University of Utah's Guest Writers Series Presents the Agha Shahid Ali Prize Reading

Each year, the Guest Writers Series at the University of Utah brings distinguished authors to Salt Lake City. Our goal is to provide our community with an opportunity to engage in a dynamic, educational and inspiring relationship with literature. We aim to bring in a diverse array of voices and perspectives, and to provide a platform for an enriching dialogue between our authors and the audience. All events are free and open to the public. Thursday, November 5, 2026, at 7 p.m. at Finch Lane Art Gallery at the Art Barn . Caleb Nolen was born in Wisconsin and grew up in Pennsylvania and Maryland. He earned his BA from St. John’s College in Annapolis and his MFA from the University of Virginia, where he was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. His poems have appeared in 32 Poems , Bat City Review , Fence , The Georgia Review , and elsewhere, and he has received support from Blue Mountain Center and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, where he was a work-study scholar. He lives with his wife in the Shenandoah Valley. His debut collection, Afterlight , won the 2025 Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry. Jennifer Chang’s An Authentic Life received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Her other books include Some Say the Lark and The History of Anonymity . She has received the William Carlos Williams Award, the Library of Virginia Award in Poetry, the Levinson Prize from Poetry, and fellowships from the Elizabeth Murray Artists Residency, MacDowell, and Yaddo. She teaches at the University of Texas in Austin.