IPRH presents Creative Writers Showcase: Nafissa Thompson-Spires on February 7 at 4:00 p.m. in the IPRH Lecture Hall, Levis Faculty Center, Fourth Floor (919 West Illinois Street, Urbana, IL).

Nafissa Thompson-Spires (English and African American Studies) will read from her forthcoming short story collection, Heads of the Colored People, and to offer insight on publishing more generally.  Nafissa Thompson-Spires earned a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois.  Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The White Review, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, StoryQuarterly, Lunch Ticket, and The Feminist Wire, among other publications. She is a 2016 participant of the Callaloo Writer’s Workshop, a 2017 Tin House workshopee, and a 2017 Sewanee Writer's Conference Stanley Elkin Scholar.

Her short story collection, Heads of the Colored People, is forthcoming in April with Simon and Schuster’s Atria/37 Ink imprints and later in the UK from Penguin Random House’s Chatto and Windus imprint. Her debut novel is under contract with the same publishers.