Great River Review Reading

Help celebrate the 2026 winners of Great River Review's writing prizes with this online reading. The Creative Writing Program's Walter Nathan Literary Initiatives presents Pink Poetry Prize winner Ìfẹ́olúwa Àyàndélé, with poems in GRR issue 73, and Walter Nathan Essay Award winner Beaudelaine Pierre, with her essay "I Live with TPS." 

 

 

Ìfẹ́olúwa Àyàndélé was born in Ago Are, Nigeria. He is the author of My Father Paints His Dreams on My Body, winner of the 2024 Moon City Poetry Award, forthcoming in Moon City Press at Missouri State University. His poetry is a finalist for the 2025 Poetic Justice Institute Editor’s Prize for BIPOC Writers, and his work has been nominated for Best New Poets, The Pushcart Prize, and The Best of the Net. His recent work is published in Magma, Transition Magazine, Poetry Wales, Jacar One, Beloit Poetry Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Texas Review, and Sierra Nevada Review. He is a doctoral student at Florida State University, where he also received his MFA in Creative Writing.

 

Beaudelaine Pierre is a journalist, scholar, and novelist who writes about her native Haiti and her adopted Youwẹ́s. Her work has been published widely in French and English. She teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.