2011 Readings

January 28, 2011 — Esther Altshul Helfgott and Ann Teplick (poets)

Esther Altshul Helfgott is a nonfiction writer and poet with a Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington. Her work appears in the Journal of Poetry Therapy, Maggid: A Journal of Jewish Literature, Drash, American Imago: Psychoanalysis and the Human Sciences, HistoryLink, and elsewhere. She curates the “It’s About Time” writers reading series at the Ballard Library, is the author of The Homeless One: A Poem in Many Voices (Seattle: Kota Press, 2000), and she writes a reader’s blog, “Witnessing Alzheimer’s: A Caregiver’s View,” for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She’s working on a nonfiction book about Seattle child psychoanalyst, Dr. Edith Buxbaum.

Ann Teplick is a poet, playwright, and prose writer, with an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College. Her work has appeared in Drash, Chrysanthemum, The Homelessness Project, 161 One-Minute Monologues from Literature, Honest Potatoes, Poetry Works! The First Verse, Reality Mom, Hunger Mountain online journal, and is forthcoming in Crab Creek Review. Her plays have been showcased in and around Seattle; Ashland, Oregon; and Nova Scotia. In 2010, she received funding from the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs and 4Culture for a collection of poems entitled The Beauty of a Beet: Poems from the Bedside. For eighteen years she has been a teaching artist, writing with youth in schools and at Richard Hugo House, Coyote Central, Providence Hospice, and Pongo Teen Publishing, where for many years she led poetry workshops in King County juvenile detention centers, and currently does the same at the Washington State Psychiatric Hospital.

February 25, 2011 — Janée Baugher (poet)

Janée Baugher has performed at Bumbershoot, Get Lit!, and Arts Edge Arts Festival, and is a former Jack Straw writer. She recently completed her second term as a Humanities Washington Inquiring Minds speaker. Since receiving an MFA degree from Eastern Washington University, Baugher has taught at Highline Community College, UW-Experimental College, Richard Hugo House, and elsewhere. A former poetry editor of Willow Springs and Switched-on Gutenberg, Baugher regularly collaborates with visual artists, composers, and choreographers. Her recent collaborations were produced at University of Cincinnati - Conservatory of Music, Interlochen Center for the Arts (Interlochen, Michigan), and Dance Now! Ensemble (Miami Beach, Florida). Her debut collection of poems is Coördinates of Yes (Ahadada Books, 2010). Her website is http://JaneeJBaugher.wordpress.com.

March 25, 2011 — Kelli Russell Agodon (poet)

Kelli Russell Agodon is the author of the recently published Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room, winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize judged by Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Dennis. Her book is also a finalist for the Foreword Book of the Year Award in Poetry. She is also the author of Small Knots (2004) and the chapbook, Geography (2003). Kelli lives in Washington State with her family where she is an avid mountain biker, a lover of chocolate and words, as well as coeditor of Seattle’s 28-year-old print literary journal, Crab Creek Review. She blogs at Book of Kells, where she writes about living and writing creatively.

April 26, 2011 — Haiku: It’s Bigger Than You Think

Kigo, kireji, shasei? What do these terms have to do with haiku? Come and learn the essential techniques of haiku, and discover how you can improve your longer poetry by better understanding haiku essentials. And no, 5-7-5 isn’t one of them. Learn the myths and realities of haiku poetry, and see how you can make your own haiku hit the target. Join master haiku teacher Michael Dylan Welch for a lively, hands-on workshop including discussion, writing, inspiration, and more (with copious handouts). Workshop held at the Redmond Regional Library, 6:30 to 9:00 p.m.

April 29, 2011 — David Lloyd Whited (poet)

David Lloyd Whited is a Northwest native, born and raised in Oregon’s Umpqua Valley. He graduated from Bowling Green State University in 1976 with an MFA in poetry. His work appears in numerous poetry magazines and periodicals. His poetry books include The Elevens (Black Heron Press), Wet Way Home (26 Books), and The Shadow Dance (Nine Muses Press). Recently he has completed a new manuscript, Olde Man Coyote Goes to Towne. David has spent the bulk of his professional life as a planner for the Puyallup Tribe of Indians. He has coauthored numerous ethnohistory articles and a monograph on the subject of health and mental health among the Puyallup Tribal community. David lives on Vashon Island with his wife, four cats, eleven raccoons, and numerous other critters.

May 27, 2011 — Dave Clapper (fiction)

Dave Clapper is the founding editor of SmokeLong Quarterly, an online literary magazine devoted to flash fiction (stories of a thousand words or fewer). His own writing has been published in numerous literary magazines, including 3am Magazine, InkPot, NFG, FRiGG Magazine, and Hobart. Locally, Dave can often be seen doing improvisational comedy with the groups “Interrobang?! Improv” (which he cofounded) and “Being Humans,” as well as occasional appearances with “Wing-It Productions.”

June 24, 2011 — Mark Waterbury (nonfiction)

Mark Waterbury is a materials scientist and author of The Monster of Perugia: The Framing of Amanda Knox. Having worked as a scientist for the Air Force, an engineer for big corporations, and even sinking to being a businessman of sorts, Waterbury recently decided it was time to wash himself off and return to his writing roots. Using a style that draws as much on analogies from literature, history, and mythology as it does from science, Monster is a work of literary nonfiction that has been called a devastating indictment of the Perugian justice system. Other work by Waterbury includes a semiautobiographical novel, Existence Simplified and the Butterfly Effect, about his years at Wright-Patterson AFB (right up the hill from Hanger 19 of UFO fame) and an upcoming work, Of Solitons and Singing Bowls, about agents of change and icons of stability.

