2015 Readings

January 30, 2015 — Tom Hitzroth (historian)

Tom Hitzroth is a lifelong Eastside resident and recognized local historian. He began researching the history of Redmond in 1998 and has worked at identifying details of Redmond development from its earliest homestead times to 1930. He is currently researching the historic site of Melrose that preceded Redmond, among several other projects. Since 2003, he has led walking tours of Redmond’s historic district. He expanded his efforts in 2005 to include historic preservation initiatives and adaptive reuse issues. Tom is currently chair of the King County Landmarks Commission, chair of the City of Redmond Landmark Commission, and vice president of the Association of King County Historic Organizations.

February 27, 2015 — Kelli Russell Agodon and Martha Silano (poets)

Kelli Russell Agodon is a poet, writer, and editor from the Pacific Northwest. Her most recent publications are Hourglass Museum (White Pine Press, 2014) and The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice, which she coauthored with Martha Silano. Her other books include Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room (Winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year in Poetry and a Finalist for the Washington State Book Prize), Small Knots, Geography, and Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry, which she edited with Annette Spaulding-Convy. Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press. Her website is www.agodon.com.

Martha Silano has authored four poetry collections, including The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, winner of the 2010 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize, and Reckless Lovely (Saturnalia Books, 2014). She also coedited, with Kelli Russell Agodon, The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice. Her poems have appeared in Paris Review, Poetry, Orion, American Poetry Review, and North American Review, where she received the 2014 James Hearst Poetry Prize, as well as in many anthologies, including American Poetry: The Next Generation and The Best American Poetry 2009. Martha serves as poetry editor of Crab Creek Review and teaches at Bellevue College. She blogs at bluepositive.blogspot.com.

March 27, 2015 — Jim Bertolino and Anita K. Boyle (poets)

James Bertolino taught literature and creative writing for 36 years at schools ranging from Washington State University to Cornell University. He spent 14 years at Western Washington University and retired from Willamette University as Writer-in-Residence in 2006. He has received a number of national awards for his poetry, and his 12 volumes include Ravenous Bliss: New and Selected Love Poems, MoonPath Press, 2014. Bertolino has served as an editor for Abraxas, Epoch, Cincinnati Poetry Review, and Stone-Marrow Press. He lives with his wife, artist and poet Anita Boyle, on five acres near Bellingham, Washington. His website is http://jamesbertolino.com.

Anita K. Boyle is a poet, artist, and graphic designer, and the author of three books of poetry: The Drenched, What the Alder Told Me, and Bamboo Equals Loon. She recently received a Poet Publisher Peace Award from the World Peace Poets. Anita lives near an inspiring pond outside Bellingham, Washington with her husband, the poet James Bertolino. Her website is http://egressstudiopress.com.

April 24, 2015 — Vikram Madan (poet, children’s literature)

Vikram Madan, Bellevue poet and artist, was born and raised in India, where he developed an early love for humor, rhyming poetry, and cartooning, but did not figure out how to bring these three passions together until he first encountered the works of Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein as an adult. Vikram’s debut collection of original, self-illustrated humorous poetry, The Bubble Collector, won a 2013 Moonbeam Award for Children’s Poetry and was nominated (by invitation) for the 2014 Washington State Book Awards. Vikram has formally studied art at Seattle’s Gage Academy of Art and was recently commissioned to create a large mural for Redmond Town Center. His website is www.VikramMadan.com.

May 22, 2015 — Charles Finn (poet, essayist)

Charles Finn is the editor of High Desert Journal and author of Wild Delicate Seconds: 29 Wildlife Encounters (OSU Press). His essays and poetry have appeared in a variety of literary journals, anthologies, newspapers, and consumer magazines, including The Sun, Northern Lights, Wild Earth, Silk Road, Open Spaces, Whitefish Review, High Country News, Writers on the Range, and many others. A self-taught woodworker, he is a proponent of “living little” and owner of A Room of One’s Own, where he builds furniture and “microhomes,” one-room wood cabins constructed entirely out of reclaimed lumber and materials. He lives in Federal Way with his wife Joyce and their two cats Pushkin and Lutsa. There’s a nice new review of Charles’ book at http://terrain.org/2015/reviews-reads/review-these-given-days/.

