Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His first collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller.
Guest Host Ari Mokdad is the National Writers Series new education director. She’s a Detroit-born choreographer, creative writer, and passionate educator. Ari holds a Master of Arts in English from Wayne State University and three Bachelor of Arts degrees in dance, English and writing from Grand Valley State University. Ari will receive a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College and participate in the Centrum Artist Residency in 2022. She lives with her husband in Traverse City on the ancestral and unceded land of the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Pottawatomie people, The People of the Three Fires.
Local Bookstores
Bay Books – Suttons Bay
Brilliant Books – Traverse City
Cottage Book Shop – Glen Arbor
Horizon Books – Traverse City
McLean & Eakin – Petoskey
Saturn Booksellers – Gaylord
Event Sponsor
Up North Financial, LLC
Literary Sponsor
Event Partner
Interlochen Center for the Arts