Author Visit: Keli Stewart

Hear author Keli Stewart read from her debut poetry collection, Small Altars. In the traditions of Gwendolyn Brooks' A Street in Bronzeville, Lucille Clifton's Good Woman, and Nikki Giovanni's Love Poems, Small Altars renders a self-portrait in spirals and snapshots—sometimes with humor, sometimes with sentiment and memory—about the body, desire, motherhood and place around her identity as a Black woman while awakening keen observations of her ancestors with a griot's voice.

About the presenter
Keli Stewart is a writer, educator, community builder, and founder of Front Porch Arts Center. Her writing has appeared in Quiddity, Muzzle Magazine, Warpland, Hip Mama, Calyx, and other journals and publications. Keli has received artist fellowships from Hedgebrook, where she was awarded the Adrienne Reiner Hochstadt Award and the Augusta Savage Gallery’s Arts International Residency. An alum of the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation and Callaloo Summer Writing Workshops, Keli’s writing was selected first place in the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award from the Illinois Center of the Book. She received her BA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College in 2002 and her MFA in Poetry from Chicago State University. She was recently selected as a 2021-2022 School of the Art Institute Nichols Tower Artist-in-Residence. Her poetry collection, Small Altars was published by Bronzeville Books in 2021. She lives in the Austin community on the Westside of Chicago.