Presented by The Washington Center for the Book and the Washington Library Association
Anna Bálint, moderator
Readers (in order of appearance)
Carletta Carrington Wilson, Rob Jacques,
Risa Denenberg, Lawrence Matsuda,
Priscilla Long, Susan Rich,
Thomas Hubbard, Ronda Piszk Broatch,
Patrick Dixon, Catalina Marie Cantú,
Mary Ellen Talley, Angelina Villalobos,
Jed Myers, Kathleen Stancik,
Maiah Merino
Anna Bálint is a London born, Seattle-based poet, writer, editor and cultural activist of East European descent. Her many years of editorial work for Raven Chronicles Press includes Take a Stand, Art Against Hate, and Words From the Café, an anthology of writing by people in recovery. Her short fiction collection, Horse Thief, (Curbstone Press, 2004) spans cultures and continents and was a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Award. A longtime of creative writing, Anna currently teaches adults in recovery from trauma, addiction, mental illness, and homelessness at Seattle’s Recovery Cáfe, where she founded Safe Place Writing Circle.
Poet and photographer, Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press, 2015). Seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Ronda is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant, a May Swenson Poetry Award finalist, and former editor for Crab Creek Review. Her journal publications include Sycamore Review, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Public Radio KUOW’s All Things Considered.
Catalina Marie Cantú (Xicana) of Indigenous Mexican/Madeiran heritage was born in San Francisco, CA. Cantú is a multi-genre writer, interdisciplinary artist, Jack Straw Fellow, and Alum of VONA/Voices, and The Mineral School. She has received funding from Artists’ Trust, Hugo House, Centrum, and Hedgebrook. Her poems and stories have been published in La Bloga, Poetry on Buses, Raven Chronicles magazine, Seattle Poetic Grid, The Inspired Poet, and anthologized in Jack Straw Writers Anthology, Take a Stand: Art Against Hate, A Raven Chronicles Anthology, and In Xóchitl, in Cuícatl: Floricanto, Cien años de poesía chicanx/latinx (1920-2020).
Risa Denenberg lives on the Olympic peninsula and is co-founder and editor at Headmistress Press, publisher of lesbian/bi/trans poetry. She publishes poetry book reviews at Adroit, the Rumpus and other venues, and curates The Poetry Café, an online meeting place where poetry chapbooks are reviewed. She has published seven collections of poetry, including slight faith (MoonPath Press, 2018) and Posthuman, finalist for the 2020 Floating Bridge Chapbook Contest. Visit: https://thepoetrycafe.online/ and https://risadenenberg.com/.
Patrick Dixon is a writer/photographer, retired from careers in teaching and commercial fishing. A member of the Olympia Poetry Network Board of Directors, he has been published in several literary journals, including Cirque, Panoplyzine, Oberon, The Raven Chronicles, The Tishman Review, and the anthologies FISH 2015 and WA129. He is the poetry editor of National Fisherman magazine’s quarterly, North Pacific Focus. A member of the FisherPoets Gathering organizing committee, Mr. Dixon received an Artist Trust Grant to edit Anchored in Deep Water: The FisherPoets Anthology (2014). His chapbook Arc of Visibility won the 2015 Alabama State Poetry Morris Memorial Award. He lives in Olympia, Washington.
Thomas Hubbard, a retired writing instructor and spoken word performer, wrote features for various newspapers and magazines during the 1980s, then authored Nail and other hardworking poems, Year of the Dragon Press, 1994; Junkyard Dogz (also available on audio CD); and Injunz, a chapbook, also Poems for my people, Foothills Publishing 2011. He designed and published Children Remember Their Fathers (an anthology), and books by seven other authors. His book reviews have appeared in Square Lake, Raven Chronicles, New Pages and The Cartier Street Review. Publication credits include poems in Yellow Medicine Review, spring 2010, I Was Indian, editor Susan Deer Cloud (Foothills Publishing, 2010), and Florida Review; and short stories in Red Ink and Yellow Medicine Review.
Rob Jacques resides on a rural island in Washington State’s Puget Sound, and his poetry appears in literary journals, including Atlanta Review, Prairie Schooner, Amsterdam Quarterly, Poet Lore, The Healing Muse, andAssaracus. A collection of his poems, War Poet, was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2017.
Priscilla Long is a 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. Her books of poems are Holy Magic (MoonPath Press, 2020) and Crossing Over: Poems (University of New Mexico Press, 2015). Her collection of linked literary nonfictions is Fire and Stone: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (University of Georgia Press).
Lawrence Matsuda was born in the Minidoka, Idaho Concentration Camp during World War II. In 2010, his book of poetry, A Cold Wind from Idaho, about the WWII forced incarceration of Japanese Americans, was published by Black Lawrence Press. In 2019, he completed a novel based on his mother’s experience entitled, My Name Is Not Viola (Endicott and Hugh publisher). lawrencematsuda@aol.com
Maiah Merino will be reading Anita Endrezze’s poem “The Wall.” Anita Endrezze is an author and artist. She was inspired to write the poem “The Wall” to protest in a literal and symbolic way—her grandmother came from Mexico a hundred years ago. Her latest collection of poems is Enigma. Her short story collection, Butterfly Moon, was published in 2012 by the University of Arizona Press. Anita’s Red Bird Press Chapbooks include Breaking Edges(2012) and A Thousand Branches (2014). Her work has been translated into ten languages and taught around the world. She won the Bumbershoot / Weyerhaeuser Award, a Washington State Governor’s Writing Award, and a GAP Award for her poetry. Maiah Merino, a Latina-Native writer, lives and works in Seattle in the field of health and healing, engaging both indigenous and western forms of healing. She published poems, one in 2016 and one in 2017, for Seattle's Poetry on Buses project. She has self-published her poetry, has had two poems published in, Revolution and Reclamation by Artnight Books. Her work has been produced on stage and in print.
Jed Myers is author of Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press), and four chapbooks. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Poetry Northwest, The American Journal of Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, Greensboro Review, and elsewhere.
Susan Rich is the author of five books, recently, Cloud Pharmacy, shortlisted for the Julie Suk prize, honoring poetry books from independent presses. She is the winner of the PEN USA Award for Poetry and the Times Literary Supplement Award, London. Her poems appear in places such as the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, New England Review, Southern Review, and World Literature Today. She is cofounder of Poets on the Coast, a yearly writing retreat that takes place in La Conner, WA.
Kathleen Stancik is a Northwest poet whose work has appeared in Cirque, Windfall, Twenty-Fourth, WA129+3 Digital Chapbook, Poets Unite!, The LiTFUSE @10 Anthology, and others. She was a featured poet at the Inland Poetry Prowl in 2017. She enjoys singing, acting, baking and dachshunds.
Mary Ellen Talley’s poems have recently been published in Raven Chronicles, U City Review and Ekphrastic Review, as well as in anthologies, All We Can Hold and Ice Cream Poems. Her poetry has received two Pushcart Nominations.
Angelina Villalobos is an Art Activist living in Seattle, WA. Her work strives to engage the viewer to be a part of their environment through observation, critique, & participation. She believes community engagement is vital to successful art planning and that art should be accessible to all. Her focus is education & leading by example.
Carletta Carrington Wilson is a literary and visual artist. Her poems and literary works have appeared in a number of publications, including, Raven Chronicles’ Last Call and Stealing Light: A Raven Chronicles Anthology Selected Work, 1991-1996. She has work in the African-American Review. Her installation, letter to a laundress, has been exhibited at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, the University of Puget Sound's Kittredge Gallery and King Street Station.