Making Space, Taking Space

Join us for incredible night of literature, art, and discussion. Mingle with acclaimed authors Kazim Ali, Jami Attenberg, Xochitl Gonzalez, Claire Lombardo, and Chigozie Obioma at a cocktail reception. They will then be joined by moderator Faylita Hicks for a conversation on the importance of space and time in the writing life, followed by a book signing. Finally, guests have the option to join a buffet dinner where you will able to continue to chat with authors.

5:00-6:00pm: Author Reception
6:00-7:30pm: Program & Signing
7:30-9:00pm: Buffet Dinner

Cost and Registraion

This is a ticketed program presented in partnership with Ragdale and StoryStudio Chicago as part of Ragdale's More Than a Novel Affair. Proceeds from tickets sales for the May 16 program and dinner benefit all three organizations.

Authors

Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and grew up transnationally in India, Canada, and the United States. Having worked as a lobbyist, field organizer and nonprofit administrator, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from NYU, where he also studied dance in the Gallatin School. Ali is the author of over two dozen books of fiction, poetry, and essay, translator of books by Marguerite Duras, Ananda Devi, and Mahmoud Chokrollahi, and editor of volumes on Shreela Ray, Jean Valentine, and Agha Shahid, as well as other anthologies. His most recent books are Sukun: New and Selected Poems, the novel Indian Winter, and a critical study, Black Buffalo Woman: An Introduction to the Poetry and Poetics of Lucille Clifton. He also published a YA fantasy with Choose-Your-Own-Adventure entitled The Citadel of Whispers. Founding editor of Nightboat Books, he served as Series Editor for both the University of Michigan Press's Poets on Poetry series and the Under Discussion series. In 2022, he received the Banff Mountain Environmental Literature Award for his book Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water. After teaching at various colleges and universities, including Oberlin, St. Mary's College of California, Davidson College, Naropa University, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Ali currently serves as Professor of Literary Arts, Comparative Literature, and Cultural Studies in the Department of Literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Jami Attenberg is the New York Times bestselling author of ten books, including The Middlesteins, All Grown Up, and a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home. Her latest novel, A Reason to See You Again, was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She is also the creator of the annual online group writing accountability project #1000wordsofsummer, which inspired the USA Today bestseller 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round. Jami has also written for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, The Guardian, and others. Her work has been published in sixteen languages.

Xochitl Gonzalez is the New York Times bestselling author of Anita de Monte Laughs Last, a Reese’s Book Club Pick longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the award-winning novel Olga Dies Dreaming, named a Best of 2022 by The New York Times, TIME, Kirkus, Washington Post, and NPR. She is a staff writer for The Atlantic, where she was recognized as a 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Commentary.

Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria. His two novels, The Fishermen (2015) and An Orchestra of Minorities (2019) were finalists for The Booker Prize and have been translated into 30 languages. He has won an LA Times book prize and the prestigious Internationaler Literaturpris, FT/Oppenheimer prize for fiction, an NAACP Image award and has been nominated for two dozen prizes for fiction. He was named one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers in 2015 and served as a judge of the Booker prize in 2021. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, Financial Times, Paris Review, Granta, and elsewhere. He is the Helen S. Lanier Professor of Creative Writing and English at the University of Georgia and the program director of the Oxbelly Fiction Writers retreat. His third novel, The Road to the Country, was published in 2024.

Claire Lombardo is the New York Times bestselling author of Same As It Ever Was and The Most Fun We Ever Had, which has been optioned for television by Reese Witherspoon. Her novels have been translated into over a dozen languages. A former social worker, Claire has also taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and worked as a bookseller at Prairie Lights Books. She lives in Minneapolis.

Moderator

Faylita Hicks (she/they) is a queer writer, interdisciplinary artist, Hoodoo practitioner, and cultural strategist working at the crossroads of social justice and spirituality. Hicks currently serves as Board Chair for The Guild Literary Complex, Core Faculty with Stories Matter Foundation’s StoryStudio, adjunct faculty with the University of Reno’s Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Incline Village, Right of Return Alumni Consultant at the Center for Art and Advocacy, and as a District Advocate and voting member of the Recording Academy. They are the author of two poetry collections, A Map of My Want (Haymarket Books, 2024), a shortlist finalist for the Chicago Review of Books Poetry Award, and HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019), a shortlist finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry. A 2024 Grammy-nominee, Hicks is an Art for Justice Fund grantee, the winner of the Sappho Poetry Award and the Best of Net Prize for Poetry. They have received grants, fellowships, and residencies from Illinois Humanities, Black Mountain Institute, Broadway Advocacy Coalition, Civil Rights Corps, Tin House, Lambda Literary, and the Center for Art and Advocacy, amongst others. They were recently named a 2024 Gwendolyn Brooks Living Legacy Honoree and are currently working on their debut memoir-in-essays about their incarceration, A Body of Wild Light: The Fall and Rise of An American Poet (Haymarket Books). You can find their poetry, essays, and art in American Poetry Review, Ecotone, Kenyon Review, Longreads, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, Poetry Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, The Rumpus, Slate, The Slowdown Podcast, and Yale Review, amongst others.

Questions?

Please contact Marita Seaberg, Ragdale's Office & Development Manager, at marita@ragdale.org or 847.234.1063 x 21.