Upcoming Readers

Jan. 6, 2026: Bethany Reid

Bethany Reid’s fourth full-length poetry book, The Pear Tree: Elegy for a Farm, won MoonPath Press’s 2023 Sally Albiso Award. Her poetry has won numerous awards, including the Gell Poetry Prize, Calyx’s Lois Cranston Memorial Prize, and OPN’s Jeanne Lohmann Prize. Her poems, short stories, essays, and poetry reviews have recently been published in Catamaran, After-Images, Tendon, Escape Into Life, Raven Chronicles and Calyx. She earned her MFA and PhD from the University of Washington and taught English, creative writing, and literature to college students for 30 years. She now teaches for the Creative Retirement Institute (CRI) and blogs about writing and life at http://www.bethanyareid.com

Emcee: Mary Crane

Feb. 3, 2026: Charlie Glick

I’m Charlie. I’m a poet and musician living in the foothills above Duvall. A multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, I spent my 20s writing, recording, and touring North America with my band Sure Sure. In the wake of the pandemic, I transitioned away from an all-out music career and into a phase of wandering: working on farms, writing poetry, nearly attending an MFA program before backing out to start a new band (Outside Air) and making another album. The Eaton Fire ate up my home and most of my belongings in Los Angeles in January of 2025, which spurred me to wander once again and enroll in the Immersion program at Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall to deepen my connection with the more-than-human world and train as a naturalist.

For me, writing poetry is a bit like making spells and divining the future. It springs from a mode of paying attention to the world that drops us into deep imagination, giving access to the currents behind the wind and rain and seasons. Poetry found me when I first lived in Washington out on the Olympic Peninsula in 2021—there’s something about this corner of the country that draws poems out of me. I took workshop under Gary Copeland Lilley for a couple years, and his feel for line and music has continued to influence my writing. I’ve had work published here and there in lit mags like the Southern Review, Reed Magazine, Voicemail Poems, Thimble Lit, and others.

Emcee: Jeremy Robkin

March 3, 2026: Brenda Cooper

Brenda Cooper is a futurist, a writer, and an editor. She writes speculative fiction and poetry of all types. She holds an MFA from Stonecoast and is an Imaginary College Fellow at the Center for Science and the Imagination, CSI, at Arizona State University. Her fiction has won two Endeavour awards and been shortlisted for the Phillip K. Dick Award. She also writes the Creative Courage substack which highlights creators of all kind pushing back on power. Brenda’s most recent work includes a collection of stories and poems about strong women and the environment, When Mothers Dream, from Fairwood Press. Brenda lives in Washington State where she can be found riding bikes and walking dogs.

Emcee: Jeremy Robkin

April 7, 2026: Christianne Balk

Christianne Balk’s latest book is The Holding Hours (University of Washington Press Northwest Poetry Series). She loves broken music, the rhythms of everyday street talk, and open water swimming. Honors include The Walt Whitman Award for Bindweed, and fellowships/grants from Artist Trust, Hedgebrook, and Jackstraw Studios. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Cirque Literary Journal, The Naugatuck River Review, Nimrod, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Poemoftheweek.org, Terrain, and other magazines.

Emcee: Jeremy Robkin

May 5, 2026: Tina Schumann

Tina Schumann is the award winning author of four poetry collections, most recently Boneyard Heresies, winner of the 2023 Moon City Press Poetry Award (Missouri State University); Praising the Paradox (Red Hen Press, 2019) a finalist in the National Poetry Series; Requiem. A Patrimony of Fugues (Diode Editions, 2017) winner of the Diode Editions Chapbook Competition and As If (Parlor City Press, 2010) winner of the Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize. She is editor of the IPPY-award winning anthology Two Countries. U.S. Daughters and Sons of Immigrant Parents (Red Hen, 2017.) Schumann’s work received the American Poet Prize from The American Poetry Journal, runner-up status in the 2023 annual Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize from The Missouri Review and finalist status in the 2013 Terrain.org annual poetry contest. Her work has received honorable mentions in The Atlantic and Crab Creek Review as well as an editor’s choice in The Allen Ginsberg Award. She serves as poetry editor with Wandering Aengus Press, she holds a MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University, and her poems have appeared in publications and anthologies since 1999, including The American Journal of Poetry, Ascent, Bear Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, Cimarron Review, Diode, Hunger Mountain Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Nimrod, Parabola, Palabra, Paterson Literary Review, Poetry Daily. Rattle, Southern Humanities Review, Verse Daily, and read on NPR's The Writer's Almanac.

