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.