Kathleen Flenniken (Post Romantic: Poems, University of Washington Press) and Donna Miscolta (Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories, Jaded Ibis Press) are launching new books included in the Seattle Times’ list of “fall books to look out for.” Tiffany Midge will read from Bury my Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s (University of Nebraska Press), recently named a nonfiction finalist for the Washington State Book Award and selected by Spokane and Spokane County Public Libraries for Spokane Is Reading 2020.

Kathleen Flenniken is the author of Post Romantic: Poems (University of Washington Press, 2020) and two previous poetry collections: Famous (University of Nebraska Press, 2006), named a Notable Book by the American Library Association, and Plume (University of Washington Press, 2012), a finalist for the William Carlos Williams Award. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, [PANK], The Iowa Review, Orion, and Third Coast. Her awards include fellowships from the NEA and Artist Trust, a Pushcart Prize, the Prairie Schooner Book Prize for Poetry, and a Washington State Book Award. She served as Washington State Poet Laureate from 2012-2014. Find her at kathleenflenniken.com, and buy a copy of Post Romantic: Poems at Elliott Bay Book Company.

Tiffany Midge is a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and was raised by wolves in the Pacific Northwest. Her most recent book is the memoir Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s (Bison Books), which Sarah Vowell called “a wry, and astute charmer.” Midge’s McSweeney’s essay “Open Letter to White Women Concerning the Handmaid’s Tale and America’s Historical Amnesia” won a 2019 Pushcart Prize, and her subversively comic collection of poems, Horns, is forthcoming from Spokane’s Scablands Books. Midge was the 2019 Simons Public Humanities fellow for University of Kansas Hall Center for the Humanities. She’s appeared on LiveWire with Luke Burbank, and broadcast interviews with Tara Gatewood for Native America Calling, and Rosanna Deerchild’s CBC Radio One Without Reservation. Midge aspires to be the Distinguished Writer in Residence for Seattle’s Space Needle and considers her contribution to humanity to be her sparkly personality. Find her at tiffanymidge.wixsite.com, and buy a copy of Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s at Elliott Bay Book Company.

Donna Miscolta’s third book of fiction, Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories, about lessons a young Mexican American girl learns in a world that favors neither her race nor gender, was published by Jaded Ibis Press in September 2020. Her story collection Hola and Goodbye, winner of the Doris Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman and published by Carolina Wren Press (2016), won an Independent Publishers award for Best Regional Fiction and an International Latino Book Award for Best Latino Focused Fiction. She’s also the author of the novel When the de la Cruz Family Danced from Signal 8 Press (2011), which poet Rick Barot called “intricate, tender, and elegantly written—a necessary novel for our times.” Recent essays appear in pif, Los Angeles Review, and the anthology Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19. Find her at donnamiscolta.com, and buy a copy of Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories at Elliott Bay Book Company.

Rena Priest, our moderator for the evening, is a writer and a member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation. She is the recipient of a 2020 Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award. Her literary debut, Patriarchy Blues, was honored with a 2018 American Book Award, and her most recent collection, Sublime Subliminal, was selected as the finalist for the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. Priest’s work can be found in literary journals and anthologies, including For Love of Orcas, Cosmonauts Avenue, Poetry Northwest, High Country News, and Nautilus. She has attended residencies at Hawthornden Castle, Hedgebrook, and Mineral School. She is a National Geographic Explorer and a Jack Straw Writer (2019). Find her at renapriest.com.