News – Zahra Gordon

event: A reading with the graduates of the university of baltimore MFA

I’m looking forward to joining my cohort to showcase our work once again, this time at The Ivy Bookshop. Join us on Saturday, July 17, 2026 for an engaging evening of poetry and prose featuring Alex Cosentino-Tich, Albert Phillips Jr., Toni Hornes-Sullivan, John S Butler, John Guechmand, Alicia Potee, Jeffery Sams and myself. All of our thesis collections will be on sale as well.

More information and RSVP here.

Announcing the 2026 plork prize winner!

Zahra Gordon at the University of Baltimore’s 2026 MFA Graduate Reading & Book Fair.

Excited to share that I was awarded the 2026 Plork Prize from the University of Baltimore’s Department of Creative Writing & Publishing Arts. Read an excerpt of the announcement below and click here for the entire news story.

The MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts faculty is pleased to announce the PlorkPrize winner for 2026, Zahra Gordon. (All graduating MFA in CWPA students are eligible for this annual award.)

This year’s MFA thesis cohort displayed key elements of what we in the MFA call “plorking”—playing, working, creating with abandon, helping others with joy. The plork ethic is the heart of our program. Faculty were especially impressed by this class’s easygoing teamwork to bring about the annual MFA Reading and Book Fair, with Plork Coordinators John Guchemand and Alicia Potee leading the process.

Zahra Gordon, a poet, worked closely with Professors Steven Leyva, Marion Winik, and Andrew Klein during her thesis year. “What does it look like to live in a red-lined community in Baltimore?” the poet asks her reader on the back of her thesis book, Butterfly Praxis. As her bio details, “[She] is a Caribbean poet and writer. Her work has been published in journals such as Intersect, Mantis, and the anthology Thicker than Water (Peekash Press).”

“Zahra’s book concept, growing out of her reading of Lawrence Brown’s Black Butterfly, expressed both her personality and the essence of Baltimore with creativity, intelligence, and a mixture of whimsy and poignancy,” said Professor Winik. “Her cover is one of the most memorable in program history.”