. She is a distinguished professor at the University of Utah, where she is also the creator and editor of West: A Translation, as well as the community web projects Mapping Literary Utah and Mapping Salt Lake City.Adam Giannelli
Read about the event on Between the Pages
Adam Giannelli is the author of Tremulous Hinge, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. He is also the translator of a selection of prose poems by Marosa di Giorgio, Diadem, which was shortlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and the editor of High Lonesome, a collection of critical essays on Charles Wright. His writing has appeared in the Kenyon Review, New England Review, New York Times Magazine, Washington Post Magazine, Ploughshares, Yale Review and elsewhere. His work has been supported by fellowships and residencies from several institutions, including the National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright Program, James Merrill House, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Yaddo and MacDowell. He has taught at Oberlin, Hamilton and Colby Colleges. He is a person who stutters.
Brandon Som is a Chicano and Chinese American poet. His most recent poetry collection Tripas was awarded the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the author of The Tribute Horse, which won the 2015 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He lives in San Diego, on the traditional and unceded territory of the Kumeyaay Nation, and teaches Literature and Creative Writing at UCSD.
K-Ming Chang is a Lambda Literary Award winner, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and an O. Henry Prize Winner. She is the author of the New York Times Book Review Editors’ choice novel Bestiary, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the Otherwise Award. In 2021, her chapbook Bone House was published. Her story collection Gods of Want won a Lambda Literary Award, and her books have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Korean, German, Turkish and other languages. Her latest books are Organ Meats and a novella titled Cecilia. Her next two books, a novel and short story collection, are forthcoming from Simon & Schuster. Her writing is most frequently described as “not for everybody” and occasionally described as “for the freaks.”
Aracelis Girmay is the author of three books of poems: Teeth, Kingdom Animalia and the black maria. For this work she was a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Her books have also been named finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Connecticut Book Award. She has received fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Cave Canem Foundation, among others. Girmay is the author of the forthcoming chapbook, and was a flower, made in collaboration with book artist Valentina Améstica. Other recent work includes a picture book collaboration with her sister entitled What Do You Know? and the picture book collaboration with artist Diana Ejaita entitled Kamau and Zuzu Find A Way. Girmay is also the editor of How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton and So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion and Birth. She is on the editorial board of the African Poetry Book Fund and is the editor-at-large of the Blessing the Boats Selections from BOA Editions. She teaches at Stanford University.
Srikanth Reddy is a poet, editor and critic. He is the author of Facts for Visitors, recipient of the 2005 Asian American Literary Award for Poetry; Voyager, which was named one of the best books of poetry in 2011 by The New Yorker, The Believer and National Public Radio; and Underworld Lit, which was a finalist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize, the Poetry Society of America's Four Quartets Prize and a TLS Book of the Year for 2020. His work has been supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Creative Capital Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His poetry, criticism and translations have appeared in Harper’s, The Guardian, The New York Times, Lana Turner, and Poetry. As a scholar, his research interests include modern American poetry, theories of global and transnational literature and contemporary Asian American writing. His book of criticism, Changing Subjects: Digressions in Modern American Poetry, was published by Oxford University Press in 2012, and The Unsignificant: Three Talks on Poetry and Pictures was published by Wave Books in 2024. He has taught at the University of Chicago since 2003.
Donna Kelly is the author of The Natural Order of Things (Copper Canyon); The Renunciations (Graywolf), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf book award in poetry; and Bestiary (Graywolf), the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Kelly’s poetry has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Publishing Triangle Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards and longlisted for the National Book Award. A Cave Canem graduate fellow and member of the collective Poets at the End of the World, she has also received a Lannan Residency Fellowship and a summer workshop fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center. She earned an M.F.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review and elsewhere. Donika lives in Iowa City with her wife, the nonfiction writer Melissa Febos, and is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Iowa, where she teaches Creative Writing.
Farnaz Fatemi is an Iranian American writer and editor in Santa Cruz, Calif. She is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective, which presents a weekly radio show and podcast in Santa Cruz County and hosts readings and poetry-related events, and was Santa Cruz County’s Poet Laureate for 2023 and 2024. She was formerly a writing instructor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her debut book, Sister Tongue, won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, from Kent State University Press. Farnaz is a recipient of a Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets and an Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council. Among other awards, she has been honored by the International Literary Awards, Best of the Net and Pushcart. Farnaz’s poems and lyric essays appear or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, No Tokens Journal and many others. Her work has also been anthologized, most recently, in Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and its Diaspora, My Shadow Is My Skin: Voices of the Iranian Diaspora and The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3: Halal If You Hear Me.
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is the author of Children of the Land: a Memoir; Cenzontle, which was the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Prize; and Dulce, winner of the Drinking Gourd Prize. He is a founding member of the Undocupoets, which eliminated citizenship requirements from all major poetry book prizes in the U.S, and was recognized with the Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers award. He was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. He currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at St. Mary’s University and the Ashland Low-Res M.F.A. Program, as well as in poetry workshops for incarcerated youth in northern California as the Yuba and Sutter County poet laureate.
Paisley Rekdal is the author of a book of essays, The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee; the hybrid photo-text memoir, Intimate; and six books of poetry, including Animal Eye, a finalist for the 2013 Kingsley Tufts Prize and winner of the UNT Rilke Prize, Imaginary Vessels, finalist for the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Prize, and Nightingale, which won the 2020 Washington State Book Award for Poetry. Her work has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Civitella Ranieri Residency, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Pushcart Prizes (2009, 2013), Narrative's Poetry Prize, the AWP Creative Nonfiction Prize and various state arts council awards. She is a distinguished professor at the University of Utah, where she is also the creator and editor of West: A Translation, as well as the community web projects Mapping Literary Utah and Mapping Salt Lake City.
Adam Giannelli is the author of Tremulous Hinge, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. He is also the translator of a selection of prose poems by Marosa di Giorgio, Diadem, which was shortlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and the editor of High Lonesome, a collection of critical essays on Charles Wright. His writing has appeared in the Kenyon Review, New England Review, New York Times Magazine, Washington Post Magazine, Ploughshares, Yale Review and elsewhere. His work has been supported by fellowships and residencies from several institutions, including the National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright Program, James Merrill House, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Yaddo and MacDowell. He has taught at Oberlin, Hamilton and Colby Colleges. He is a person who stutters.