SPECTRA Reading Series: MC Hyland and Elizabeth Clark Wessel at Rozz-Tox -- April 24 (pictured: Elizabeth Clark Wessel).
Thursday, April 24, 8 p.m.
Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL
With the event co-presented by the Midwest Writing Center, the Quad Cities' longest-running reading series SPECTRA returns to Rock Island's Rozz-Tox on April 24 for its public event of the 2024-25 season, the evening showcasing a pair of lauded poets who will read from their latest collections; The Dead and the Living and the Bridge, written by MC Hyland, and None of It Belongs to Me, authored by Elizabeth Clark Wessel.
MC Hyland is the founding editor of DoubleCross Press, a poetry micropress. She is the author of more than a dozen poetry chapbooks/artist books and two previous full-length books of poems, THE END (Sidebrow 2019) and Neveragainland (Lowbrow Press 2010), as well as a book of short essays, The Dead and the Living and the Bridge (Meekling Press 2025). Holding MFAs in book arts and creative writing from the University of Alabama and a PhD in English literature from NYU, MC is a teacher, scholar, artist, and freelancer, and lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with her partner, Jeff, and cat, Dakota.
Elizabeth Clark Wessel lives in Stockholm, Sweden, and works as a translator of Swedish literature. She was born in rural Nebraska and lived for many years in New York, where she pursued a BA at Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA at Columbia University. In 2010, she co-founded Argos Books, which has been publishing innovative poetry books ever since. She’s the author of four chapbooks of poetry, and her poems have appeared in Fence, Boston Review, and the American Poetry Review. None of It Belongs to Me (Game Over Books, 2024) is her first full-length collection.
In their Rozz-Tox engagement, Hyland and Wessel will lead a free community write-in at 6 p.m.; there will be short reading, followed by a prompt they developed. Copies of the reading will be available at no cost, and there will be time for participants to write and briefly discuss their work, followed by an open-mic event at 7 p.m. (Spaces are limited, five-minute sets, first come first served.) Then at 8 p.m., both writers will give a feature reading to close out the evening. Participation is free and open to the public, books by both authors and by MWC Press will be available for purchase, and donations to the Midwest Writing Center are welcome and go to support youth writing programs in the Quad Cities. This is the second of two SPECTRA events celebrating National Poetry Month, and the MWC is also hosting a reading from a poet every day on their YouTube channel throughout the month of April.
For more information on the April 24 literary event, contact Rozz-Tox at (309)200-0978 and RozzTox.com, and the Midwest Writing Center at (309)732-7330 and MWCQC.org.
