Modern Art is honored to host The Turning Wheel, a monthly literary reading and open mic event, every third Thursday. On April 16 we welcome Taslima Nasrin and Jesse Waters.

Doors/Sign up: 6:30 / Readings start at 7:00pm
Free and all are welcome.

Taslima is a Bangladeshi-Swedish writer, physician, feminist, secular humanist, and activist, who has been subject to forced banishment and multiple fatwas. Her writings have been deemed controversial time and again because of their unflinching preoccupation with gender, community and identity. Her widely celebrated books include Lajja, Split: A Life, My Girlhood, Exile: a Memoir and French Lover. Her recent book of poetry Burning Roses in My Garden, published in 2023, was edited and translated by Jesse Waters.

Jesse is a winner of the River Styx International Poetry contest, runner up for the Iowa Review Fiction Prize and Finalist in the Starcherone Prize, the DIAGRAM Innovation Fiction Prize and the Paul Bowles Fiction Award. Jesse’s work has been published widely, in such journals as The Adirondack Review, Coal Hill Review, The Courtland Review, Cimarron Review, Iowa Quarterly, and others.