July 29, 2011 — Stephen Toulouse (nonfiction)

Longtime Microsoft employee Stephen “Stepto” Toulouse is a geek, a gamer, a writer, and the director of policy and enforcement for Xbox LIVE. When he’s not busy helping his team protect the Xbox LIVE service from miscreants, Stepto can be found exhorting players to “be excellent to each other,” cohosting the weekly Xbox LIVE-oriented “Major Nelson Radio” podcast, and performing segments from his book A Microsoft Life at various events such as the Penny Arcade Expo, w00tstock, and any place discerning gamers and nerds are known to gather. Sharing wry wry-isms and specifically vague observations about gaming and geek culture are Stepto’s specialty, and he often enjoys relaxing at home in the small community of Duvall with his wife Rochelle, a cat, and three Golden Retrievers. Stepto’s website is located at http://www.stepto.com and he tweets at @stepto.

August 26, 2011 — Stephen Roxborough (poet)

Stephen Roxborough (aka roxword) was born in New York to a Canadian father and American mother. He’s a past board member for the Washington Poets Association, cofounder of Burning Word poetry festival, and head poet for Madrona Center on Guemes Island. An internationally acclaimed, award-winning performance poet, Rox has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize (2003, 2006), appeared at the Skagit River Poetry Festival (2004), Brave New Words (Whidbey Island, 2009), and coedited radiant danse uv being, a poetic portrait of bill bissett (2006). He is the author of six books and one CD. His newest collection, this wonderful perpetual beautiful, was published in the spring of 2011.

September 30, 2011 — Renda Belle Dodge (stories)

Renda Belle Dodge grew up in the Pacific Northwest as part of a typical, fractured family, and she currently resides in Seattle, Washington. Writing has always been a part of her life, and she began telling and illustrating stories when she was a child. Renda’s writing style is bold and strives to capture the ongoing struggle for identity in contemporary America. Renda is author of Inked and The Indie Writer’s Workshop (July 2011). She is the managing editor of Line Zero, a quarterly indie arts and writing journal, and Pink Fish Press. Renda regularly runs workshops on fiction plotting, drafting, and independent publishing. For the past seven years she has been involved in National Novel Writing Month, and for the past four has been a municipal liaison in the Seattle area, working with and encouraging writers of all ages and skill sets. Her website is http://rendadodge.com/.

October 28, 2011 — Angela Jane Fountas (stories)

Angela Jane Fountas was a 2008-2009 writer-in-residence at Richard Hugo House and a 2006 Jack Straw Writer. Her story collection, LG + Tiny, is a finalist for the 2011 Bakeless Prize in Fiction. Her work has appeared in Fairy Tale Review, Quick Fiction, Diagram, Sentence, Redivider, Syntax, and elsewhere. Angela was awarded a 2009 Artist Trust Fellowship and her work has been supported by grants from the Seattle Mayor’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs and 4Culture. She earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama.

November 18, 2011 — Jack Straw Writers:
Susan Rich, Annette Spaulding-Convy, and Harold Taw (poetry, fiction)

Susan Rich is the author of three collections of poetry, The Cartographer’s Tongue / Poems of the World (2000), Cures Include Travel (2006), and The Alchemist’s Kitchen (2010), the latter a finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Prize. She has received awards from PEN USA, The Times Literary Supplement, and Peace Corps Writers. Recent poems have appeared in the Harvard Review, Poetry Ireland, and Poetry International. She lives in Seattle and teaches English at Highline Community College. Susan is one of the featured readers in this year’s Seattle Arts & Lectures poetry series. Photo credit: Rosanne Olson

Annette Spaulding-Convy’s full length collection, In Broken Latin, will be published by the University of Arkansas Press (Spring 2012) as a finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, In the Convent We Become Clouds, won the 2006 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Contest and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have been published in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Crab Orchard Review, and in the International Feminist Journal of Politics, among others. She is coeditor of the literary journal Crab Creek Review, and is cofounder of Two Sylvias Press, which will publish the first eBook anthology of contemporary women’s poetry, Fire on Her Tongue, later in 2011.

Harold Taw’s debut novel, Adventures of the Karaoke King (AmazonEncore 2011), is a karaoke grail quest about people who keep falling just short of their dreams. A participant in the 2009 Artist Trust EDGE Program for Writers and the 2011 Jack Straw Writers Program, Harold received an Artist Trust GAP award to research his second novel Saturday’s Child, garnered accolades for his screenplay Dog Park, and had his work featured on NPR and in a New York Times bestselling anthology. Harold graduated from Yale Law School and as a Fulbright Scholar studied prostitution and the AIDS epidemic in rural Thailand.

December 2, 2011 — Holiday Party: Fun and Food

December 30, 2011 — Vonnie Thompson (poet)

Vonnie Thompson is a wife, mother, poet, and actress, and a graduate of the University of Puget Sound’s creative writing program. After a long hiatus hiding from her poetry, Vonnie is once again thinking, writing, and living words. She lives in the beautiful Sky Valley with her husband, two boys, and the Triangulation of Tabbies, and is also, at times, an office manager at a sales office and a regular at both Woodinville Unitarian and the Aquarian Tabernacle Church. All these threads come together in her very personal style of poetry in which she weaves her personal experience around the experiences and feelings that tie all our lives together. Vonnie is currently working on her first chapbook of poetry, which she hopes to have completed by the end of 2011.