Dawn McGuire will be here to read from her collection of poetry, The Aphasia Café. The poems of The Aphasia Café write the lives of individuals who, because of stroke or dementia, have lost all or part of their ability to use language, exploring what happens to self when the tool we use to construct who we are, suddenly fractures along one of its many fault lines.

Dawn McGuire is a neurologist and author of two earlier poetry collections, Sleeping in Africa and Hands On. She grew up in eastern Kentucky and was educated at Princeton University, Union Theological Seminary, and Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. Her poems have appeared in various literary magazine and anthologies, including the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the Journal of American Neurology. McGuire has won several poetry awards, including the 2011 Sarah Lawrence/Campbell Corner Academy of Language Exchange Poetry Prize.