About this Event
Please join us on Friday, June 26th to celebrate the debut poetry collection by Kay E. Bancroft. The author will be reading with Séamus Isaac Fey and I.S. Jones.
Please note: this is a mask required event. We have free masks available for everyone at the door, several large air purifiers, and ceiling fans for circulation.
Bloodroom is a howling, scorching debut collection of deftly formatted poetry-circling, and delicately probing, themes of familial debt, legacy, obligation, and the matriline. Through an index of past wounds and inherited scars, the speaker bleeds their histories together with the slow erosion of nostalgia. These poems offer an incisive and scalding interrogation of gender, yet are often unbearably tender-a swirling emulsion of grief and anger poured into an intricately technical and beautifully challenging mold. Each piece draws out a tragic, cyclical song of love and loss, resentment and admiration, as though drawing poison from a wound. Bancroft's writing is meditative, cleansing, and compulsively readable: recounting a feminine childhood transformed into something monstrous until seen through a new lens. Bloodroom is a plea to identity, to the process of searching for purpose and of seeking certainty in a broken world.
Kay E. Bancroft is a writer, educator, and artist based in Cincinnati, OH. They hold an MFA in Poetry from Randolph College, and a BA from the University of Cincinnati. Their debut poetry collection, Bloodroom, is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in Summer 2026. You can find their writing in Poet Lore, Pleiades Journal, RHINO Poetry, Passengers Journal, The Rumpus, & more. Explore more at kayebancroftpoet.com
Séamus Isaac Fey (he/him) is trans and lives in Chicago. Currently, he is the poetry editor at Hooligan Magazine. His debut poetry collection, decompose, is out with Not a Cult Media. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Adroit Journal, Poet Lore, The Offing, Sonora Review, and others. If he isn’t playing Baldur’s Gate 3, he’s thinking about Shadowheart. Find him online @sfeycreates.
I.S. Jones is the author of Bloodmercy and the chapbook Spells of My Name. Alongside the poet Yazud Brito-Milian, she founded Canto-Kojo, a featured reading series and open mic at Call and Response Books. Along with the poet Yazud Brito-Milian, she is the founder and co-organizer of Canto-Kòjo, a monthly open mic and featured reading series based in Chicago at Call & Response Books. Currently, she is a Senior Editor for Poetry Northwest, where she runs her column, The Legacy Suite, a three-part interview documenting the journey of writers publishing their debut poetry collections. In 2025, The New York Times Review of Books named Bloodmercy one of the Best Poetry Books of 2025. While she has lived in many places across the U.S., she gratefully calls Chicago home.
Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is wheelchair accessible. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you need a reserved seat, ASL interpretation, or have other access needs, please email [email protected] (2 weeks notice is required for interpretation).
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Women & Children First, 5233 North Clark Street, Chicago, United States
USD 0.00
