The Virtual Cobalt Poets series happens via Zoom every Tuesday night at 7:30pm (pacific).
Each evening includes an open reading plus a featured reader. Sign up for the open reading when you join with the Zoom link.
Unsung Poetry is a semi-regular poetry series held in the Byte Cafe located on the 2nd floor of the Lemieux Library and McGoldrick Learning Commons at Seattle University. The mission of Unsung Poetry is to bring people together through poetry, and bridge the gap between the Seattle literary arts community and the Seattle University campus community.
Each event in the series will feature readings by poets from the Seattle literary community and beyond, who will share some of their own work and also the work of a lesser known “unsung poet.” Immediately following the featured readers, we invite members of the SU community to share their own creative work during the open mic. This is open to any SU student currently enrolled or any staff or faculty currently employed by the university.
Join us on zoom to celebrate the launch of Jamie Silvonek’s debut poetry collection Marginal Verse.
Hosted by Ally Ang, with readings by Jamie Silvonek, Jarreau "Ruk" Ayers, Jerome "Hoagie" Coffey, Kwaneta Harris, dana middleton, and Leigh Sugar!
Get a break from the dreary dampness of early Juneuary in Seattle with some verdant and insightful verse! MarginShift is excited to welcome the talented, Palouse-based poet, Linda Russo, to our cozy Hugo House lounge to share eco-poetic experiments in re-inhabitation.
Joining Linda will be an incredible lineup of local voices, including Sarah Mangold, whose highly potent collages-in-verse of women visionaries like Hilma af Klint are sonically and visually invigorating, Samar Abulhassan, whose polyvocal prose-poetic meditations are both visceral and deeply insightful, and the dynamic Ally Ang, whose lush lyric invocations call forth a vibrant, invigorating world.
Get ready for an evening filled with thought-provoking poetry that will awaken the world around you!
Welcome to Port Veritas! We meet every Tuesday night for an open mic night in person AND online. We are a diverse collaboration of creative minds, bound by a common love of creating a space for artists of all kinds to come and express themselves.
For more information, find us on Facebook!
From holes we came and into holes we shall return. The hole is the ultimate abject, the transgressable boundary between the self and itself, other selves, the world, the divine. Come join us in reading various hole poems and writing your own hole poems, assisted by holesome prompts. Doors, thresholds, portals, windows, Christ's side wound, gloryholes, manholes, orifices, sutures, slits, sinkholes, mouths, God-sized holes, punctures, ear canals. Let’s make some holes together!
Hosted through Fahmidan. Virtual. Pay what you can. Sign up here.
Other People’s Poems is a monthly poetry open mic and reading series that centers readers and lovers of poetry. Hosted by Ally Ang and Cody Stetzel at Open Books: A Poem Emporium, each event begins with an open mic in which any person can sign up to read 5 minutes of poetry written by someone else, and then three featured readers will each read 10-15 minutes of other people’s poems. This event is free and mask-required.
April’s featured readers:
Mateo Bracken is a poet, librettist, and actor who splits his time between Auburn and Seattle, Washington. He was the 2023-2024 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate and currently serves as the 2024-2026 Auburn Poet Laureate. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in the Gay & Lesbian Review, EchoX, The Washington State Queer Poetry Anthology, Abya Yala: Indigenous Connections in Latin America, Creative Colloquy, Bird Brains: A Lyrical Guide to the Birds of Washington State, and more. As a librettist in the Seattle Opera Creation Lab, he developed the twenty-minute chamber opera Blood Dawn of the Inti Sun in collaboration with composer Mina Pariseau. His first chapbook, Dear Spanish, was published in 2024 through Poetry Northwest and explores the languages of identity, heritage, and belonging. He is currently working on a manuscript about the settler colonial history of Auburn in verse.
