2021 UW Poetry MFA Graduates Reading

Gabriella Balza is a poet from Venezuela and South Florida. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Waxwing, River Styx and Colorado Review. 

Adrienne Chung’s poetry and prose have appeared in The Yale Review, Diagram, Joyland, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of UW-Madison’s MFA program and the recipient of fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, MacDowell, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Based in Berlin, she teaches at the Berlin Writers’ Workshop and is an editor at Sand Journal.

Miriam Huettner is an M.F.A. candidate in poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her poems have appeared in Colorado Review and peripheries. She likes to think about religion and the body in grocery stores and museums.

Itiola Jones is an American Nigerian poet and music journalist. She is a Graduate Fellow with The Watering Hole and holds fellowships from Callaloo, BOAAT Writer’s Retreat (pronounced "Boat"), and Brooklyn Poets. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, Washington Square Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hobart Pulp, The Rumpus, The Offing, Shade Literary Arts, Blood Orange Review and elsewhere. Her work was chosen by Khadijah Queen as a finalist for the 2020 Sublingua Prize for Poetry. She is an MFA candidate in Poetry at UW–Madison as well as the Inaugural 2019­­–2020 Kemper K. Knapp University Fellowship recipient. 

Alison Thumel is a writer from Chicago. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her poems have appeared in DIAGRAM, Ninth Letter, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her first chapbook, LIFE OF, won Salt Hill’s Dead Lake Chapbook Contest in 2016.

Ajibola Tolase is a Nigerian poet and essayist. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in American Chordata, LitHub, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, and The Lifted Brow. He is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.