About this Event
Please join us to celebrate the poetry collection , who will be joined by Amari Amai, Ola Faleti, and Sam Herschel Wein.
This National Poetry Series–winning debut collection asks how we can make meaning in our lives during a time of ecological crisis and rampant social injustice.
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL POETRY SERIES, Kira Tucker’s Wildest rethinks the American Dream as a series of ecological nightmares and the untold stories buried within. These unflinching lyrics bear witness to the raging wildfires, literal and figurative, of social injustice—from the haunting origins of Lake Lanier to the human rights crisis converging at this nation’s borders and beyond.
Rooted in the Delta South, Wildest is a sojourn through geographies of loss and hope—from the diasporic flora of the Puerto Rican rainforest, to the microplastics clouding Mt. Fuji, to the iridescent beauty of Gulf Coast oil spills, and more. Investigating turn-of-the-century dream science alongside apocalyptic climate data, this collection insists on a reclamation of wildness. Each poem reaches—through personal memory, archives of public life, and seeds of possibility—toward a richer understanding of our collective unconscious.
Above all, this striking debut asks: how might we dream, grieve, and make meaning at this global tipping point?
Kira Tucker is the author of the National Poetry Series-winning collection Wildest. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English from Northwestern University, where she currently teaches as an Artist in Residence. Her work appears in Poetry, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, The Iowa Review, Callaloo, and elsewhere. A former managing editor of TriQuarterly, Tucker was a finalist for a 2024 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Wildest is her debut collection.
Amari Amai is a Black non-binary poet, storyteller, and teaching artist born and raised in Chicago. He writes poetry and reimagined folklore that accompanies soundscapes and performance to create immersive worlds during his live solo performances. With about 10 years of experience teaching and working with youth, Amari's art practice is inspired by the futures of all of their former students, archival research, ethnography, and ancestral veneration. His practice has expanded with support and fellowships from The Watering Hole, Vermont Studio Center, Sundress Academy for the Arts, Periplus Collective, Chicago Poetry Center, Tin House, Hyde Park Art Center, Free Street Theater, Celebration Theater Los Angeles, Chicago Public Libraries, and Crossroads Writers Collective, among others. Amari's work can be found in various places, but is best experienced in the moment, with you as a witness and collaborator of our collective histories and sweeter futures. Find out more at amariamai.com.
Ola Faleti is the author of fiction chapbook Soft & Solid (2024) and an artist and arts educator based in Chicago, Illinois. Her writing, including a collaborative poetry chapbook with Pitymilk Press, has also appeared in Voicemail Poems, Unwoven, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. Curriculum for Ola’s workshop with 826CHI, “Poets in Revolt!,” was nationally distributed and birthed an anthology of youth writing. Ola runs Spare Jar Consulting, a grant writing and creative facilitation business, and teaches poetry with the Chicago Poetry Center. Her favorite number is nine. She believes there’s no such thing as too many flowers.
Sam Herschel Wein (he/they) is a lollygagging plum of a poet who specializes in perpetual frolicking. Sam has an MFA from the University of Tennessee and was the recipient of a 2022 Pushcart Prize. They have published four chapbooks, most recently Love that For Us (& Change, 2026), a collaboration with Chen Chen. He co-founded and edits Underblong.
Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which has a wheelchair accessible entrance and bathroom. Masks are strongly encouraged. We have free masks available for everyone at the door, several large air purifiers, and ceiling fans for circulation. 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
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