Join us for the book launch of Let the Moon Wobble by Ally Ang at Open Books, with readings and performances by special guests Cass Garison, Jane Wong, and Gretchen Yanover.
Free event, masks required.
Celebrate Ally Ang’s debut book, Let the Moon Wobble, with poets Giovanna Lomanto and Sagaree at Green Apple Books in San Francisco. More information here.
Virtual poetry reading with poets Ally Ang and Asa Drake. Register here.
Poet Lore and The Writer’s Center present a FREE virtual chat about the craft of poetry! We’re joined by Ally Ang to discuss their debut collection, Let the Moon Wobble. Ally is in conversation with Emily Holland, poet and editor of Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry journal.
RSVP here to receive login information (our virtual events are held via Zoom). FREE and open to the public, all times Eastern.
We encourage you to order a copy of the book from your local, independent bookseller or online from the publisher »
Poets are known for seeking beauty in everything, from the tragic to the mundane. But what happens when we reject beauty altogether and lean into the abject and grotesque, when we turn our gaze towards that which makes us squirm? Julia Kristeva writes, “[the abject] is simply a frontier, a repulsive gift that the Other, having become alter ego, drops so that the ‘I’ does not disappear in it but finds, in that sublime alienation, a forfeited existence.” Embracing the grotesque offers a space for reclamation and resistance, particularly for those of us whose bodies are already marginalized and regarded as monstrous. Register here.
In this workshop, students will read and discuss poems that explore the grotesque, including work by Kim Hyesoon, Jenny Zhang, Justin Chin, and more, and will engage in generative writing exercises.
Saturday | Jan 24 | 12:00 – 3:00pm | $105 ($90 for Members)
Workshop will take place in the Stanley Kunitz Conference Room at Poets House.
All are welcome, space is limited. A limited number of need-based scholarships are available. Please email support@poetshouse.org with any questions. By participating in the workshop, you agree to abide by our Community Agreement.
Co-sponsored by Kundiman Pacific Northwest
Featuring performances and readings by:
Ally Ang
nawa angel a.h.
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Claire Kantner
Mita Mahato
Allison Masangkay
Ashley Miyagishima
Gwynne Siak
Ashley Topacio
ammara touch
Pop-up will be open and books, zines, and artwork will be available for sale.
Masks & fragrance-free requested.
Come celebrate literary Seattle! Join us for an evening of celebrating what is most essential about literature: truth-telling, community-building, and creativity as a response to challenge. This event brings together several pillars of our local literary community, including Hinton Publishing, Jack Straw Cultural Center, Moss, Poetry Northwest, and Crab Creek Review in a showcase of local literary talent.
This event is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance.
Other People’s Poems is an open mic and reading series centering readers and lovers of poetry. Hosted by Cody Stetzel and Ally Ang at Open Books: A Poem Emporium. Masks required
The August Other People’s Poems features readings by Ching-In Chen, Kalehua Kim, and Corinne Manning.
Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American writer, community organizer and teacher. They are author of recombinant (2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry), The Heart's Traffic: a novel in poems; and Shiny City (forthcoming November 2025) as well as chapbooks to make black paper sing and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (Leslie Scalapino Finalist). Chen is co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities. They work with Massage Parlor Organizing Project and are a Kelsey Street Press collective member, Airlie Press editor and Nonfiction Coordinator for Best of the Net. They serve on the Governing Council of Seattle's Cultural Space Agency and on the board of Seattle City of Literature. They received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Can Serrat, Imagining America, Jack Straw Cultural Center, EmergeNYC, Intercultural Leadership Institute and the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship as well as the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers. They have served as Pacific Northwest chapter co-lead for Kundiman and recently joined the national Kundiman board. They collaborate with Cassie Mira on Breathing in a Time of Disaster, a performance, installation and speculative writing project exploring breath through meditation and environmental justice. They currently teach in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the MFA program in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington Bothell and serve as the poet laureate of Redmond, Washington.
Kalehua Kim is a poet living in the Pacific Northwest. Born of Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino and Portuguese descent, her multicultural background informs much of her work. A 2023 winner of the James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, she is currently pursuing an MFA through the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. She is a Fellow with the Indigenous Nations Poets and her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Denver Quarterly, Calyx, and ‘Ōiwi, A Native Hawaiian Journal. As a recipient of the 2024 Trio House Press Editor’s Choice Prize, her first collection of poems, Mele, was released by Trio House in 2025.
