Name: SPECTRA Reading Series: Reading & Community Write-In with Jeffrey McDaniel
Start: 2026-04-23T18:00:00-05:00
End: 2026-04-23T21:00:00-05:00
Location: 401 19th Street, ground floor, Rock Island, IL, United States, Illinois 61201

SPECTRA Reading Series: Reading & Community Write-In with Jeffrey McDaniel
What: SPECTRA Reading Series, featuring Jeffrey McDaniel, with support from Sophia Best, Henry Morray, and Ryan Collins
When: Thursday, April 23
Time: Doors at 6:00 p.m., Community Write-In at 7:00 p.m., Featured Readings at 8:00 p.m.
Where: Rozz-Tox (2108 3rd Ave. Rock Island, IL)
Cost: Free & Open / $5-$10 suggested donation to support future SPECTRA events
SPECTRA Lives!
The Quad Cities’ longest running reading series welcomes award-winning poet and professor Jeffrey McDaniel to the QC on Thursday, April 23 at Rozz-Tox (2108 3rd Ave. Rock Island, IL).
McDaniel will lead a community write-in prior to the readings at 7:00 p.m.; there will be short reading, followed by a prompt he 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. Then at 8:00 p.m., McDaniel will give a reading, with local poets Sophia Best, Henry Morray, and Ryan Collins opening.
Event will be livestreamed and archived to Midwest Writing Center’s YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/midwestwritingcenter
Space is limited for this special event. SPECTRA events are forever free and open to the public, with a $5 suggested donation to support future SPECTRA Reading Series events.
For more information, or for media queries, please contact Sarah Elgatian, [email protected]
Jeffrey McDaniel is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Thin Ice Olympics (Write Bloody, 2022) Other books include Holiday in the Islands of Grief (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020). Chapel of Inadvertent Joy (Pittsburgh, 2013), The Endarkenment (Pittsburgh, 2008), The Splinter Factory (Manic D Press, 2002), The Forgiveness Parade (Manic D Press, 1998), and Alibi School (Manic D Press, 1995). McDaniel’s poems have appeared in numerous places, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and Best American Poetry 1994, 2010, and 2019. Recipient of an NEA fellowship, he is the co-editor of the Pitt Poetry Series and a professor of creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College.
Sophia Best is a Quad Cities based writer. In 2023, she won the Iowa Chapbook Prize and had her poetry collection Pink Bathwater published by the Magid Writing Center. She has been published by the MWC Press in the Atlas 13, 14, and 15, and is featured in their 2024 anthology Shattered Constraints. She is also featured in the 2024 edition of Western Illinois University’s literary magazine, Elements and won the Cordell Larner Award in poetry.
Henry Morray is an internationally recognized spoken word poet, born in Maryland and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, where Henry discovered his passion for poetry, becoming the President of the school's spoken word and poetry club: Lyrically Inclined. In his senior year of college, Henry was crowned Iowa City's 2022 champion, and most recently the 2025 Global Champion for Slamovision, a UNESCO International Cities of Literature poetry slam competition. In 2023 he graduated from Cornell College with a Bachelor of Arts in Product Development and Marketing. Henry is based in the Quad Cities, where he serves as a Creative Educator for Young Lions Roar; a creative empowerment and youth writing program, an emcee for The Roaring Rhetoric Open Mic, and the newest member of the Iowa poetry slam team: IO-WHAT.
Ryan Collins is the author of A New American Field Guide & Song Book and several chapbooks. Recently he was a finalist in the Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest, the DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press Chapbook Contest, and the Sixth Finch Chapbook Contest. His work has appeared in And Other Poems, Apartment, The Biscuit Hill, Coma,The Laurel Review, Ninth Letter, Past Ten, Sink Review, swamp pink, and many other places. He is the Executive Director of the Midwest Writing Center, and hosts the SPECTRA Reading Series in Rock Island, IL, where he lives.
The SPECTRA Reading Series is supported by the Illinois Arts Council and Quad City Arts, through the Arts Dollars re-granting program, supported by The Illinois Arts Council Agency, a state agency, The Hubbell-Waterman Foundation, and the Quad Cities Community Foundation - Isabel Bloom Art Education Endowment.