SPECTRA Reading Series: Elizabeth Willis, Tanya Rastogi, and Sophia Bush at Rozz-Tox -- April 10 (pictured: Elizabeth Willis).
Thursday, April 10, 8 p.m.
Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL
With the event co-presented by the Midwest Writing Center, the Quad Cities' longest-running reading series SPECTRA returns to Rock Island's Rozz-Tox on April 10, with Elizabeth Willis reading from her latest book Liontaming in America, longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award in poetry, Iowa Student Poet Ambassador Tanya Rastogi, and Sophia Best, whose first chapbook PINK BATHWATER won the Iowa Chapbook Prize.
Elizabeth Willis is the author of Liontaming in America (New Directions, 2024), a hybrid work engaged with American belief and relationship structures, theatre, activism, and film. Her other books of poetry include Alive (New York Review Books, 2015), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, as well as Address; Meteoric Flowers; Turneresque; The Human Abstract; and the artist’s book Spectral Evidence. She also writes about the intersection of art and labor and edited the volume Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Poetics of Place. She teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Tanya Rastogi is an artist and writer from Bettendorf, and is currently serving as the 2024-25 Iowa Student Poet Ambassador. Her work has been published in The Adroit Journal, Shō Poetry Journal, Gone Lawn, and other publications. She is also the founding editor of The Seraphic Review. She enjoys hot tea, long evening walks, and anything sweet.
Sophia Best is a current writing student at Western Illinois University. In 2023, she won the Iowa Chapbook Prize and published PINK BATHWATER. She participated in the Midwest Writing Center’s Young Emerging Writers program for three summers and is featured in the 13th, 14th, and 15th editions of the MWC's literary journal The Atlas.
At SPECTRA's latest open-to-the-public gathering, an open-mic event will start things off at 7 p.m. (spaces are limited, five-minute sets, first come first served), and the featured readings will begin at 8 p.m. This is the first of two SPECTRA events celebrating National Poetry Month (the next to be held at Rozz-Tox on April 24), and the Midwest Writing Center is also hosting a reading from a poet every day on their YouTube channel throughout the month of April.
For more information on the April 10 event, contact Rozz-Tox at (309)200-0978 and RozzTox.com, and the Midwest Writing Center at (309)732-7330 and MWCQC.org.
