Silo City Reading Series: 2026 Season Subscriptions

Featured Artists

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  Tarfia Faizullah Poet
  

  Tarfia Faizullah

  Poet

  Tarfia Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections, Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf, 2018) and Seam (SIU, 2014). Tarfia’s writing appears widely in the U.S. and abroad in The Daily Star, Hindu Business Line, BuzzFeed, PBS News Hour, Huffington Post, Poetry Magazine, Ms. Magazine, The Academy of American Poets, Oxford American, The New Republic, The Nation, and Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket, 2019), and has been displayed at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere. Born in Brooklyn, NY to Bangladeshi immigrants and raised in Texas, Tarfia currently lives in Dallas.

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  Aitina Fareed-Cooke Entrepreneur, National Recording Artist, Educator, Writer
  

  Aitina Fareed-Cooke

  Entrepreneur, National Recording Artist, Educator, Writer

  Aitina Fareed-Cooke is an accomplished creative arts strategist who has developed a strong reputation for her work with a diverse range of creatives, entrepreneurs, educators, and emerging artists. With a wide range of artistic skills encompassing poetry, creative writing, photography, film, music, and graphic design, Aitina has provided creative services to tens of thousands of individuals, including youth, educators, and nonprofit organizations. Known for her exceptional creative problem-solving abilities, Aitina’s expertise has proven invaluable in delivering innovative solutions tailored to the specific needs of each project, making her a highly sought-after professional in the industry.

  Aitina earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Masters in Science & Education from Buffalo State University. With an extensive career spanning nearly 20 years, Aitina has worked with numerous non-profit organizations, companies, artists and entrepreneurs throughout the country. During this time, she has successfully developed, managed, and implemented arts and education programs, effectively mobilizing youth, emerging artists, entrepreneurs, and educators to foster growth in creative problem-solving, social awareness, and entrepreneurship.

  Currently, Aitina is the Founder and Creative Director at Get Fokus’d Productions, which is a prominent award-winning Creative Media Arts company. As a nationally recognized recording artist, Aitina has executively produced and written 3 albums that have accumulated over 1 million streams collectively. Her work within music has earned her multiple prestigious awards and has garnered acclaim from esteemed figures in the industry, including Grammy award winners like Lecrae and Derek Minor. Additionally, she serves as a foundation board member at Buffalo State University and as a board member at CEPA Gallery. Aitina’s expertise and exceptional contributions have garnered her multiple awards, accolades, and substantial funding for a variety of creative arts projects.

  Aitina has received awards, recognition, and features through NYSCA, CRNY, Citizen’s Bank, Arts Services Inc., 43North’s Ignite Buffalo, Just Buffalo, CEPA Gallery, Buffalo State University, Canisius College, the National Society of Leadership & Success, Kingdom Choice, Buffalo Urban League, NPR’s Buffalo What’s Next, WBFO, Upstart New York, Challenger News, Buffalo News, Buffalo State Alumni Magazine, National Young Audiences Emerging Leaders, DJ Booth, Rapzilla, and Trackstarz.

  Aitina’s original and curatorial work has been exhibited at Buffalo State University, CEPA Gallery, Jamestown Community College, Thiel College, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo Arts Studio, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House, Erie County Public Library, to name a few.

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  D. Sloan Artist
  

  D. Sloan

  Artist

  D. Sloan (b. 1990) traded the Vegas heat for the Buffalo cold. She co-curates the Museum of Cold—an archive of cold as muse, co-edits the theory-fiction journal TRANSVERSALS, and is the proprietor of a flower shop. She creates alternative systems for divining the future through casting lots (keys and coins, in this case). She likes to write with photography and prefers not to use the viewfinder, instead trading composition for spiritual intervention.

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  Siew Hii Poet + Writer
  

  Siew Hii

  Poet + Writer

  Siew Hii (she/they) is the author of Entered Some Aliens (University of Wisconsin Press, 2026). Her prose and poetry appear in AGNI, Electric Lit, Story, Georgia Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Mobile, Alabama, Hii now lives in Orlando, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Central Florida. Her parents hail from Sibu, Malaysia and Kentucky, USA.

