First Rodeo: Poetry Reading Series

First Rodeo returns with poets Saddiq Dzukogi, Kathy Fagan, Jenny Molberg, and Tarfia Faizullah, reading new work.A seasonal poetry series hosted by Hannah Smith and L. A. Johnson, First Rodeo is sponsored by SMU’s Project Poëtica.Saddiq Dzukogi is the author of Bakandamiya: An Elegy (University of Nebraska Press, 2025), winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Poetry, and Your Crib, My Qibla (2021), winner of the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. A Cave Canem fellow, he is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Poetry London, Guernica, and The Kenyon Review, among other journals.Kathy Fagan’s new poetry collection is The Unbecoming (W. W. Norton). Her previous books include Bad Hobby (Milkweed Editions, 2022), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award, and Sycamore (2017), a Kingsley Tufts Award finalist. A 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the National Poetry Series and Vassar Miller Prize, she co-founded the MFA Program in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University and served for more than twenty years as Poetry Editor of The Journal.Jenny Molberg is the author of three poetry collections, most recently The Court of No Record (LSU Press, 2023), a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. Her fourth collection, The Medium, is forthcoming in 2027. Her work has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center. She is Professor of Writing, Literature, and Publishing and Editor-in-Chief of Ploughshares at Emerson College.Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Alien of Extraordinary Ability (forthcoming from Haymarket Books in 2027), Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf, 2018), and Seam (SIU, 2014). Her writing appears widely in the US and abroad, has been translated into several languages, and has received numerous awards and honors. She teaches creative writing at UNT, where she also serves as Co-Director of Creative Writing & Graduate Studies. Don’t miss out and sign up to our newsletter

Indie bookstore & cafe offering a variety of titles, light fare & drinks, author readings & music.

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First Rodeo returns with poets Saddiq Dzukogi, Kathy Fagan, Jenny Molberg, and Tarfia Faizullah, reading new work.A seasonal poetry series hosted by Hannah Smith and L. A. Johnson, First Rodeo is sponsored by SMU’s Project Poëtica.Saddiq Dzukogi is the author of Bakandamiya: An Elegy (University of Nebraska Press, 2025), winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Poetry, and Your Crib, My Qibla (2021), winner of the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. A Cave Canem fellow, he is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Poetry London, Guernica, and The Kenyon Review, among other journals.Kathy Fagan’s new poetry collection is The Unbecoming (W. W. Norton). He