Oliver Brickman is a queer Jewish writer and performer invested in liberatory futures and reckoning with ghosts. The winner of the Split This Rock Poetry Prize and a nationally recognized performer, they have received support from Hedgebrook, the Lambda Literary Foundation, Yiddish Book Center, 4Culture, and Artist Trust. A BOAAT Writers Fellow and Ken Warfel Fellow for Poetry in Community, recent work has appeared in Narrative, Adroit, The Indiana Review, and as part of On the Boards' Performance Lab. They are currently at work on a collection of poems interrogating transness and 19th century spirit photographs, and a memoir about collective organizing in Charlottesville, Virginia during the white nationalist rallies of 2017. Ollie holds an MFA from the University of Virginia and lives in Seattle, where they work in a library and teach writing to youth and adults.
Originally from South Florida, Garfield Hillson is a Black-Queer poet and educator working in Seattle. He believes in the beauty of words and the power of story-sharing. He believes in trauma-informed social justice healing and that art and education are the building blocks to achieve this. Garfield imagines being Black and Queer is nothing if not a study in silence. So he writes to reclaim the language that was stolen from him, to empower others, and to push imaginations to craft a better NOW!! Garfield is a Seattle Poetry Slam Grand Slam Champion (2015); a Rain City Slam Grand Slam Champion (2017); and a five-time Seattle Poetry Slam National Team Member (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019). Garfield has appeared in Rising Up: A Queer Social Justice Play (2017); and Dear White People—Resistance (2018).
Five poets publishing debuts in 2024–2025 will discuss the resources, time, and tactics with which they approached book promotion. With day job expertise ranging from strategic marketing and grant writing to editing and communications, they’ll share how to divide time between writing and publicity, create a budget, send cold emails when you’re a stone-cold introvert, plan readings, pitch reviews, and more. If you’ve got a book on the way or in the works, this panel is for you.
Moderator: Ally Ang
Panelists: Sarah Ghazal Ali, Margot Kahn, Megan Pinto, Katie Prince
Confessional poetry and the phrase “The personal is political” have parallel histories. While some have claimed that autobiographical poetry is apolitical, that claim has always been fallacious—and never more so than in the poetry of the present. This panel gathers five poets to share their strategies for infusing even their most “private” or “interior” poems with their politics and their ethics, read brief examples of their own and others’ work, and engage the audience collaboratively.
Moderator: Sumita Chakraborty
Panelists: Ally Ang, Jericho Brown, Tariq Luthun, Rachel Mennies
A celebration of 2025 debut poets with readings by Ally Ang, Raye Hendrix, Ava Nathaniel Winter, Sara Daniela Rivera, Ae Hee Lee, Patrycja Humienik, Rachel Edelman, Adam Deutsch, and Ayelet Amittay.
5-7pm at Grand Hope Park in Los Angeles.
Join us at the store at 7pm on Saturday, February 15, 2025 for Other People’s Poems, featuring Cass Garison, Constance Hansen, and nanya jhingran.
Other People’s Poems is a poetry series centered on readers of other people’s poems. Sometimes these readers are writers too, but often they are also lovers of poetry who can’t get enough of those lines that evoke the sense of the exclamation O!. They are no-I’m-not-a-poets who secretly scribble their innermost thoughts in the most delicate of deckled journals. This series features these readers and the poems they love.
This series, hosted at Open Books, will consist of an open mic, in which any attendee can sign up to read 5 minutes of someone else’s poems, followed by a reading by our three featured readers.
At Other People's Poems events, there are low lights and snacks and always a reason to leave one’s winter depression pit, to warm the freeze one has acquired in many cities, and a reason to come together for the thing we love, which is reading, and poetry, and a hot cup of meaning.
Masks required.
In the heart of Seattle winter, any uttered word or expressed movement drips with the big drizz. Come experience local writers and poets perform creations/divinations/grievances into the falling clouds that make and unmake themselves–and us–moment by moment, drop by drop. We invite you to celebrate this atmospheric act, Aquarius season in general, and Martha’s birthday/imminent departure to other weather systems. KARAOKE TO FOLLOW!
