A Blog of Seattle Arts & Lectures
This piece was first featured by Literary Hub on March 18, 2016. You may find the original post here. When the Apocalypse is Your Religion: On Leaving the Church and Finding a Haven in Science Fiction By Rachel Kessler I grew up anxiously awaiting the apocalypse, a taste of ashes in my mouth. I dreamed […]
By Anastacia Tolbert, WITS Writer-in-Residence *I’m wearing faded blue jeans spotted with white paint, a long, un-tucked NASA t-shirt, a burgundy hooded sweater, a pageboy hat, stripped socks and black flats. The teacher has already told them a “professional writer” from WITS is coming. They haven’t Googled me but have formed ideas on what a […]
We were thrilled to have Sjohnna McCray join us from Savannah, GA for our recent event with Tracy K. Smith and Joshua Roman. Sjohnna’s book, Rapture, was selected by Tracy K. Smith as the winner of the 2015 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets and is forthcoming from Graywolf Press this April. […]
By Michael Overa, WITS Writer-in-Residence The first day of a new class, I’ve begun a rather nerve-wracking experiment (as if simply standing in front of thirty seventh or eighth grade students I’ve never met before wasn’t enough.) The experiment goes something like this: shortly after my partner teacher’s introduction – and before explaining any more […]
By Peter Mountford, WITS Writer-in-Residence When I was in middle school I had this magical power, which was very useful. The way it worked was that if I wanted a teacher to not call on me I could camouflage myself, or become invisible. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure how it worked, but I […]
By Anastacia Renee Tolbert, WITS Writer-in-Residence Tracy K. Smith’s Duende (2007) opens with: This is a poem about the itch. That stirs a nation at night. —”History” […]
By Jeanine Walker, WITS Writer-in-Residence My final day of teaching with my 4th & 5th grade students at Leschi Elementary School was last Thursday. I would call it bittersweet, but I’m not sure that’s the right word—there was plenty of sweetness from the students (free hugs! a delightful card! an orchid!)—but saying goodbye to them […]
Months Later Let me tell you about the day my tongue broke down. It melted into fine dust, iridescent particles of lies and rabbit-quick explanations I tried to get underneath where you used to be, but it was a tangled mess of boot buckles and bolts I sucked the lies from your marrow; they went […]
When we asked the different folks at SAL about the best writing on love, it was hard to know what to expect. The topic is so widely written about and so subject to cliché. And, yet, it is so satisfying to experience words on the page that somehow manage to capture the feeling and kind […]
Greg Stump is a WITS Writer-in-Residence at SAL and has been a regular contributor to The Stranger for more than a decade. He is the co-creator of the comic book series Urban Hipster, a former writer and editor for The Comics Journal, and the creator of the weekly alternative-newspaper comic Dwarf Attack. He teaches […]