Award-winning poet Kazim Ali will give a reading at Northern Michigan University as part of the English department's Visiting Writer Series. The event will begin at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8, in the University Center Charcoal Room. It is free and open to the public.

Ali also is an essayist, fiction writer and translator. His books include several volumes of poetry, including Sky Ward,winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books' New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; and the cross-genre text Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities.

Ali was co-editor of Jean Valentine: This-World Company. He also is a contributing editor for AWP Writers Chronicle, associate editor of the literary magazine FIELD and founding editor of the small press Nightboat Books. He is the series co-editor for both Poets on Poetry and Under Discussion, from the University of Michigan Press. Ali teaches creative writing and comparative literature at Oberlin College.