Poets:
Eric Acosta
Ally Ang
Serena Chopra
Cass Garison
Kate Ersing
Sophie Johnson
Martha Ryan
Laurel Wilkinson
Join us at the store at 7pm on Saturday, January 18, 2025 for Other People’s Poems, featuring Woogee Bae, Paul Hlava Ceballos, and Patrick Milian.
Other People’s Poems is a poetry series centered on readers of other people’s poems. Sometimes these readers are writers too, but often they are also lovers of poetry who can’t get enough of those lines that evoke the sense of the exclamation O!. They are no-I’m-not-a-poets who secretly scribble their innermost thoughts in the most delicate of deckled journals. This series features these readers and the poems they love.
This series, hosted at Open Books, will consist of an open mic, in which any attendee can sign up to read 5 minutes of someone else’s poems, followed by a reading by our three featured readers.
At Other People's Poems events, there are low lights and snacks and always a reason to leave one’s winter depression pit, to warm the freeze one has acquired in many cities, and a reason to come together for the thing we love, which is reading, and poetry, and a hot cup of meaning.
New poetry open mic and reading series!
Join us at the store at 7pm on Saturday, October 26, 2024 for Other People’s Poems, featuring Quenton Baker, Jane Wong, and Yanyi.
Other People’s Poems is a poetry series centered on readers of other people’s poems. Sometimes these readers are writers too, but often they are also lovers of poetry who can’t get enough of those lines that evoke the sense of the exclamation O!. They are no-I’m-not-a-poets who secretly scribble their innermost thoughts in the most delicate of deckled journals. This series features these readers and the poems they love.
This series, hosted at Open Books, will consist of an Opening Reading track, in which any reader can sign up to 5 minutes of someone else’s poems, followed by the Round Robin track, in which the two hosts, Ally Ang and Cody Stetzel, invite 3-4 writers to select and read poems from one of the other readers or their favorite poets for 10-15 minutes.
At Other People's Poems events, there are low lights and snacks and always a reason to leave one’s winter depression pit, to warm the freeze one has acquired in many cities, and a reason to come together for the thing we love, which is reading, and poetry, and a hot cup of meaning.
Join us on Sunday, December 1, for the 21st Annual Stronger Together: World AIDS Day Celebration. Gather in community and remembrance of those lost to AIDS and celebrate how far we’ve come while looking to a future that’s stronger than HIV.
Expect speakers, refreshments, a silent auction, A community vigil, and a procession through the AMP: AIDS Memorial Pathway directly following the event.
Time: 12pm-3pm
Venue: The Century Ballroom, 915 E Pine St, Seattle, WA 98122
Suggested minimum donation: $150
Please save the date and reserve your tickets now!
New poetry open mic and reading series!
Join us at the store at 7pm on Saturday, October 26, 2024 for the inaugural event, featuring Rachel Edelman, Gabrielle Bates, and Luther Hughes.
Other People’s Poems is a poetry series centered on readers of other people’s poems. Sometimes these readers are writers too, but often they are also lovers of poetry who can’t get enough of those lines that evoke the sense of the exclamation O!. They are no-I’m-not-a-poets who secretly scribble their innermost thoughts in the most delicate of deckled journals. This series features these readers and the poems they love.
This series, hosted at Open Books, will consist of an Opening Reading track, in which any reader can sign up to 5 minutes of someone else’s poems, followed by the Round Robin track, in which the two hosts, Ally Ang and Cody Stetzel, invite 3-4 writers to select and read poems from one of the other readers or their favorite poets for 10-15 minutes.
At Other People's Poems events, there are low lights and snacks and always a reason to leave one’s winter depression pit, to warm the freeze one has acquired in many cities, and a reason to come together for the thing we love, which is reading, and poetry, and a hot cup of meaning.
Join Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Reorienting Reads to share space for a luminous bicoastal evening of connection and kinship, uplifting our trans, intersex, non-binary, and gender expansive communities. We’ll be joined in person and through the ether by Ally Ang, Fatimah Asghar, Wo Chan, Persimmon Tobing, Pauline Park, Såhi Velasco, and Yanyi.
