Tarfia Faizullah and Jamaal May will read from their works at Northern Michigan University as part of this visiting writers series. The event is scheduled at 7:30 p.m. Friday Oct. 14, in the University Center's Nicolet & Cadillac Rooms.

Faizullah is a poet, editor and educator who was born in Brooklyn and raised in west Texas. She received an MFA in poetry from Virginia Commonwealth University and is the author of Seam, which U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey calls "beautiful and necessary.” The book was the recipient of the 2015 Great Lake College Association New Writers Awards, the 2015 VIDA Award in Poetry and the 2015 Binghamton University Milton Kessler Poetry Book Award.

May is the author Hum and The Big Book of Exit Strategies. His first collection received a Lannan Foundation Grant, American Library Association's Notable Book Award, and was a finalist for the Tufts Discovery Award and an NAACP Image Award. May's poetry explores the tension between opposites to render a sonically rich argument for the interconnectivity of people, worlds and ideas. He co-directs OW! Arts with Faizullah.