The English Department is pleased to present Dr. Taylor Byas, the Seelbinder Literary Arts Series speaker, who will give a poetry reading. Her debut full-length collection, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, won the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award. Inspired by The Wiz, this book celebrates South Side Chicago and a Black woman’s quest for self-discovery.

Dr. Byas' second collection, Resting Bitch Face, is forthcoming from Soft Skull Press. She is a coeditor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama, forthcoming from Texas Review Press, and Poemhood: Our Black Revival, a young adult fiction anthology forthcoming from HarperCollins. She is also an Assistant Features Editor for The Rumpus, an Acquisitions Poetry Editor for Variant Literature, a member of the Beloit Poetry Journal Editorial Board, and a 2023-24 National Book Critics Emerging Fellow.

The series is made possible by a gift from Professor Emerita Emily Seelbinder to enhance the study of and appreciation for the literary arts at Queens and in our community.