📍 Common Area Maintenance
2125 2nd Ave, Seattle, WA 98121
📍Asian American Writers’ Workshop
112 W 27th St #600, New York, NY 10001
This event is free with RSVP and will be simultaneously live streamed.
For more information about the 2024 Asian American Literature Festival, visit www.asianamericanliteraturefestival.org
Local poet Katie Prince reads from her debut poetry collection alongside fellow poet Ally Ang at Elliott Bay Book Company.
There is an absence at the heart of Katie Prince’s debut collection, Tell This to the Universe, and an obsessive search to find what’s missing. Like moons around faraway planets, the poems orbit the strange and brutal landscapes of longing, alienation, and grief as they move through physics to philosophy, linguistics to mathematics, fairy tales to science fiction. It could be said that this book is trying to find god—to name it, to hurt it or hold it, to make desperate demands of it—but it’s just as true to say it’s looking for a home, a family, an answer to a question it still doesn’t know how to ask.
In his latest release and nonfiction debut, The Dead Don’t Need Reminding: In Search of Fugitives, Mississippi, and Black TV Nerd Shit, New York Times bestselling author Julian Randall braids past with present as he retraces the life of his grandfather, a white-passing patriarch driven from a town in Mississippi, all the way to Randall’s own internal battles with depression and how he ultimately emerged from its depths.
Randall weaves pop culture into his pages, exploring grief, family, emotional health, and the American way with a medley of media ranging from Into the Spiderverse and Jordan Peele movies to BoJack Horseman and the music of Odd Future.
Date: Thursday, May 16
Time: 7:30 pm PDT
Cost: $5 – $25 Sliding Scale
Join us on Friday, April 26, 2024 at 7pm for a reading featuring poets Ally Ang and Summer Farah! This will be a fabulous event celebrating the recent publication of Farah's chapbook I could die today and live again (Game Over Books, 2024).
Please note that masking is required during the event.
Ally Ang is a gaysian poet and editor based in Seattle. They are a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts fellow and MacDowell fellow, and their debut poetry collection, Let the Moon Wobble, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2025. Find them at allysonang.com or on Twitter and Instagram @TheOceanIsGay.
Summer Farah is a Palestinian American writer from California. The author of the chapbook I could die today and live again (Game Over Books, 2024), she organizes with the Radius of Arab American Writers and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. She is calling on you to recommit yourself to the liberation of the Palestinian people each day.
Holding / Movement album release concert! Arrive early to purchase a CD, which will include a booklet of poetry from Seattle poets whose work is paired with Gretchen's compositions. The program will include dance, as well as readings by poets involved with the project. Pay-what-you-can at the door.
PROGRAM:
Through Chenoa's Eyes
Bisoux
"Such Things Require Tenderness" (poetry of Luther Hughes)
"& when we unmake the making" (poetry of Abi Pollokoff)
"in your wings, querido" (poetry of Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs)
"Shhh. We are walking on Lushootseed words" (poetry of Jourdan Imani Keith)
"the coinciding" (poetry of Karin de Weille)
Poetry reading by Ally Ang
Ara (with dance by Anastasia & Willow)
Poetry reading by Luther Hughes Taken From Us (part one)
Taken From Us (part two)
"to solve for heart" (poetry of Shin Yu Pai)
"this four-walled pasture" (poetry of Luther Hughes)
"At the end of reason, I am locked in place" (poetry of Quenton Baker)
"i have spread my roots across borders/and i am growing still" (poetry of Ally Ang)
Poetry reading by Raúl Sánchez
"If brown angels could fly" (poetry of Raúl Sánchez)
Join us to celebrate Jane Wong's recent Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association award for her memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City. Jane will appear onstage to accept the award and discuss the book. Ally Ang, Quenton Baker, and c.r. glasgow will join Jane onstage.
