Riverfront Readings featuring Thomas Reynolds and Aisha Sharif

Thomas Reynolds is a Professor of English at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, and has published poems in various print and online journals, including New Delta Review, Alabama Literary Review, Aethlon--The Journal of Sport Literature, Sport Literate, Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine, Flint Hills Review, and Prairie Poetry. He is the author of three chapbooks: Electricity (1987), The Kansas Hermit Poems (2013) and Small Town Rodeos (2016). Woodley Memorial Press published his poetry collections Ghost Town Almanac (2008) and Home Field (2019).

Aisha Sharif is a Cave Canem fellow who resides in Shawnee, Kansas, a suburb that borders Kansas City, Missouri. And in many ways, much of her poetry and nonfiction addresses the politics of "bordering identities." As an African American Muslim woman originally from the south, her work explores how racial, gender, and religious identities align, separate, and blend. Her poem "Why I Can Dance Down a Soul Train Line and Still be Muslim" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2015. Aisha's poetry has also appeared in Rattle, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, and Calyx. Her first book of poetry, To Keep From Undressing, has recently been released by Spark Wheel Press. Aisha earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Indiana University, Bloomington and her BA in English from Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. She currently teaches English at Metropolitan Community College in Kansas City, Missouri and is a wife and a mother of two beautiful girls.