University of Detroit Mercy’s English Department hosts Triptych, a virtual reading series featuring award-winning authors in conversation with UDM’s poet-in-residence, Prof. Stacy Gnall. The series showcases nationally and internationally recognized writers whose work spans poetry, essays, translation, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Triptych events take place on the third Thursday of January, February, and March 2026 from 6:30–8:00 p.m. via Zoom. All events are free and open to the public.
Thursday, January 15: Cate Marvin
Cate Marvin is the author of four books of poetry, including World’s Tallest Disaster, winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize; Fragment of the Head of a Queen, which earned a Whiting Award; Oracle, named one of The New York Times’ Best Poetry Books of 2015; and Event Horizon (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). A recipient of the Kate Tufts Discovery Prize and a recent Guggenheim Fellow, Marvin teaches in the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine and is Professor of English at the College of Staten Island (CUNY).
Thursday, February 19: Ross Gay
Ross Gay is the author of four poetry collections, including Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award. He is also the author of bestselling essay collections The Book of Delights, Inciting Joy, and The Book of (More) Delights. His work is widely celebrated for its focus on joy, justice, gratitude, and community.
Thursday, March 19: Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine, and is the author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has received numerous honors, including the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, National Jewish Book Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and NEA Fellowship. In 2019, the BBC named him one of the “12 artists that changed the world.”
Katie Farris is the author of Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, a Publisher’s Weekly Top 10 Poetry Book and finalist for the T.S. Eliot Prize, as well as several chapbooks and hybrid-form works. A Pushcart Prize winner, her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Poetry, and Granta. She is an Associate Professor of Poetry at Princeton University and an accomplished translator.
Register for free at https://linktr.ee/detroitmercyenglish.