Award-winning poet to read at Oakton writers series

Award-winning writer Quraysh Ali Lansana will read excerpts from his works of poetry at a free Chicago Writers Series event 6 p.m. Wednesday at Oakton Community College's Footlik Theater, 1600 E. Golf Road, Des Plaines.

Lansana is the author of eight poetry books, three textbooks, three children's books, editor of eight anthologies and co-author of a book of pedagogy. A faculty member of the writing program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Lansana has also worked as the director of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University.

He is the recipient of numerous honors including the 2000 Poet of the Year Award presented by Chicago's Black Book Fair and the 1999 Wallace W. Douglas Distinguished Service Award presented by Young Chicago Authors, Inc.

Funded by the Oakton Educational Foundation and student activity fees, the Chicago Writers Series attracts award-winning fiction and nonfiction writers and poets to Oakton to perform, engage and educate.