Join InsideOut on Saturday, October 22nd at 2 PM for a poetry reading with Visiting Writer Dunya Mikhail. Hosted at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), InsideOut’s Visiting Writer Series is an opportunity to hear work from nationally-renowned writers and Detroit’s youth poets. This free event will include a teen-only open mic followed by a performance by our Visiting Writer, Dunya Mikhail.

In an NPR interview, Mikhail said, “I feel that poetry is not medicine—it’s an X-ray. It helps you see the wound and understand it. We all feel alienated because of this continuous violence in the world. We feel alone, but we feel also together. So we resort to poetry as a possibility for survival.”

Dunya Mikhail was born in Iraq in 1965 and came to the United States in 1996. Her books include The Bird Tattoo (2022); In Her Feminine Sign (2019); The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq (2018), which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Literature in Translation; The Iraqi Nights, Diary of A Wave Outside the Sea; and The War Works Hard. She also edited a pamphlet of Iraqi poetry titled 15 Iraqi Poets. Her honors include the Kresge Fellowship, Arab American Book Award, and the United Nations Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. The War Works Hard was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and named one of the New York Public Library’s Twenty-Five Books to Remember from 2005. She is the co-founder of Mesopotamian Forum for Art and Culture in Michigan. She currently works as an Arabic special lecturer at Oakland University in Michigan.

CITYWIDE POETS PROGRAM KICK OFF AND REGISTRATION

There will also be on-site registration for InsideOut’s award-winning afterschool program Citywide Poets. Citywide Poets provides teens with weekly creative writing workshops, publication, and performance opportunities. In this rigorous and supportive literary community, teens learn their words are powerful and embrace creative expression as a tool for self-development and civic engagement.

Teens can learn more about Citywide Poets and register for FREE weekly sessions here.

Before the reading will be a free lunch and writing workshop for **teens only** (no registration required).

11:30 AM Free lunch for teens

12-1:30 PM Teens-only poetry workshop with Dunya Mikhail

2 PM Youth open mic + featured performance (free and open to all)