Leila Chatti is the author of the new chapbook Figment (Bull City Press, 2022), an innovative work that uses poetic fragmentation and a capacious interpretation of abecedarian form to navigate the overwhelming silences that surround pregnancy loss. Poet and essayist Caryl Pagel writes that Chatti “reminds us that it’s a poet’s imperative…to cultivate and suffer relationships with what’s beyond: the nothingness we’ll never know, a notion’s shadow, or ‘fiction with some // truth to it.’” Chatti, a champion of the chapbook form, has written three other chapbooks in addition to Figment, including a collaborative conversation with Dorianne Laux, The Mothers (Slapering Hol Press, 2022) as well as the acclaimed full-length collection, Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). Among Chatti’s many honors, she has been awarded grants and fellowships from the N.E.A., the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and Cleveland State University, where she was the inaugural Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Writing and Publishing. Chatti is currently the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith College.

Chatti will read at Leo Weinstein Auditorium in Wright Hall on Tuesday, April 18 at 7 p.m. Livestreams will be available on BDPC Facebook and YouTube pages. 

Select Poems by Leila Chatti:

The Rules
I Went Out to Hear