Join us for a series of readings from the faculty of the Creative Writing Program in the Department of English. We look forward to seeing you there!

Ama Codjoe is the author of Bluest Nude (Milkweed Editions, 2022), winner of the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Paterson Poetry Prize; and Blood of the Air (Northwestern University Press, 2020), winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. She has been awarded support from Bogliasco, Cave Canem, Robert Rauschenberg, and Saltonstall foundations as well as from Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Hedgebrook, Yaddo, Hawthornden Literary Retreat, Willapa Bay AiR, MacDowell, and the Amy Clampitt Residency. Among other honors, Codjoe has received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bronx Council on the Arts, the New York State Council/New York Foundation of the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation. In 2023, Codjoe was appointed as the second Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. She is the winner of a 2023 Whiting Award and a recipient of a 2024 Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Nikki Lyssy is a writer from Austin, Texas, specializing in essays and young adult literature. She has work published in HAD/Was, Sweet Literary, and appeared as a guest on the MFA Writers Podcast. Nikki is pursuing a PhD in English with a concentration in creative nonfiction at Texas Tech University.

Amor Costilla is a first-gen undergrad at TTU, earning a BA in English with a creative writing concentration. She's also a journalism minor who is just as passionate about fiction and poetry as she is about current political events.

Sponsored by generous support from the TTU Humanities Center, the Thomas Jay Harris Institute for Hispanic and International Communication in the TTU College of Media and Communications, the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program and the TTU Department of English, the TTU Creative Writing Program is proud to feature Vlora Konushevci, a visiting writer and translator from Kosovo.

Vlora KONUSHEVCI (poet, translator, and essayist; Kosovo) is the author of the poetry collection Lavdi Vetes and the editor-translator of the bilingual anthologies Poetry Without Borders (Albanian–Serbian) and Magma (Albanian–English). Her poetry and translations appear in The Common, Songs of Eretz, and European Literature Network. A winner of multiple literary awards and a contributor to Kosovo’s cultural press, she also works as a certified translator for national and international institutions. Her participation is made possible thanks to the University of Iowa’s Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate College.

Find a sample of her writing here.

Justin Taylor is the author of the novel Reboot, a New York Times Notable Book of 2024 and a Washington Post best novel of the year. He is also the author of the memoir Riding with the Ghost, the novel The Gospel of Anarchy, and the story collections Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever and Flings. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, N+1, Granta, and Best American Short Stories. He is a contributing writer to the Washington Post Book World, and the director of the MFA program at Sewanee, the University of the South.