Fourth Annual Open Mouth Readings Festival Goes Virtual to Celebrate Poetry

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This year's festival features poets Jessica Abughattas, Eloisa Amezcua, Callista Buchen, Leila Chatti, Meg Day, Benjamin Garcia, Allison Joseph, Shannon Sankey, Michael Torres and Jihyun Yun, with opening readings by Rome Hernández Morgan and Calypso Jane Selwyn.

The Open Mouth Reading Series invites poetry lovers from all walks of life to attend a series of virtual readings and workshops from Oct. 30-31 as part of the fourth annual Open Mouth Poetry Festival. 

Featured readers include: 

• Jessica Abughattas (Strip, University of Arkansas Press 2020)

• Eloisa Amezcua (From the Inside Quietly, Sundress Publications 2018)

• Callista Buchen (Look Look Look, Black Lawrence Press 2019)

• Leila Chatti (Deluge, Copper Canyon Press 2020)

• Meg Day (Last Psalm at Sea Level, Barrow Street 2014)

• Benjamin Garcia (Thrown in the Throat, Milkweed Editions 2020)

• Allison Joseph (The Last Human Heart, Diode Editions 2020)

• Shannon Sankey  (We Ran Rapturous, The Atlas Review 2019)

• Michael Torres (An Incomplete List of Names, Beacon Press 2020)

• Jihyun Yun (Some Are Always Hungry, University of Nebraska Press 2020)

Mini features by local poet Calypso Jane Selwyn and Rome Hernandez Morgan, an M.F.A. candidate in the Creative Writing and Translation Program, will precede each reading.

For more information about the festival and our featured poets can be found on the Open Mouth Readings website.

All events are free and open to the public. Readings and workshops will take place virtually via Zoom with Otter Live Captions, and an ASL interpreter will be present. Access copies of all poems will be provided via Google Docs at the beginning of each event.

Sponsors for this year's poetry festival include the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas and Open Mouth supporters on Patreon.

READINGS

• Open Mouth Festival Reading, featuring Michael Torres, Eloisa Amezcua, Jessica Abughattas, Shannon Sankey, Allison Joseph, with opening reading by Calypso Jane Selwyn
  Friday, October 30 at 7:00 p.m. (CDT)
  Register

• Open Mouth Festival Reading, featuring Benjamin Garcia, Meg Day, Jihyun Yun, Callista Buchen, and Leila Chatti, with opening reading by Rome Hernández Morgan
  Saturday, October 31 at 7:00 p.m. (CDT)
  Register

WORKSHOPS

• Sound as Memory, with Eloisa Amezcua
  Friday, October 30 at 4:00 p.m. (CDT)
  Register

• Writing Workshop with Leila Chatti
  Saturday, October 31 at 11:00 a.m. (CDT)
  Register

• The Elegy in October, with Michael Torres
  Saturday, October 31 at 1:00 p.m. (CDT)
  Register

• Writing Workshop with Meg Day
  Saturday, October 31 at 3:00 p.m. (CDT)
  Register

About the Open Mouth Reading Series: The Open Mouth Reading Series is a community-based poetry series located in Fayetteville, Arkansas founded by poets M.D. Myers and Molly Bess Rector in October of 2015. A federal 501(c)(3) non-profit, Open Mouth works to enrich the Northwest Arkansas community through close contact with poetry and with poets from the larger literary world. Open Mouth hosts readings, workshops, a summer poetry retreat and an annual fall poetry festival. For more information about Open Mouth or to donate, visit www.openmouthreadings.com and sign up for the Open Mouth newsletter.

About the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies: The King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies is an academic and research unit in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas, dedicated to the study of the modern Middle East and the geo-cultural area in which Islamic civilization prospered and continues to shape world history. More information about the King Fahd Center can be found at mest.uark.edu. For ongoing news, follow the Center on Facebook and Twitter.