Posted on July 12, 2018 at 6:00 am
You’re invited to enjoy poetry and gelato on the back lawn of the Moran Prairie Library.
Listen to enlivening poetry of four Pacific Northwest poets: José Angel Araguz, Laura Read, Sam Roxas-Chua, and Nance Van Winckel.
Bring your picnic blanket or folding chair and get settled in for the poetic cadence of these celebrated poets.
All ages are welcome, but some poems will contain adult themes and language.
Gelato will be served from Ferrante’s Marketplace Cafe. This summer evening event is sponsored by the Friends of the Library.
Update: Please note that José Angel Araguz is unable to make it to the Poetry Picnic. Fortunate for us, Dawn Pichon Barron is available.
Dawn Pichon Barron is a mixed blood—Indixicana/white—writer/educator, wife/mother, barker/biter. She is currently the Director/Faculty of the Native Pathways Program at The Evergreen State College. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barrelhouse (ALPHA blog), Yellow Medicine Review, Pontoon Poetry, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, WA129 poetry anthology, Of a Monstrous Child anthology, No News Today blog, and The Olympian. Her chapbook, ESCAPE GIRL BLUES (Finishing Line Press, 2018) can either be a tease or too much.
Laura Read’s first collection of poems, Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral, was published in 2012 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her second collection, Dresses from the Old Country, will be published by BOA in fall of 2018. She teaches English at Spokane Falls Community College.
Sam Roxas-Chua is a poet and multi-disciplinary artist from Eugene, Oregon. His publications include Fawn Language (Tebot Bach, 2013), Saying Your Name Three Times Underwater (Lithic Press) and Echolalia in Script: A Collection of Asemic Writing (Orison Books). His poems and visual art folios have appeared in various journals including Narrative, december magazine, Cream City Review, and basalt magazine; his collection of poems, Diary of Collected Summers, won the first place award in the 7th Annual Missouri Review Audio Competition in poetry. Sam is the owner of The Requatorist, a small business dedicated to community writing workshops.
Nance Van Winckel is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Our Foreigner (Beyond Baroque Press, 2017), winner of the Pacific Coast Poetry Prize, and Book of No Ledge (Pleiades Press Visual Poetry Series, 2016). Of her five books of fiction, Ever Yrs (Twisted Road Publications, 2014), a scrapbook novel, is her most recent. Nance is the recipient of two NEA poetry fellowships, the Paterson Fiction Prize, a Christopher Isherwood Fiction Fellowship, and three Pushcart Prizes. She teaches in the MFA programs at Eastern Washington University and Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Tags: friends, friends of the library, gelato, José Angel Araguz, Laura Read, Moran Prairie, Nance Van Winckel, poems, poetry, poetry picnic, poets, reading, Sam Roxas-Chua