Young Thing // Poetry Book Release Party

Join us to celebrate the launch of Young Thing – the tragicomedic poetry collection by Grace Bialecki. With bonus poems from Liana Jahan Imam and music by river bend river. Doors at 7 pm. Poems at 7:30 pm.

Rampant creativity all night long.

Liana Jahan Imam is an American essayist & poet born in Southeast Michigan. She left home in 2010 and spent formative time — some long, some brief — in Scotland, Brooklyn, Missoula, Tbilisi, & Asheville, before resettling in the city of Detroit in 2020.Imam holds an MFA from the University of Montana, and is the recipient of a 2023 Gilda Award from Kresge Arts in Detroit. She writes, waits tables, hosts a virtual group on hybrid poetics, facilitates workshops, & is at work on her first full-length book project.

Grace Bialecki is a writer, editor, and meditation teacher who helps people be present in their lives and with their art. She has taught hundreds of workshops for organizations from Hugo House to Detroit Horse Power to the Brooklyn Public Schools. Her writing has appeared in The Millions, Catapult, and Epiphany Magazine, and elsewhere, and her poetry chapbook, Young Thing was published by Rainbow Skull in 2025. Grace lives in Detroit where she plays in the genre-fluid duo, river bird river.

river bend river is an experimental duo who weave poetic and experimental soundscapes, and who play, write, read, panhandle, dumpster, stretch, breathe, and commune with trees in Detroit.

Doors: 7 pm

Poems by Liana: 7:30 pm

Poems by Grace: 7:45 pm

Break/mingle

Music by river bend river: ~8:20-9 pm

FREE

Host or Publisher Book Suey