June 19, 2015 — Gene Ambaum (comic artist)

Gene Ambaum occasionally works as a public librarian in the Seattle area under his real name. He’s been writing the comic strip Unshelved for the last 13+ years, and has also cowritten a kids graphic novel, Poopy Claw, and a purposely terrible first novel, Fifty Shades of Brains (as BF Dealeo). He loves French comics, television shows from his childhood, librarians’ horror stories, piña coladas, and getting caught in the rain. See pictures of his dirty cats and furniture in his neighborhood on Twitter @ambaum, or visit the Unshelved website at www.unshelved.com. Learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unshelved.

July 31, 2015 — Colleen Squier (storyteller)

Colleen Squier is a recent transplant to Sequim and The Storypeople of Clallam County. Originally from Seattle, she served on the board of the Seattle Storytellers guild for two years. Her family says that she has been telling stories as long as she has been talking. About six years ago, she decided that she wanted to learn to “really” tell stories and took a class from Cherie Terbon at North Seattle College. Since then, she has shared stories at church, parties, and bookstore story times. She appeared at Northwest Folklife for four years, and treasures her genuine recycled trophy for placing third in the Liars Contest. “Stories,” she says, “tell us who we were, who we are, and who we will be.”

August 21, 2015 — Michael Schein (poet)

Michael Schein is the author of two historical novels, one nonfiction history, and a logorrhea of poems. His latest is John Surratt: The Lincoln Assassin Who Got Away (2015). His novels are Bones Beneath Our Feet (2011), a historical novel of Puget Sound, and Just Deceits (2008), a historical courtroom mystery. Michael teaches poetry and fiction at the Port Townsend Writers Conference, Write on the Sound, in libraries, and elsewhere. He is founder and director of LiTFUSE Poets’ Workshop. His poetry is supported by a grant from King County 4Culture. It has been nominated for the Pushcart thrice, and stuck to refrigerators by magnets. Michael and his wife Carol live at Lake Marcel in Carnation.

September 25, 2015 — Jack Straw Writers: Clare Johnson, Laura Da’ and Kevin Craft (poets)

Clare Johnson is a writer and visual artist, published in Blithe House Quarterly, Quiet Shorts, Frogmore Papers, 14 Magazine, Lumina, and Cranky. She is a Michael S. Harper Poetry Prize recipient, and her ongoing Post-it Note Project (drawing a memory on a post-it each night) won a Seattle Magazine Best of 2011 for “Best New Take on the Memoir,” also garnering a cover feature in Real Change. Recent honors include Artist Trust funding to expand her series of drawings inspired by favorite works of literature, and the publication of Roses, a book pairing her art with poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. She is working on her book-length poetry and fiction project Will I live here when I grow up.

Laura Da’ is a poet and public-school teacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and the Institute of American Indian Arts. Da’ is an enrolled member of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. Her first chapbook, The Tecumseh Motel, was published in Effigies II. The University of Arizona Press will publish her first full-length manuscript, Tributaries, in 2015. Da’ lives near Seattle with her husband and son.

Kevin Craft, curator of the 2015 Jack Straw Writers Program, is also the editor of Poetry Northwest. His books include Solar Prominence (Cloudbank Books, 2005), and five volumes of the anthology Mare Nostrum, an annual collection of Italian translation and Mediterranean-inspired writing. His poems, reviews, and essays have appeared widely in such places as Poetry, AGNI, Verse, Ninth Letter, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, The Stranger, and West Branch. A 2008 Jack Straw Writer, he has also been awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Bogliasco Foundation (Italy), the Camargo Foundation (France), 4Culture, and Artist Trust.

October 30, 2015 — Jason Zions (poet)

Jason Zions has been writing poetry for more than forty years, although the first ten years or so were pretty terrible. He is a trained storyteller and musician, and is likelier to characterize himself as “bard” than “poet.” His work was published in the RASP collection Here, There, and Everywhere, and more can be seen at feedingthegeek.tumblr.com (along with some excellent recipes and meditations on cooking and technology). In his day job as software architect for a large software monopoly, he’s lectured to thousands around the world to vaguely thunderous applause.

November 20, 2015 — Gloria Burgess

Photo by Kevin Ray Smith

Gloria Burgess fuses memory and ancestral presence into her poetry and performances. She celebrates her deep connection to her African American, Native American, and Celtic heritage. A poetry fellow with Cave Canem, a collective of poets and writers of the African Diaspora, her poetry appears in several anthologies, including The Ringing Ear and Gathering Ground, and in movable and permanent installations, including on a bridge at Brown University. Gloria’s poetry has also been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and a PBS film on social activism and the arts. She is currently working on a children’s picture book about her father’s life-changing relationship with William Faulkner. Her website is www.gloriaburgess.com.

December 11, 2015 — 6th Annual Holiday Party!