In the late 1980s on the Jersey shore, Jane Wong watches her mother shake ants from an MSG bin behind the family’s Chinese restaurant. She is a hungry daughter frying crab rangoon for lunch, a child sneaking naps on bags of rice, a playful sister scheming to trap her brother in the freezer before he traps her first. Jane is part of a family staking their claim to the American dream, even as this dream crumbles. Beneath Atlantic City’s promise lies her father’s gambling addiction, an addiction that causes him to disappear for days and ultimately leads to the loss of the restaurant.
In her debut memoir, Jane Wong tells a new story about Atlantic City, one that resists a single identity, a single story as she writes about making do with what you have—and what you don’t. What does it mean, she asks, to be both tender and angry? What is strength without vulnerability—and humor? Filled with beauty found in unexpected places, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City is a resounding love song of the Asian American working class, a portrait of how we become who we are, and a story of lyric wisdom to hold and to share.
Jane Wong is the author of the poetry collections How to Not Be Afraid of Everything and Overpour and the memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City. An associate professor of creative writing at Western Washington University, she grew up in New Jersey and currently lives in Seattle, Washington.
Ally Ang is a gaysian poet & editor based in Seattle. They have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and MacDowell, and their debut poetry collection, Let the Moon Wobble, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2025. Ally unequivocally supports the liberation of all colonized and oppressed peoples, from Palestine to Sudan to Congo to Haiti to Puerto Rico to Hawai'i to West Papua to Turtle Island and beyond, and they urge you to do everything in your power to resist the normalization of genocide and halt the machinery of empire.
Quenton Baker is a poet, educator, and Cave Canem fellow. Their current focus is black interiority and the afterlife of slavery. Their work has appeared in The Offing, Jubilat, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus and elsewhere. They are a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from Artist Trust. They were a 2019 Robert Rauschenberg Artist in Residence and a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. They are the author of we pilot the blood (The 3rd Thing, 2021) and ballast (Haymarket Books, 2023).
c.r. glasgow (doc) is a Queer, first-gen Caribbean-American somatic psychologist, interdisciplinary healing artist, Fool, and public speaker. c’s work has been supported by fellowships through UCross, VONA, The Watering Hole, Hurston/Wright, and Anaphora Arts. The work is committed to the interiority and sonics of Black Queer womanhood, nostalgia, death/rebirth, non-duality, and the cosmos/portals. Their chapbook the Devils that raised Us was longlisted by Frontier Poetry and had a 2023 Best of the Net nomination in poetry. c’s work is forthcoming in Obsidian, Black Lawrence Press, and Lion’s Roar. c can be found mimicking sounds, playing steel pan, and finding healthier versions of 80s corner store snacks.
Join us for a reading by featured poet Czaerra Galicinao Ucol. The reading will be preceded by a round of introductory readings by Ally Ang, Hannah J. Russell, Sylvia Foster, and Zara Jamshed.
ACCESS NOTES: The reading will take place virtually via Zoom with Zoom and Otter.ai auto captions. An ASL interpreter will be present. Access copies of poems will be made available via Google Docs. Our Access Statement will be read before we begin.
Join us for the West Coast launch of Team Building: A Memoir about Family and the Fight for Workers’ Rights by Ben Gwin on August 11th at 6pm at the Georgetown Mini Mart Park (6525 Ellis Ave S., Seattle) with readings by Ally Ang, Vincent Rendoni, and Michael Schmeltzer.
Ben Gwin is the author of the novel, Clean Time: The True Story of Ronald Reagan Middleton (Burrow Press, 2018). His fiction and essays have appeared in the Normal School, Lit Hub, the Rumpus, and other venues. He is the editor of The Pittsburgh Neighborhood Guidebook (Belt). He lives in Pittsburgh with his daughter.
Ally Ang is a gaysian poet & editor from Seattle. Their work has appeared in The Rumpus, Muzzle Magazine, ANMLY, and elsewhere. Ally has received fellowships & support from the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, and Artist Trust. Their debut poetry collection, Let the Moon Wobble, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2025. Find them at allysonang.com or on Twitter and Instagram @TheOceanIsGay.
