The Open Door series presents work from Chicago’s new and emerging poets and highlights the area’s outstanding writing programs.

Each hour-long event at The Poetry Foundation features readings by two Chicagoland writing program instructors and two of their current or recent students. This month’s reading features Ruben Quesada and student Dustin Lowman, and Maggie Andersen and student Shaina Warfield.

Ruben Quesada is a contributing editor at Chicago Review of Books. He serves as faculty at The School of the Art Institute, where he teaches poetry writing. His chapbook of poetry and translations, "Revelations," is available from Sibling Rivalry Press, an inclusive publishing house whose entire catalog is housed in the Library of Congress’ Rare Book and Special Collections division.

Maggie Andersen is Assistant Professor of English at Dominican University. She is author of the forthcoming memoir, No Stars in Jefferson Park, and has published in CutBank, StoryClub, Southern California Review, Grain, Knee-Jerk, Glimmer Train, New Delta Review, and South Loop Review, among others. Maggie has been a recipient of the Montana Nonfiction Prize and is a frequent contributor to the Paper Machete, giftLIT and other local reading series. She currently serves as Literary Director at the Gift Theatre, Chicago, where she is a founding company member.

Dustin Lowman is a first year poetry MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A poet and songwriter, he has had poems published in Five2One, Writing Disorder, and Uut Poetry, and he has produced the albums Folk Songs (2015) and Carnivalesque (2018).

Shaina Warfield is a 20 year-old Chicagoland native studying English at Dominican University. She has been published in Dominican's literary magazine Stella Veritatis. Her work is a product of navigating many forms of hybridity through the day to day chronicles of being a queer, black woman working very hard to only speak on purpose.