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  Julia Dzwonkoski Artist
  

  Julia Dzwonkoski

  Artist

  Julia Dzwonkoski’s drawings often take the form of existential cartoons. She studied art at SUNY Buffalo and UC San Diego. Her work has been shown at Rivalry Projects (Buffalo), Gattopardo (LA), Harkawik (NY) and Blank Forms (NY) and is collected in the books Two Eyes in an Environment (2023) and 100 More Frogs (2025). Dzwonkoski is currently working on a new series of pictures inspired by the poet and collagist Helen Adam. She lives in Buffalo.

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  William Tyler Guitarist
  

  William Tyler

  Guitarist

  William Tyler has spent the last two decades reshaping the landscape of American instrumental guitar. After establishing his voice through essential tenures in Silver Jews and Lambchop, the Nashville native launched a solo career defined by a restless curiosity. His work bridges the gap between country-rearing melodies and postmodern experimentation—blending the spirit of Chet Atkins with the avant-garde textures of Gavin Bryars and electroacoustic abstraction.

  His latest album, Time Indefinite, marks his first solo effort in five years. Born from the isolation of the pandemic and recorded between Nashville and Los Angeles, the album is a candid, “uneasy, damaged, and honest” exploration of mental health and survival. Collaborating with figures like Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden and producer Jake Davis, Tyler embraces the “hiss and wobble” of antique tape loops and field recordings to anchor his compositions.

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  Sasha Debevec-McKenney Poet
  

  Sasha Debevec-McKenney

  Poet

  Sasha Debevec-McKenney is the author of the poetry collection Joy Is My Middle Name. She received her MFA from New York University. She was the 2020–2021 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, and a 2023-2025 Creative Writing Fellow at Emory University. Her poems have appeared in places like The New Yorker, The Yale Review, , The Drift, and Granta. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Writing at Grand Valley State University.

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  Mary Ruefle Poet
  

  Mary Ruefle

  Poet

  Mary Ruefle is the author of many books, including The Book (Wave Books, 2023), Dunce (Wave Books, 2019), which was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize, longlisted for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, as well as a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. She is also the author of My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016), Trances of the Blast (Wave Books, 2013), Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2010), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She has also published a comic book, Go Home and Go to Bed! (Pilot Books/Orange Table Comics, 2007), and is an erasure artist, whose treatments of nineteenth century texts have been exhibited in museums and galleries and published in A Little White Shadow (Wave Books, 2006). Ruefle is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Robert Creeley Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Award. She lives in Bennington, Vermont, where she served as the state’s poet laureate from 2019 to 2024.

  Photo Credit: Libby Lewis

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  Ross Gay Poet + Essayist
  

  Ross Gay

  Poet + Essayist

  Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays—The Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller; Inciting Joy was released in 2022, and his latest collection, The Book of (More) Delights was released in September of 2023.

  photo credit: Natasha Komoda

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  Olivia Block Media Artist + Composer
  

  Olivia Block

  Media Artist + Composer

  Olivia Block is a media artist and composer. Her discography, spanning nearly thirty years, is published on Another Timbre, Black Truffle, Erstwhile, Ina GRM, NNA Tapes, Room40, Sedimental, and Touch, among other labels. She performs live experimental music, where at any given concert she might be playing electronic instruments, piano, organ or amplified objects. Block also creates surround sound concerts, sound installations and scores. Block has performed, premiered and exhibited her work throughout Europe, America, and Japan in tours in festivals and performance series including Rewire, MoogFest, Festival del Bosque Germinal, Sonic Light, Redbull Academy, Kontraste, Archipel, and many others. Her installations have been shown at The Nasher Sculpture Museum, The Richard H. Driehaus Museum, Arthur Ross Gallery at University of Pennsylvania, CEAM at Flagler University, MCA Chicago, Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech, Museo Reina Sofia, The Smart Museum at University of Chicago, Manhattan Museum of Arts and Design, Sokolowsko Sanitorium (Poland), CONTEXT (Miami and NY) and The Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park (Chicago). She has taught at The School of the Art Institute in the Sound Department and at Northwestern University in the Sound Arts and Industries program. She has completed many university teaching residencies and teaches workshops around the world.
 Olivia is based in Chicago, and travels widely for her work.