Emcee: Pamela Denchfield

June 2, 2026: Priscilla Long

Priscilla Long’s eighth book and third book of poems is Cartographies of Home (MoonPath Press, 2026). Forthcoming in 2026 is Chambers of Being: Essays on Spaces and Colors and the third edition of The Writer’s Portable Mentor (University of New Mexico Press, 2026). Her awards include a National Magazine Award and ten of her essays have been honored as "notable" in various years of Best American Essays. She has an MFA from the University of Washington and grew up on a dairy farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. (Photo from Anne Herman)

Emcee: Pamela Denchfield

July 7, 2026: Laura LeHew

Laura LeHew grew up in the Midwest where she spent her childhood summers playing Man from U.N.C.L.E. and chasing fireflies. Widely published her collections include: Let Widows Be Widows (Unsolicited Press) 2022, themed around the elegiac, Dear John--(The Poetry Box) 2021 themed around love and divorce, Buyer’s Remorse (Tiger’s Eye Press—Infinities) poems on abuse, Becoming (Another New Calligraphy) a non-linear discourse on alcoholism and dementia, Willingly Would I Burn, (MoonPath Press) themed around math and science, It’s Always Night, It Always Rains, (Winterhawk Press) murder/noir and Beauty (Tiger’s Eye Press) fairy tales. She is actively seeking a home for her manuscript The Whisper of Night Moths.

Laura received her MFA from the California College of the Arts. She was on the steering committee for the Emerald Literary Guild. Laura held various positions for the Oregon Poetry Association including President, Contest Chair and Cascadia editor, she co-hosted a reading series, Poetry for the People, and has received residencies to Hypatia-in-the-Wood, PLAYA, the Montana Artists Refuge, and Soapstone. Laura facilitates ;unruly poets, owns and edits Uttered Chaos, a small press and is the recipient of the 2021 Oregon Poetry Association’s (OPA) Patricia Ruth Banta Award. She facilitates the writing group ;unruly poets, and spends her days taking photos of rivers and roses. Find her at: www.lauralehew.com | www.utteredchaos.org

Emcee: Mary Crane

Aug. 4, 2026: Alan Weltzien

O. Alan Weltzien, a Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Montana Western, retired in 2020 after 40 years of full-time teaching. Weltzien grew up in Bellevue and Camano Island, WA. He attended Whitman College as an undergraduate (B.A.) and the University of Virginia for graduate school (M.A., PhD). He taught 11 years at Ferrum College in Ferrum, VA, and the remaining 29 years at UMW in Dillon, MT. Early in his career, Weltzien received two Fulbright Fellowships (Poland, 1989-90, and Bulgaria, 1997-98). He also received two University of Montana International Faculty Awards (Australia, 2003, and France, 2010).

Weltzien has published eleven books and five chapbooks. These include studies or collections of writers Rick Bass, John McPhee, and Norman Maclean. Additionally, he published the biography of Montana novelist, Thomas Savage (2020), whose best novel, “The Power of Of the Dog," was made into an award-winning film of the same name by internationally acclaimed director, Jane Campion (2021).

Weltzien has published a memoir, “A Father and an Island” (Lewis-Clark Press, 2008) and three full-length poetry collections, most recently “On The Beach: Poems 2016 - 2021” (Cirque Press, 2022). More recent work includes a prose chapbook, “The Taylor Triptych” (The Sea Letter journal, no. 12, winter 2024), and a poetry chapbook, “Into The Khumbu” (Cirque Press, 2025).

Emcee: Mary Crane

Sept. 1, 2026: Iz White

Iz White is a proud Snoqualmie tribal member. His tribe is located in King County. He grew up homeless in Seattle, writing poetry on napkins on the back of buses. He disguised his poetry as rap in middle school so the other kids would stop making fun of him. He got his start on stage through Red Eagle Soaring, a Native youth theater group, and he now hones his craft at Hugo House’s monthly open mic. Hugo House’s inclusive environment has helped him represent Indigenous culture while finding his voice. He is honored to share his work.

Emcee: Pamela Denchfield