Mark your calendars for a newcomer to Cleveland’s poetry scene — poet Leila Chatti will be at Loganberry Books December 13 for an intimate reading of her new and celebrated poems. Chatti, a dual citizen of Tunisia and the United States, became the inaugural Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Writing and Editing at Cleveland State University’s Poetry Center this fall, beating out nearly 90 other applicants. The newly created position was meant to develop a pipeline for a more diverse workforce in the U.S. publishing industry, which is 89 percent white.
“Once I was discouraged from writing early in my career for being too female and too Muslim, by those who were neither,” she told the selection committee, “an instance of the systemic silencing in writing establishments and publishing that I hope to combat.”
Listeners will have the chance to hear poems like Chatti’s recently published “Testimony,” a meditation on her faith, a reoccurring theme in her work.
Join her on Thursday, December 13 for a riveting evening of poetry.