Alison Thumel, Aurora Shimshak, Steven Espada Dawson

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courtesy A Room of One's Own

Alison Thumel, Aurora Shimshak, Steven Espada Dawson (from left).

Alison Thumel, Aurora Shimshak, Steven Espada Dawson (from left).

As Isthmus has underlined for you several times recently, April is poetry month. This reading features three Madison poets. Alison Thumel’s collection Architect recently won the 2024 Miller Williams Poetry Prize (read Linda Falkenstein’s interview with Thumel here). Aurora Shimshak, like Thumel a master of fine arts recipient from UW-Madison, read at the investiture ceremony of Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin last year, performing her “The Appleshaped Earth and We Upon It,” a poem in which she asks, “Is there a poem in this?” We feel safe in saying, yes, there is. Also reading is Steven Espada Dawson, recently named Madison's new poet laureate.

media release: Room of One's Own is thrilled to host Alison Thumel, Aurora Shimshak, and Steven Espada Dawson, for this poetry reading and conversation. Join us for an evening of lyrical delights with three wonderful wordsmiths!

This is an in person event at A Room of One's Own.

Alison Thumel’s poems have appeared in Poetry, the Adroit Journal, New England Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in poetry at Stanford University, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and the Martha Meier Renk Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she completed her MFA.

Aurora Shimshak grew up in several rural communities and small cities in Wisconsin. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2023, Copper Nickel, and Poetry Northwest, among others. She teaches writing to undergraduate students and those incarcerated at Oakhill Correctional Institution. Her favorite spring ephemeral is the bloodroot. 

Steven Espada Dawson is from East Los Angeles. The son of a Mexican immigrant, he is a former Ruth Lilly Fellow and Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellow. He has served as a poetry editor for Copper Nickel and Sycamore Review and has taught creative writing at universities, libraries, and prisons across the country. His poems appear in many journals and have been anthologized in Best New Poets, Pushcart Prize, and Sarabande’s Another Last Call. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he serves as Poet Laureate.