African-American/Black History Month is a designated time to remember people and events in the history of the African diaspora. Last year Raven Chronicles Press published POEM OF STONE & BONE, The Iconography of James W. Washington Jr. in Fourteen Stanzas and Thirty-One Days, by Carletta Carrington Wilson. This book honors the art-filled legacy and life of Mississippi-born and Seattle-based Artist, James W. Washington Jr (1909-2000). Below is a chapter from the book.
Read MoreSusan Deer Cloud, a Catskill Native, is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, two New York State Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowships, and an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant. Published in numerous journals and anthologies, her most recent books are The Way to Rainbow Mountain (Shabda Press, 2019), Before Language (Shabda Press, 2016), and Hunger Moon: Poems (Shabda Press, 2014). She also edited the anthologies I Was Indian (Before Being Indian Was Cool), Volumes I & II (Foothills Publishing 2009, 2012). Currently Deer Cloud balances her life Libra-like between her mountain home and roving afar, her rambling naturally becoming an interior journey resulting in visions, stories, essays, and poems. For more: https://sites.google.com/site/susandeercloud/.
Read MoreMaryna Ajaja: on June 25, 2022, Maryna died at home in Seattle after a prolonged fight with cancer. She was a writer and a long-time film programmer for the Seattle International Film Festival, specializing in Eastern, Central European, and Russian films. Ajaja lived in the Northwest since 1969, except for seven years in Russia from 1991 to 1997; and she lived in Seattle’s Zip Code 98118, “the most diverse Zip code in America,” since 2004.
Raven included Ajaja's photos from the 98118 Project in our 2012 issue of Raven Chronicles Magazine: Vol. 17, No. 1-2, A Sense of Place. In honor of Maryna Ajaja, we share them here.
Read MoreMarc Beaudin, a former Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Foundation artist-in-residence, is a poet, theatre artist and bookseller in Livingston, Montana. Books include Life List: Poems and the hitchhiking memoir, Vagabond Song: Neo-Haibun from the Peregrine Journals. More at CrowVoice.com.
Carrie Albert: is an artist and writer. Drawings, collage, comics, photographs, sculpture, and visual art/poem pairings have been published and featured in numerous journals, most recently Ink Sweat & Tears, pacificREVIEW: The Mirror Maze, The Indianapolis Review: Visual Poetry Issue, and upcoming cover art for Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her artworks have been exhibited and won awards nationally. She lives in Seattle, where she is a featured artist at Four Corners Art.
Read MorePriscilla Long is a Seattle-based writer of poetry, essays, creative nonfictions, fictions, science, and history. She has an MFA degree from the University of Washington and teaches writing. Her guide to writing is The Writer’s Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life (University of New Mexico Press, second edition, 2018).
Jasmine Iona Brown: “My paintings, photography and illustrations usually focus on the face. I paint portraits, masks and icons or take photographs that highlight individual beings. My work is in the collections of the Wing Luke Museum, the municipal collections of both Seattle and Tacoma, and the Trayvon Martin Foundation.” Visit her Instagram site @jasmineionadesign.
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