In-Person: DECOMPOSE by Séamus Fey

Please join us for an in-person poetry reading celebrating Decompose by Séamus Fey with Taylor Byas, Meg Kim, and Czaerra Galicinao Ucol!

Please note: Pre-registration for this event is required. By pre-registering, you are verifying that you are fully vaccinated and will wear a mask throughout the entirety of the event.

Our life contains several lives as well as several deaths; we attempt to understand these little rebirths through poetry. decompose explores pruning our past to make room for future growth; the expanse we are offered through the crush of heartbreak, discovering family beyond our original home, finding new meaning in our own name - S. Fey picks these timeless themes like roses from a flourishing garden to compose a thorny and succulent bouquet of living, loss, and rebirth throughout the rejuvenating pages of their debut poetry collection.

Séamus Fey (he/they) is a Trans writer living in LA. Currently, they are the poetry editor at Hooligan Magazine, and co creative director at Rock Pocket Productions. Their debut poetry collection, decompose, is forthcoming with Not a Cult Media. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poet Lore, The Offing, Sonora Review, and others. They love to beat their friends at Mario Party. Find them online @sfeycreates.

Dr. Taylor Byas, Ph.D. (she/her) is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is a Features Editor for The Rumpus, a Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Literature, an Editorial Board Member for Beloit Poetry Journal, and an Editorial Advisor for Jackleg Press. She is the author of two chapbooks, her debut full-length, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, from Soft Skull Press, which won the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award and the 2023 Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry, and Resting Bitch Face, forthcoming in Fall of 2025. She is also a co-editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama from Texas Review Press, and of Poemhood: Our Black Revival, a YA anthology on Black folklore from HarperCollins.

Meg Kim is a poet from Southern Oregon currently based in Chicago. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Sundog Lit, and Gulf Coast, among others, and her debut chapbook, INVISIBLE CARTOGRAPHIES, is forthcoming with New Delta Review. Find her online @megpieinflight.

Czaerra Galicinao Ucol (they/them) is a queer Filipino writer from Chicago. Their debut poetry collection Pisces Urges was published by Sampaguita Press in 2023, and they are the Co-Director of Luya, a local grassroots poetry organization centering people of color. You can find them online @czaerra.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email [email protected] by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questions or access needs, please email [email protected].

Host or Publisher Women & Children First