Enjoy Mark Turcotte's Poetry at Oakton’s Chicago Writers Series

Native American author Mark Turcotte will read selections from his unique poetry collections 3 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 15, at Oakton Community College’s Student Center (Room 1530), 1600 E. Golf Road, Des Plaines. Admission is free and open to the public.

Raised on North Dakota’s Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation, Turcotte’s poetry reflects the importance of knowing his cultural heritage. He is the author of “Exploding Chippewas” and “Feathered Heart.” In 1993, his literary career received a boost by Illinois Poet Laureate, Gwendolyn Brooks, who awarded him the first Gwendolyn Brooks Open-mic Poetry Award and named him a Significant Illinois Poet.

“Mark’s work is included in several anthologies and has been translated into French and Hungarian,” Tina Fakhrid-Deen, associate professor of English at Oakton, says

Turcotte served as a visiting writer-in-residence in 2014 at the Center for the Writing Arts at Northwestern University. He presently serves as a senior lecturer in English and creative writing at De Paul University.

Funded by the Oakton Educational Foundation and student activity fees, the Chicago Writers Series attracts award-winning fiction and nonfiction writers and poets to Oakton to perform, engage and educate. Oakton’s connection to native Chicago authors, as well as those who have called Chicago “home,” allows the community to access diverse, inspiring and relevant authors in a space outside the traditional classroom.

The next Chicago Writers Series event features Northbrook native and Glenbrook North High School alumnus Kevin Coval at 2 p.m. Nov. 20, at Oakton’s Des Plaines campus.

For more information, contact Tina Fakhrid-Deen at tfakhrid@oakton.edu.