Northwest writers will read the work of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman in celebration of their poetry, which has influenced and inspired generations of poets and poetry-lovers around the world. The evening will offer a chance to hear the poems of these two indispensable nineteenth-century American poets read aloud by contemporary writers. Writer-readers include Alice Derry, Kathleen Flenniken, Kathryn Hunt, Gary Copeland Lilley, Michelle Peñaloza, Nancy Rawles, and Kristen Millares Young.
Alice Derry was born in Oregon and raised in Washington and Montana. She has won a number of prizes, and her poems have been widely published in anthologies. She teaches English and German at Peninsula College in Port Angeles on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula where she has co-directed the Foothills Writers’ Series since 1980.
Kathleen Flenniken began her career as a civil engineer and didn’t discover poetry until her early 30s. Her collection, Plume (University of Washington Press, 2012), is a meditation on the Hanford Nuclear Site and her home town of Richland, Washington. She is also editor and president of Floating Bridge Press, a nonprofit press dedicated to publishing Washington State poets, and president of Jack Straw, an audio arts studio and cultural center.
Kathryn Hunt is a writer and filmmaker and makes her home in Port Townsend, Washington, on the coast of the Salish Sea. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in Rattle, The Sun, Willow Springs, Rear Curtain, Orion, Crab Orchard Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among other publications. A collection of her poems, Long Way Through Ruin, was published by Blue Begonia Press in 2013.
Gary Copeland Lilley is a native of Sandy Cross, North Carolina. He is a veteran of the United States Navy Submarine Force and a longtime blues denizen of Chicago and Washington, DC. He presently teaches and writes in Port Townsend, Washington. Lilley’s books include Alpha Zulu, The Subsequent Blues, Black Poem, and The Reprehensibles.
Michelle Peñaloza was born in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan and grew up in the suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee. She is the author of two chapbooks: landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias Press) and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts). She lives in Seattle.
Nancy Rawleshas worked as a journalist, playwright, and novelist. Rawles has received many awards for her writing, including an Alex Award from the American Library Association, an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and a Legacy Award from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. She grew up in Los Angeles, studied in Chicago, and makes her home in Seattle.
Kristen Millares Young is a writer and journalist whose work has been featured by the Guardian, the New York Times, and other outlets. She was the researcher for the Times team that produced “Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek,” which won a Pulitzer and a Peabody in 2013.
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