ROCK ISLAND, ILLINOIS (March 16, 2023) — SPECTRA Lives! The longest-running reading series in the Quad Cities, presented by the Midwest Writing Center, returns to Rozz-Tox, 2108 3rd Ave, Rock Island, on Friday, March 31, to celebrate the release of Emily Kingery’s début poetry chapbook Invasives, recently released by Finishing Line Press. The event will start with an open mic (limited five-minutes slots available, sign-up available starting at 7PM). Then, Emily Kingery will read from the chapbook, and will be joined on stage by fellow poets Melissa Estes, Lexi Birks, and Lola Nakashima Brooke.
Doors open at 7PM and the show starts at 8PM. The event is free and open to the public, and books will be available for purchase. Donations to MWC are welcome and go to support youth writing programs in the QC. Please contact Ryan Collins at MWC with questions and media inquiries: ryan.collins@mwcqc.org | 309-732-7330.
Advance Praise for Invasives:
In her Invasives, Emily Kingery exposes the exposed. Dirt bags and bright girls further prove that wet is light and dirt is dark — but it’s all intimate, none of it disposable, all necessary to the story. We think we know what story that is: IT’s the one we aIways deserved, the always that needs us in it. Never only a small town. Never just a neighbor boy. These poems inhabit a body that is all will, and willing to be more. “We had visions more necessary than eyes,” Kingery says. To visualize with her is to see, ever more clearly, how we got here.— Beth Roberts, author of Brief Moral History in Blue (New Issues Poetry & Prose) and Like You (Ottoline Prize, Fence Books)
Bios for the Readers:
Emily Kingery is the author of Invasives (Finishing Line Press, 2023), a semi-finalist in the New Women’s Voices Series and a finalist at Harbor Editions and Thirty West Publishing House. Her work appears widely in journals and has been selected for multiple honors and awards in both poetry and prose, including the 2022 Laureate Prize (Harbor Editions) and 2022 Pablo Neruda Prize (Nimrod). She teaches creative writing and literature at St. Ambrose University and serves on the Board of Directors at the Midwest Writing Center, a non-profit supporting writers in the Quad Cities community. You can find her at emilykingery.com.
Lexi Birks is the author of Diary of Her Disappearance (2015) and Elimination (2016). She wrote and published her first book at the age of fifteen and continues to write fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. She will graduate from St Ambrose University in May of 2023 with a BA in English and a minor in Art. She currently accepts commissions for memorial portraits using charcoal and chalk and is an active member of the Eastern Iowa Writers’ Guild, a community for local authors to share works in progress and provide feedback. You can visit authorlexibirks on Facebook for updates on her latest work.
The SPECTRA Reading Series manifests thanks to the generous support of the Illinois Arts Council Agency and Illinois Humanities.