Corinne Manning is the author of the acclaimed story collection We Had No Rules (arsenal pulp press 2020). Their essays and criticism have been published widely including The New York Times and Lux magazine. Corinne's vampire romance, The Treasure Maker, is forthcoming from Generous Press in 2026, and their retelling of Dante's Inferno, Dirty Joke, featuring Italian Americans in hell is forthcoming from Bunny Presse/Fonograph Editions in 2027.
unpoetry at Analog Coffee at 7pm on August 13th. Hosted by Eric Acosta, featuring Nanzy Azcona, Ally Ang, Garfield Hillson, and Cody Stetzel.
Please join us in celebrating the release of Leigh Sugar’s debut poetry collection, FREELAND (Alice James Books, 2025) at Hugo House.
Sugar, who formerly lived in Seattle, has taught several courses at Hugo House, and is excited to share in this exciting time with the Hugo House and greater Seattle literary community.
A Jake Adam York and Alice James Award finalist, FREELAND is a collection that interrogates the US Criminal Legal System, following a romantic relationship between the speaker and an incarcerated beloved.
Leigh will be joined by friends and Seattle-based writers Ally Ang (whose debut Let the Moon Wobble is also forthcoming from Alice James!) and Shelby Handler.
Reading with Q&A to follow.
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!
Other People’s Poems is a monthly poetry open mic and reading series celebrating readers and lovers of poetry. Hosted by Ally Ang and Cody Stetzel at Open Books: A Poem Emporium, each reading consists of an open mic, in which anyone can read up to five minutes of poetry written by someone else, followed by three featured readers who will read poems by their literary influences and community.
Masks required.
June’s featured readers are Sullivan Forderhase, Shelby Handler, and Dujie Tahat.
raised in tennessee but rooted in seattle, sullivan forderhase works in the spine of poetry through word and movement. they are interested in desire, shame, dream spaces, the knife of grief, and the resistance of joy. they choose the question over the answer every time, allowing curiosity and tenderness to move them. you can connect with them on social media via @softservesully
Shelby Handler is a writer, translator, and organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace.
Dujie Tahat is the fifth Seattle Civic poet and author of three poetry chapbooks: Here I Am O My God, selected for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship; Salat, winner of the Tupelo Press Sunken Garden Chapbook Award and longlisted for the 2020 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection; and Balikbayan, finalist for The New Michigan Press / DIAGRAM chapbook contest and the Center for Book Arts honoree. Along with Luther Hughes and Gabrielle Bates, they cohost The Poet Salon podcast.
Jack Straw artist Eric Acosta brings his multidisciplinary event series Unpoetry to Jack Straw for a series of three events. Performers will share their work in multiple spaces at Jack Straw, in conversation with the New Media Gallery installation we being so.
Mosaic Mirage, Emily J Mundy, Redisforlove, Justine Chan, Julieta Alexandra, Teresa Hayes, Allison Lee, Ally Ang, Olivia Anderson, Sullivan Forderhase, and Till The Teeth | Eric M Acosta.
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!
Other People’s Poems is a monthly poetry open mic and reading series that celebrates readers and lovers of poetry. Hosted by Ally Ang and Cody Stetzel, each event starts with an open mic in which anyone can sign up to read 5 minutes of poetry written by another person, then three featured readers will each read 10-15 minutes of other people’s poems. Free event, masks required.
May’s featured readers are:
Joyce Chen is a writer, editor, and community builder who draws inspiration from many coastal cities. She was the most recent Hugo House writer-in-residence, and was a 2019-2020 Hugo House Fellow. Her work has been published in Rolling Stone, Poets & Writers, Lit Hub, Narratively, and Slant’d, among others, and she contributes book reviews to Orion and Hyphen magazines. She has received support through Hugo House, VONA, Tin House, Artist Trust, Vermont Studio Center, Centrum, and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and she is the executive director of The Seventh Wave, an arts and literary nonprofit that champions art in the space of social issues.
Amy Hirayama is a writer and educator from Seattle. She teaches English at South Seattle College, coordinates programming for Clarion West, is a creative writing instructor with Writers in the Schools, and is involved at Common Area Maintenance (CAM). She likes collaborative writing, insists on leaning into the surreal, and actively pursues unnecessary complications.
Diana Xin holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana and serves as a contributing editor for Moss. She is a recipient of fellowships and residencies from Hedgebrook, Artist Trust of Washington State, The M Literary Residency in Beijing, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Her work appears in Electric Literature, Narrative Magazine, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. Her first full-length collection, Book of Exemplary Women, is forthcoming from YesYes Books.
Come to the Seattle book launch for We Contain Landscapes by Patrycja Humienik (Tin House 2025) at Common Objects: 2601 1st Ave.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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