Vincent Antonio Rendoni is the author of A Grito Contest in the Afterlife, which was the winner of the 2022 Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast Poets as selected by Dorianne Laux. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions multiple times and has appeared/will appear in Prairie Schooner, The Sycamore Review, The Vestal Review, The Texas Review, and So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.
Michael Schmeltzer is a biracial author originally from Japan. He currently lives in Seattle where he serves as Editor-in-Chief of Floating Bridge Press. His latest poetry book, Empire of Surrender, was the winner of the 2021 Wandering Aengus Book Award. Along with Meghan McClure, he is the co-author of the nonfiction book A Single Throat Opens, a lyric exploration of addiction and family. His debut full-length Blood Song was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award in Poetry, the Julie Suk Award, and the Coil Book Award.
Volta! is a monthly words & tunes open mic centering queer and trans people of color.
Every 2nd Monday at College Inn Pub. Sign-up @ 6:30pm, featured artist @ 7:00pm, open mic readings right after!
April 10th ft. Bobbi Kindred
May 8th ft. Luther Hughes
June 19th ft. Ally Ang
Artist Trust is having an Open House on Thursday, June 15 from 4-7pm featuring poet Ally Ang. To receive an invitation, email justine@artisttrust.org.
Join us in celebrating the release of Jane Wong’s memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House 2023) with a night of nonfiction readings from Ally Ang, Rebecca Clarren, Grace Dunbar-Miller, and Jane Wong, hosted by Katie Lee Ellison.
Please join us for “Life After the MFA,” a conversation about literary and artistic pathways through and beyond the Master of Fine Arts. Bringing together alumni from the UW Seattle MFA in Creative Writing and the UWB MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics, this event is an opportunity to learn more about Ph.D. programs; careers in education, the arts, and publishing; and the process of sustaining creative community. Featured panelists include Ally Ang, Emma Aylor, Emma Carson, Brent Michael Cox, Rasheena Fountain, and Liezel Moraleja Hackett.
In this virtual generative poetry workshop led by Ally Ang in partnership with The Lavender Newsletter, participants will discuss how poetry can be used as an altar to invoke our ancestors and ghosts, and will write altar poems of their own.
b e t w e e n s p a c e s: an AWP offsite reading hosted by University of Washington Bothell MFA in Creative Writing & Poetics, Kelsey Street Press, Essay Press, and Bellingham Review.
Featured readers: Ally Ang, Kiran Bath, Andrea Abi-Karam, Steven Dunn, Valerie Hsiung, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Dennis James Sweeney, and Keith S. Wilson.
March 10th, 2023 7-9pm at Common Area Maintenance (2125 2nd Avenue, Seattle)
Dreamyard Rad(ical) Poetry Offsite Reading 2023
Seattle Edition
Hosted by Ellen Hagan & Andy Powell
Featuring Ally Ang, Carlina Duan, Will Harris, Czaerra Ucol, Lisa Ascalon, Natalia Torres, Winston T., Marina Hope Wilson, Tamara Al-Qaisi-Coleman
Pratt Fine Arts Center
Thursday 3/9 at 6pm in the wood shop
Masks required!
PROGRAM: The event should run about 90 minutes start-to-finish including author readings, and possible audience Q&A. Book signing follows.
PLATFORM: This event will take place in person at Central Library and will be streamed live on Zoom Webinar at 2pm PT.
ABOUT THIS EVENT:
Presenters may include: Curator Michael Schmeltzer, Helen Anderson, Ally Ang, Carrie Beyer, Julie Feng, Jessica Gigot, Danielle Hayden, Erin Langner, Jory Mickelson, Emily Parzybok, Vincent Rendoni, Ruth Schemmel, and Katharine Strange.
The event is presented in partnership with Jack Straw Cultural Center. This event is supported by The Seattle Public Library Foundation and author series sponsors the Gary and Connie Kunis Foundation. Thanks to media sponsor The Seattle Times. This event will be recorded, captioned and then posted on SPL's YouTube channel after the event.
COVID PROTOCOLS:
* Proof of vaccination is required for speakers and vendors who will be on site for more than 15 minutes.
