Poetry Reading by DJ Savarese at Pioneer Bookshop on December 8 at 5p.m.
GRINNELL, Iowa — DJ Savarese, an acclaimed poet, celebrated activist, and 2011 graduate of Grinnell High School, will return to Grinnell on Thursday, December 8, 2022, for an event celebrating the release of his new poetry collection, Swoon.
Of Swoon, Writers @ Grinnell director Dean Bakopoulos, associate professor of English, says, “D.J. Savarese’s new collection of poems is blazingly smart, bright with a keen enthusiasm for observing the wonderful and mundane parts of human experience, and for remembering the sublime elements of our lives as much as thesorrowful ones. This is a book by an assured poet who takes in what so many of us miss, and spins it back into the world as surprising, powerful, and sometimes even playful art. We are thrilled to have DJ conclude our Fall 2022 reading series.”
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DJ Savarese is a public speaker, writer, and activist who works to make literacy-based education, communication, and inclusive lives a reality for all nontraditionally speaking people through artful advocacy, teaching, and community organizing. A 2017-19 OSF Human Rights Initiative Youth Fellow alum, he is also the co-producer of the Peabody award-winning, Emmy-nominated documentary Deej: Inclusion Shouldn’t be a Lottery, which unearths discrepancies between insider and outsider perspectives of his lived experience as an alternatively-communicating autistic person.
DJ is the author of the chapbook A Doorknob for the Eye and has published poems and prose in The Iowa Review, Seneca Review, Prospect, Bellingham Review, Nine Mile Magazine, Autism in Adulthood, Stone Canoe, and wordgathering.com. “Passive Plants,” a lyric essay published in The Iowa Review, was named a notable essay in the 2018 Best American Essays. Before moving to Iowa City, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Oberlin College in May 2017 with a double major in Anthropology and Creative Writing. Learn more about Savarse and his projects atwww.djsavarese.com.
WHEN:
Thursday, December 8, 2022 at 5 p.m.
WHERE:
Pioneer Bookshop – 933 Main Street, Grinnell, IA 50112
TICKETS:
This event is free and open to the public. No tickets are required.
