Jenny Xie: In-Person & Online

Marco Giugliarelli

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Poetry

Jenny Xie: In-Person & Online

Past Event: Tuesday, January 17, 2023

At Rainier Arts Center

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In Person & Online

Jenny Xie is a celebrated poet, and author of the National Book Award and PEN Open Book Award finalist, Eye Level: a meditation on the forces that moor us and those that set us in motion.

Xie’s newly-released second collection, The Rupture Tense, explores the reverberant and vexed experiences of diasporic homecoming, intergenerational memory transfer, state-enforced amnesia, public secrecies, and the psychic fallout of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

All Poetry Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscribers receive a copy of The Rupture Tense, shipped to their doors by our partner bookstore. Please note: complimentary subscriptions and single tickets do not include the book.

Q&A with poet Jane Wong.

Shaped around moments of puncture and release, The Rupture Tense registers what leaks across the breached borders between past and future, background and foreground, silence and utterance. Across these poems, memory—whether historical, collective, or personal—stains and erodes. Xie voices what remains irreducible in our complex entanglements with familial ties, language, capitalism, and the histories in which we find ourselves lodged.

The collection begins with poems provoked by the photography of Li Zhensheng, whose negatives, hidden under his floorboards to avoid government seizure, provide one of the few surviving visual archives of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and concludes with an aching elegy for the poet’s grandmother, who took her own life shortly after the end of the Revolution. Xie records the aftershocks and long distances between those years and the present, echoing out toward the ongoing past and a trembling future.

Xie is also author of the 2017 chapbook, Nowhere to Arrive, which received the Drinking Gourd Prize. She has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Kundiman, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2020, she was awarded the Vilcek Prize in Creative Promise. She has taught at Princeton and NYU and is currently on faculty at Bard College.

Jane Wong, our Q&A moderator for the evening, is the author of two poetry collections: How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James, 2021) and Overpour (Action Books, 2016). Her debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, is forthcoming from Tin House in May 2023. A Kundiman fellow, she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room, the U.S. Fulbright Program, Artist Trust, the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf, Hedgebrook, Willapa Bay, the Jentel Foundation, and others. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Western Washington University.

Event Details

Rainier Arts Center

3515 S Alaska St, Seattle, WA 98118

View directions.

Know Before You Go

COVID-19 Policies

The safety of our patrons, artists, community partners, staff, and volunteers continues to be important to us. At this time, facial masks are encouraged but not required for entry, and proof of vaccination or negative COVID-19 test is no longer required. However, health and safety protocols are subject to change. Before attending events, please check your pre-event email for the most up-to-date information.

Can't find your tickets?

All tickets have been emailed for this event, so be sure to check your inbox for an email from boxoffice@lectures.org. Call us at 206-621-2230 x10 if you can’t find them.

For in-person attendance: Your e-tickets come attached in a PDF with your ticket order confirmation email. Present on your mobile device or bring your printed ticket to the venue the night of the event. Check your pre-event email for details on COVID safety precautions.

For online attendance: Your e-tickets, which come attached in a PDF with your ticket order confirmation email, contain your digital access instructions. The night of your event, return to lectures.org/eventjenny-xie and enter the password where prompted. The program begins at 7:30 p.m. (PT) and will be available for viewing for a week after the event.

SAL will also send an email the day of the event, containing the same information. If you have opted out of receiving SAL emails, you will miss this important information—please email us at boxoffice@lectures.org and we will assist you.

Have a question for the speaker?

Want to ask the author something? Send your question to SAL at sal@lectures.org—it might be asked onstage!

Books

Poetry Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscribers receive a copy of The Rupture Tense, shipped to their doors by our partner bookstore. Please note: complimentary subscriptions and single tickets do not include the book.

Our partner bookstore, Open Books: A Poem Emporium, will have books available for purchase at their table in the lobby and on their website.

Patrons & Grand Patrons, Have a Drink on SAL!

Patron & Grand Patron seating includes a pre-event drink ticket! Check your pre-event email for details.

Transportation & Parking

This event will be held at the Rainier Arts Center.

Rainier Arts Center is Southeast Seattle’s community performing arts center, which overlooks Columbia Park at the gateway to Columbia City. The Center is located at the corner of Rainier Ave S and S Alaska St.

By Car

Click here for directions.

By Public Transit

The Center is three blocks from the Columbia City Light Rail Station and is served by King County Metro bus routes #7 and #50.

Parking

The parking lot can accommodate 15 vehicles; additional parking is available on the street.

Accessibility

Open Captioning is an option for people who have hearing losses, where a captioning screen displaying the words that are spoken or sung is placed on stage. To make a request for open captioning, please contact us at boxoffice@lectures.org or 206.621.2230×10. Please note: for in-person captioning at Langston, we appreciate a two-week advance notice to allow us time to secure captioning services. 

Closed Captioning is an option for people who have hearing loss, where captioning displays the words that are spoken or sung at the bottom of the video during an online event. Captioning is available for all online events; click the “CC” button to view captions during the event.

Sign Language Interpretation is available upon request for Deaf, DeafBlind, and hard of hearing individuals at all in-person and online events. To make a request for interpretation, please contact us at boxoffice@lectures.org or 206.621.2230×10, or select “Sign Language Interpretation” from the Accessibility section during your ticket checkout process and we will contact you to confirm details. Please note: we appreciate a two-week advance notice to allow us time to secure interpretation

Assistive Listening Devices (ALDs) are devices that people with hearing loss use in conjunction with their hearing device (hearing aids or cochlear implants). To pick up a headset, check in with the SAL Box Office when you arrive.

Wheelchair Accessible Seating and Accessible Restrooms are available in the theatre, which complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. To reserve seating for a specific mobility concern, please contact us at boxoffice@lectures.org or 206.621.2230×10, or select “Wheelchair Accessible or Alternative Seating Options” during ticket checkout, and we will contact you to confirm details.

Guide and service dogs are welcome.

We are pleased to offer these accessibility services at our venues, and they are provided at no additional cost to ticket holders. Please contact us with any questions and feedback about how we can be more accessible and inclusive. Our Patron Services Manager is available at boxoffice@lectures.org, or Tuesday-Friday, from 12 noon–5 p.m., at 206.621.2230×10.

For more accessibility information, please head to lectures.org/accessibility. If you would like to make accessibility arrangements you do not see listed here, please contact our box office or select “Other Accommodations” from the Accessibility section during your ticket checkout process, and we will contact you to confirm details.

Sponsors

Poetry Series Sponsor

Charles B. & Barbara Wright

Media Sponsor