* Masks are currently requested but not required for patrons, speakers, or vendors.
* No social distancing is required of patrons, speakers, or vendors.
* All guidelines are subject to change.
Registration required.
Click here to register.
The Ballard Branch welcomes the 395th meeting of the It's About Time Writers' Reading Series, featuring author readings and open mics. Registration required.
Description: This month’s online presentation welcomes Jack Straw 2022 Writers Ally Ang, Katharine Strange, and Danielle Hayden.
Ally Ang is a gaysian poet living on occupied Duwamish and Coast Salish lands known as Seattle. Ally’s work has appeared in "Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color", The Journal, Foglifter, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere, and their work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Bettering American Poetry. They are the co-editor of an anthology of Southeast Asian art and writing titled "All the Oils: On Friendship, Sex, and Other Warmths" (Ginger Bug Press 2021) and they are an editor for Game Over Books. Ally received their MFA from the University of Washington.
Katharine Strange specializes in questioning received wisdom with a wink and a smirk. She writes personal essays, short stories, novels, and now, memoir! Her work has appeared in The Seattle Times, The Stranger, OC87 Diaries, Literary Yard, ScaryMommy, and anthology "The Pandemic Midlife Crisis: Gen X Women on the Brink." She was a 2021 Mainstage Storyteller for The Moth. Formerly she wrote a column for Fundamentally Free, a blog for Exvangelicals and heretics. She lives in south Seattle with her family and is represented by Savannah Brooks of Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency. As a rule, she never turns down champagne.
Danielle Hayden is a writer from Detroit. Her work has appeared in Seattle magazine, The Dillydoun Review, The Cleveland Review of Books, Ampersand, SELF, and elsewhere. Outside of writing, she finds additional ways to fill her life with words: as a polyglot with an insatiable appetite for learning languages, as an amateur calligrapher, and recently as creator of the website 3pistolary.com, which encourages people to send letters. Some of her volunteer work includes assisting language preservation-based nonprofits such as Our Golden Hour and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. Danielle also volunteers as a court-appointed child advocate and dabbles in photography.
The Jack Straw Writers are coming back for a group reading of their latest anthology. Don't miss it!
This reading, hosted by Jack Straw Writers Program Curator Michael Schmeltzer, includes seven of the twelve writers featured in the 2022 Jack Straw Writers Anthology. The Anthology includes the work of this year’s Jack Straw Writers, selected by program curator Michael Schmeltzer.
2022 Jack Straw Writers Program Curator Michael Schmeltzer is a biracial author originally from Japan. He currently lives in Seattle where he serves as Editor-in-Chief of Floating Bridge Press. His poetry book Empire of Surrender (2022) is the winner of the 2021 Wandering Aengus Book Award. Along with Meghan McClure, he is the co-author of the nonfiction book A Single Throat Opens, a lyric exploration of addiction and family. His debut full-length Blood Song was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award in Poetry, the Julie Suk Award, and the Coil Book Award. His honors include a 2019 Jack Straw Fellowship, the Gulf Stream Award for Poetry, and Blue Earth Review’s Flash Fiction Prize. He has been a finalist for the Four Way Books Intro and Levis Prizes, the Zone 3 Press First Book Prize, the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry from BkMk Press, the OSU Press/The Journal Award in Poetry, and most recently the Jake Adam York Prize.
Ally Ang is a gaysian poet living on occupied Duwamish and Coast Salish lands known as Seattle. Ally’s work has appeared in Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, The Journal, Foglifter, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere, and their work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Bettering American Poetry. They are the co-editor of an anthology of Southeast Asian art and writing titled All the Oils: On Friendship, Sex, and Other Warmths (Ginger Bug Press 2021) and they are an editor for Game Over Books. Ally received their MFA from the University of Washington.
Jessica Gigot is a poet and farmer. Her second book of poems, Feeding Hour (Wandering Aengus Press, 2020), won a Nautilus Award and was a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Award. Jessica’s writing and reviews appear in several publications, such as Orion, Taproot, Terrain.org, Gastronomica, and Poetry Northwest. She is currently a poetry editor for The Hopper. Her memoir, A Little Bit of Land, will be published by Oregon State University Press in 2022.
