Carr Visiting Author Series: Alumni Reading featuring Chekwube Danladi, Weston Morrow, and Chris Vanjonack

Join us for a reading by Illinois Alumni, Chekwube Danladi, Chris Vanjonack, and Weston Morrow!

Chekwube Danladi is the author of Semiotics (University of Georgia Press, 2020), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, selected by Evie Shockley, as well as a 2022 Independent Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. She has received fellowships and support from Callaloo, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Hedgebrook, Jack Jones Literary Arts, Kimbilio for Black Fiction, the Lambda Literary Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Take Me Back, was included in the New Generation African Poets: Nne boxset. Her visual work has been commissioned by the Center for Afrofuturist Studies (a program of PS1), Already Felt: Poetry in Revolt and Bounty, Langer/Dickie, and the Black Poetry Review. She is the Writer-in-Residence at Occidental College and lives in Los Angeles.

Chris Vanjonack is a writer and educator from Denver, Colorado. A recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Award, his fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in One Story, Book of the Month Club's Volume 0, Barrelhouse, Electric Literature, Ninth Letter, DIAGRAM, CRAFT Literary, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and teaches creative writing at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop.

His debut short story collection, Out of Body, is forthcoming from William Morrow on 9/22/2026.

Weston Morrow is the author of Cloud Builder, winner of the 2025 National Poetry Series, forthcoming Sept. 1, 2026, from University of Georgia Press. His recent poems have appeared in Boulevard, The Adroit Journal, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. His essays, criticism, and other prose have appeared in venues such as Ninth Letter, Blackbird, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency.