For 2026’s headlining poetry event, three prize winning authors - Keetje Kuipers, Ally Ang, and Laura Read - will read from their most recent collections. Keetje Kuipers’, Lonely Women Make Good Lovers, has received critical acclaim for its daring and complicated evocation of love. Queer, tender, and painfully aware, her poetry astonishes for its raw audacity as terror and desire collide. Ally Ang is the author of Let the Moon Wobble, their debut poetry collection, which critics have called “a tour de force of passion, longing, and loneliness.” One of the rising stars out of Seattle, they’ve received recognition from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Jack Straw Writers Program, and more. Laura Read, former Spokane Poet Laureate and current professor at both SFCC and EWU, is the author of four poetry collections and won the Juniper Prize for Poetry in 2022. Her latest collection, The Serious World, is a deep and humorous reflection on depression, therapy, family, and the struggling life of the artist. At turns provocative, harrowing, and serene, these three authors bring comfort in dark times and inspire readers to shape and nurture their perspectives of connection. Join them as they discuss—and elevate—the genre they love.

This event is free and open to the public.