May 1, 2024: Mary Ellen Talley Following a career in special education as a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP), Mary Ellen Talley now devotes herself to poetry endeavors. She has studied with Deborah Woodard, Judith Skillman, Susan Rich, and Kelli Russell Agodon, among others. Her poems have been published in journals such as Banshee, CIRQUE, and Deep Wild, as well as in anthologies such as “Sing the Salmon Home” and “Raising Lilly Ledbetter.” Her chapbook, “Postcards from the Lilac City,” was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020 and “Taking Leave '' by Kelsay Books in 2024. Born and raised in Spokane, she earned degrees at UW in Seattle, the city she and her husband call home. Visit maryellentalley.com. Emcee: Mary Crane June 5, 2024: John BurgessJohn Burgess grew up in upstate New York, worked on a survey crew in Montana, taught English in Japan, and now retired, writes and draws in Seattle. His influences include 70s punk, Montana bars, and Japanese haiku. He has six books of poetry from Ravenna Press, each with an increasing number of maps, graphs, and comics interwoven. His latest book is Punk Poems Complete (2023) which collects all 100 of his 10-line poems. He's a co-instigator with the Band of Poets, a poetry and music collaborative. More at punkpoet.net.
Emcee: Mary Crane July 3, 2024: Maurice RobkinMaurice Robkin grew up in Hollywood, California at the time that the electric streetcars still ran on Hollywood Boulevard. He graduated from Hollywood High School, within a few miles of major movie studios. He took his undergraduate degree from Caltech and his doctorate from MIT. He has worked as an engineer in industry and retired from the faculty of the University of Washington.
After he retired, he began to write fiction. He took some classes at UW Extension and practiced by writing two mysteries. He has written seven volumes of a series about Margaret Fleming Hawley, a female pirate. The eighth and last of the series is finished and is in the final editing phase. He writes fiction under the pseudonym of Martin March. As is the case for many authors of this new era, his books are available on Amazon. Many years ago, he tried his hand at poetry. He took a class but had little encouragement from the instructor. In the last few years, he tried again. Perhaps the added experiences of living made the attempts more productive. He now has a collection of poems on various themes, many of which he has inflicted on poetry open mics around his home in Puget Sound country. Emcee: Jeremy Robkin |
August 7, 2024: Joanna ThomasJOANNA THOMAS was born in April, which is the cruelest month, in Chicago, where the fog comes on little cat feet. She currently lives in a tin-sided house, on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, in a small, rural, university town. She encountered her first simile when she was eleven years old, while reading National Velvet, a novel in which author Enid Bagnold describes Velvet Brown's sisters as sleek golden greyhounds, their fine faces like antelopes. Thomas is a bibliophile. She is also a visual artist, working with paper scraps, scissors, and paste, and a poet, working with language fragments. She has no fear of breaking an egg to make an ocelot. When composing poems, she likes to read first drafts aloud to the dog, and when the dog says no, no, no, you gotta sigh like a goose, honk like a duck, quack like a bunny, she revises.
Emcee: Mary Crane September 4, 2024: Julene WeaverJulene Tripp Weaver is the author of four poetry collections, the newest released in May: Slow Now With Clear Skies. Prior books include: truth be bold: Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS (a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, winner of the Bisexual Book Award and four Human Relations Indie Book Awards), No Father Can Save Her, and a chapbook, Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues. Widely published and anthologized, she was a Jack Straw Writing Fellow (2022-2023) working on her memoir-in-process about living through the AIDS epidemic. She lives in Seattle, forages wild foods and lives according to the Wise Woman Tradition. Read more of her writing at www.julenetrippweaver.com.
Emcee: Pamela Denchfield Oct. 2, 2024: Tony BeemanTony Beeman is a Seattle-based writer and performer who has been published in the Sycamore Review, the Oak Leaf, and even a few non-tree based publications. He is Assistant Artistic Director at Unexpected Productions in Pike Place Market, where he has directed, produced and performed several poetry-based shows including Thirteen Ways and This Is For You (co-directed with Audrey Kohler). He minored in poetry at Purdue University, studying under Marianne Boruch and the late Tom Andrews, who once accused Tony of enthusiastically presenting and then abandoning his poems like paper airplanes thrown out a third story window. Tony has not yet broken the habit, and is excited to throw a few more airplanes this Fall.
Emcee: Jeremy Robkin November 6, 2024: Susan BlairSusan Blair is a poet, writer, arts event organizer and award-winning speaker. Her full-length poetry collection, A Howling, was published in the fall of 2023 by Press 53 in Winston-Salem, N.C. Her poetry chapbook, What Remains of a Life, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2018; her work has also appeared in numerous print and online publications. Susan founded and is the editor of The Shrub-Steppe Poetry Journal, an annual anthology representing the poets of Central Washington. She hosts the monthly “Third Thursday Poets” open mic event. She has also written five poetry-activity books for children and presents them in costume as “Perri the Poetry Fairy” to elementary school kids. Susan graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont with a B.A. in German and Russian and lives in Wenatchee, WA.
Emcee: TBA December 4, 2024: TBAWatch this space!
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