University of Houston Libraries is pleased to announce the first-ever virtual Poetry & Prose reading, featuring new graduate students of the UH Creative Writing Program. The reading starts at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, September 30 on Zoom and is free to attend. Register

Reader Bios

Nick Almeida earned his MFA from The Michener Center for Writers where he was Editor-in-Chief of Bat City Review. His fiction has appeared in American Literary Review, Mid-American Review, Waxwing, Southeast Review, and elsewhere. 

Pritha Bhattacharyya (PhD, Fiction) is a Bengali-American writer and first-year fiction PhD student at the University of Houston. She completed her MFA at Boston University, and she was a Fall 2019 Leslie Epstein Global Fellow in Osaka, Japan. 

Ryan Bollenbach is a writer living in Houston, Texas. He formerly served as poetry editor for Black Warrior Review in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He reads for SweetLit: A Literary Confection and Heavy Feather Review. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Colorado Review, poets.org, Painted Bride Quarterly, Snail Trail Press and elsewhere. Find his tweets @SilentAsIAm, more writing @ whatgreatlarks.tumblr.com

Addie Eliades, a new UH MFA candidate in poetry, was a 2019 Fulbright Fellow in Brazil. She received the University of Virginia’s 2017 Rachel St. Paul Poetry Prize. Her writing has appeared in Bitter Melon Magazine, Rumble Fish Quarterly, and other publications.

Tayyba Maya Kanwal is a Pakistani-American writer who grew up in the United Arab Emirates. Her work appears in Juxtaprose, Quarterly West and other journals. Her nonfiction has been anthologized by The Doctor TJ Eckleburg Review and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her awards include the Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellowship. She is a candidate for an MFA at the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston.

Erin L. McCoy holds an MFA in creative writing and an MA in Hispanic studies from the University of Washington. She won second place in the 2019–2020 Rougarou Poetry Contest, judged by CAConrad, and her poem, “Futures,” was selected by Natalie Diaz for inclusion in Best New Poets 2017. Her poetry and fiction have been published or are forthcoming in Bennington Review, Pleiades, DIAGRAM, Nimrod International Journal, Conjunctions, and other publications.

Fey Popoola is an activist and writer. She has a degree in Linguistics and Cognitive Science from Princeton University and is now a first year poetry MFA student here at UH. 

Joy Priest is the author of HORSEPOWER (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. She is the recipient of the 2020 Stanley Kunitz Prize and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, APR, The Atlantic, Poetry Northwest, and Poets & Writers, among others. She is currently a doctoral student in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Houston.  

Stephanie Pushaw‘s short fiction appears in Narrative, Joyland, and the Masters Review Anthology. She has also published essays in Mississippi Review, DIAGRAM, and Los Angeles Review of Books. She was a Truman Capote Fellow at the University of Montana, where she received an MFA in Fiction, and has worked as assistant essays and interviews editor at The Believer. Originally from Los Angeles, Stephanie currently lives in New Orleans. 

Adele Elise Williams is a poet from Louisiana. She is a winner of the Emily Morrison Poetry Prize and has received support from Hindman Settlement School, Muse Writing Center and Inprint of Houston. Adele’s work can be found or is forthcoming in Split Lip Magazine, The Adroit Journal, Quarterly West, SAND, and more.