Erin Langner is an essayist whose work focuses on art, architecture and identity. She is a regular contributor to Hyperallergic and METROPOLIS magazines. Her writing has also appeared or is forthcoming in december, The Offing, The Normal School, Hobart, The Stranger, and ARCADE. She lives in Seattle and works on exhibitions and publications at the Frye Art Museum. Her debut collection, Souvenirs from Paradise, will be published by Zone 3 Press in 2022.
Jory Mickelson (they/them) is a queer, non-binary writer who was raised by two visual artists. They received their BA in English from Western Washington University and their MFA in poetry from the University of Idaho. Their work can be found in Court Green, Painted Bride Quarterly, Jubilat, Sixth Finch, Ninth Letter, Diode, and The Rumpus. They are currently working on poems that explore the intersection of visual art, queerness, erasure, gender, and history. Their first book, Wilderness//Kingdom (2019) was the inaugural winner of Floating Bridge Press’ Evergreen Award Tour and the 2020 High Plains Book Award winner in poetry. They received fellowships from the Port Townsend Writers Conference, Lambda Literary Foundation, Winter Tangerine, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico.
Emily Parzybok is a writer, political consultant and teacher from Seattle. She serves as the Executive Director of Balance Our Tax Code advocating for progressive solutions to balance the tax code at the state legislature and on the ballot. She is a writer and an MFA candidate at New York University’s low residency program. Her work has been published in Poetry Northwest, The Syndrome Mag and Points in Case. She has work forthcoming in the Uncertain Girls, Uncertain Times anthology, a collection of inspiration and encouragement for young women. Above all else, she is a dedicated reader who can often be found in bed with her three cats, a cup of breakfast tea and a book. You can write with her at A Very Important Meeting!
Vincent Antonio Rendoni (he / him / his) is a Seattle-based poet and writer. He is the winner of Blue Earth Review’s 2021 Annual Flash Fiction Contest. He is a contributor to What They Leave Behind: A Latinx Anthology. His work has appeared / will be appearing in the Texas Review, Juked, Fiction Southeast, Sky Island Journal, Door is a Jar, and more. He received his BA from Western Washington University and MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University. He has previously taught poetry and fiction in the Allegheny County Jail as part of the Words Without Walls program in Pittsburgh, PA. His work focuses on the intersection of family, truth, death, and the mixed-race/Latinx experience.
Ruth Schemmel’s short fiction has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Fiction, and New Orleans Review, among other places. She has been a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open and a fifth-place overall winner in the NYC Midnight Short Fiction Challenge. A former Peace Corps volunteer, she works as a teacher of high school English language learners in the greater Seattle area, where she lives with her family.
by The Open Mouth Literary Center
Sun, September 11, 2022
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM CDT
A virtual reading with featured poet Chen Chen.
About this event
Join us for a reading by featured poet Chen Chen. The reading will be preceded by a round of introductory readings by members of our poetry community.
SUPPORT OUR WORK: Suggested donation of $5 or more.
Every donation to Open Mouth Literary Center supports our programming, ASL interpreters, featured poets, and increasing accessibility. The only way we can keep doing this is with our community’s support!
You can help sustain this work by signing up to give regularly through our Patreon or make a one-time donation at our PayPal, Venmo (@omliterary), or CashApp ($openmouthliterary).
Thank you for helping ensure that we can offer programs accessible to everyone.
ACCESS NOTES: The reading will take place virtually via Zoom with Zoom and Otter.ai auto captions. An ASL interpreter will be present. Access copies of poems will be made available via Google Docs. Our Access Statement will be read before we begin.
Recommended for attendees 16 years and above.
FEATURED READER:
Chen Chen is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions, 2022) and the forthcoming book of essays, In Cahoots with the Rabbit God (Noemi Press, 2023). His debut book of poems, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. He teaches at Brandeis University.
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