The Department of Literature, Journalism, Writing, and Languages is pleased to announce Dr. Taylor Byas, Ph.D. as the poet of honor for the 26th Annual PLNU Poetry Day on September 25, 2024.
Dr. Taylor Byas, Ph.D. (she/her) is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is a Features Editor for The Rumpus, a Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Literature, an Editorial Board Member for Beloit Poetry Journal, and an Editorial Advisor for Jackleg Press. She is the author of two chapbooks, her debut full-length, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, from Soft Skull Press, which won the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award and the 2023 Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry, and Resting Bitch Face, forthcoming in Fall of 2025. She is also a co-editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama from Texas Review Press, and of Poemhood: Our Black Revival, a YA anthology on Black folklore from HarperCollins.
The Soft Skull Press website shares the following about Dr. Byas’s debut full-length chapbook I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times:
“I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times takes its inspiration and concept from the cult classic film The Wiz to explore a Black woman’s journey out of the South Side of Chicago and into adulthood. The narrative arc of The Wiz—a tumultuous departure from home, trials designed to reveal new things about the self, and the eventual return home—serves as a loose trajectory for this collection, pulling readers through an abandoned barn, a Wendy’s drive-thru, a Beyoncé video, Grandma’s house, Sunday service, and the corner store. At every stop, the speaker is made to confront her womanhood, her sexuality, the visibility of her body, alcoholism in her family, and various ways in which narratives are imposed on her. Subverting monolithic ideas about the South Side of Chicago, and re-casting the city as a living, breathing entity, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times spans sestinas, sonnets, free-verse, and erasures, all to reimagine the concept of home. Chicago isn’t just a city, but a teacher, a lingering shadow, a way of seeing the world.”
The bestselling book has received multiple awards, including the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award, the 2023 Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry, and the 2024 Honor Book for Poetry from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. A review by Chicago Magazine calls Dr. Byas “a literary descendant of fellow Chicagoan Gwendolyn Brooks”:
“Like Brooks, the 27-year-old Byas turns the everyday aspects of life into the exuberantly extraordinary… Her collection is a love letter to the city that made her—and to her own journey of self-discovery.” — Diamond Sharpe, Chicago Magazine
In addition to I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times and her forthcoming book Resting Bitch Face, Dr. Byas is author of the chapbooks Bloodwarm and Shutter. She is the 1st place winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway Contest, the 2020 Frontier Award for New Poets, and the 1st place winner for the 2021 Adrienne Rich Poetry Prize.
On September 25, 2024, Dr. Byas will lead two events at PLNU as part of the 26th Annual Poetry Day. She will conduct a poetry craft lecture and writing workshop at 3 p.m. at Fermanian Conference Center followed by an evening poetry reading at 7 p.m. at Fermanian Conference Center. Book sales and signing will follow the evening reading courtesy of La Playa Books. Both events are free and open to the public. Reserve tickets for the 7 p.m. reading at the link below.