This four-part reading series features acclaimed poets, writers, and comics artists who teach in SAL’s Writers in the Schools (WITS) program. In addition to cultivating the next generation of writers, WITS writers are their own creative forces. Tonight’s program will feature Samar Abulhassan, Naomi Day, Gloria Demissie, Karen Finneyfrock, Gabriella Garcia, and Sierra Nelson! These resident writers come together to read from their own work, inspiring the same craft and performance skills they teach in the classroom.
All are welcome to join these warm-hearted, fun community events. Murmurations is free to attend but RSVP is appreciated.
Samar Abulhassan is a Jack Straw Writer and holds an M.F.A. from Colorado State University. She’s worked in California public schools for seven years. Born to Lebanese immigrants and raised with multiple languages, she is a 2006 Hedgebrook alum and the author of six chapbooks, including Farah and Nocturnal Temple. Samar has worked with Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools since 2008. Samar also recently participated in the 2018 Skagit River Poetry Festival. In 2016, Samar received a CityArtist grant to aid in completing a novel-in-poems reflecting on memory, longing, and the Arabic alphabet. Samar often finds inspiration in images and places and replicates these techniques in her teaching.
Naomi Day is a writer, editor, and teaching artist raised in the hills of western Massachusetts. She works primarily with Black speculative fiction to examine queerness, belonging, and her own generational distance from the concept of home. She received both her passion for teaching artistry and an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School, and is excited to bring her NYC-based teaching experience to her students in Seattle. Her work in the classroom is rooted in her belief that art making is world making. She uses everything from her extensive dance background to her love of film photography to cultivate joyful learning environments in support of this effort.
Gloria Demissie is an Ethiopian-born poet, writer, and performer whose interest in creating worlds through words began at a young age. They spent their adolescent years in Seattle navigating their identity in the context of a white American culture and grew curious of the complex systems that shape these identities. As she returns to her love of creating, she is informed and motivated by her work in youth development to bring the power and joy of art into the classroom. She believes writing gives us the power and access to reimagine our world outside of the colonial constructs that make up our realities. As the Vice President for Writing Black @ The House, they facilitate discussions and plan events and programming to strengthen the communing of local Black artists. Gloria studied Political Science, Women Gender & Sexuality Studies, and holds a B.A. in Criminal Justice from Washington State University.
Karen Finneyfrock is a poet and novelist. She is the author of two young adult novels: The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door and Starbird Murphy and the World Outside, both published by Viking Children’s Books. She is one of the editors of the anthology Courage: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls, and the author of Ceremony for the Choking Ghost, both released on Write Bloody press. She is a former Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House.
Gabriella Garcia for Gabriella, writing is a celebration of language and our interconnectedness. It is her favorite way to uplift the beauty of everyday life. She is a poet and librettist. Her chamber opera, A Spring Like This, a collaboration with composer Nehemiah Jones, premiered in 2025 with the support of Seattle Opera’s Jane Lang Davis Creation Lab. She holds a B.A. in linguistics from Wellesley College. She grew up in Phoenix and now lives in Seattle, WA.
Sierra Nelson is a poet, co-founder of literary performance art groups The Typing Explosion and Vis-à-Vis Society, and president of Seattle’s Cephalopod Appreciation Society. Her poetry books include The Lachrymose Report (PoetryNW Editions) and two collaborative books made with visual artist Loren Erdrich: I Take Back the Sponge Cake (Rose Metal Press) and artist book ISOLATION. Earning her M.F.A. in poetry from University of Washington, Nelson is a Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of the Carolyn Kizer Prize. Her poems have appeared in Seattle Metro buses, at the Seattle Aquarium, in soundboxes along Denny Way, with Nordic runes on lava stones in Iceland, read across the U.S. and Canada on the Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour, and at the Slovenian Natural History Museum, as well as in more traditional literary journals and anthologies. She is currently editing an anthology of cephalopod-inspired poetry and lyrical prose, forthcoming with World Enough Writers.