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"How thin the seam between
the world, and the world,"

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Tarfia Faizullah writes
in her first book, Seam --

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winner of the Crab Orchard
Review's 2014 First Book Award

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and the Great Lakes College
Association New Writers award.

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The book, which
Natasha Trethewey

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calls "Beautiful and necessary,"
is a confrontation of,

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and a reckoning with,
uncontrollable violences

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against Bangladeshi women
in the 1971 liberation war.

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Seam reminds us that poetry
can be something more nuanced

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than a survival tactic.

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It can be a way of
living and breathing

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in the face of suffering
and history, vulnerability,

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and presence.

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Tarfia is a Bangladeshi-Texan
poet, educator, and editor.

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She is the author
of Seam as well as

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the forthcoming Register of
Illuminated Villages, which

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we'll have to wait
even longer to read.

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That second book will be
out from Graywolf in 2017.

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She's the recipient
of a Pushcart Prize,

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scholarships, and fellowships
from Kundiman, Breadloaf,

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Vermont Studio
Center and others.

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She's the Nicholas
Delbanco visiting professor

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of poetry in the Helen
Zell writers program

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at the University of Michigan.

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And she co-directs The Organic
Weapon Arts chapbook press

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and video series
with Jamaal May.

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Please welcome Tarfia Faizullah.

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[APPLAUSE]