Although this event has passed, you can still purchase a digital pass to view the event through Monday, March 11. Join us for a double-feature with two stunning poets! Roger Reeves is the author of Best Barbarian, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Anastacia-Reneé, a Seattle literary legend, is a queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, podcaster, and the author of Sidenotes from the Archivist.
Q&A with Amber Flame.
All Poetry Series, Create Your Own Series, and Super SAL subscribers receive a copy of Best Barbarian, shipped to their doors by our partner bookstore, Open Books. Please note: complimentary subscriptions and single tickets do not include the book.
Roger Reeves is the author of Best Barbarian (W.W. Norton & Co., 2022), a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Tracy K. Smith called it “a revelation and a form of reparation.” His debut collection is King Me (Copper Canyon Press, 2013), a Library Journal Best Poetry Book of the year, and winner of the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and a John C. Zacharis First Book Award. His next book is Dark Days: Fugitive Essays to be published by Graywolf in August 2023.
His poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Tin House, among others. He was awarded a 2013 NEA Fellowship, Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation in 2008, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, two Bread Loaf Scholarships, an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, two Cave Canem Fellowships and a Whiting Award.
He earned a B.A. in English from Morehouse College, an M.A. in English from Texas A & M University, an MFA from the James A. Michener Center for Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He is currently a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and an associate professor of English and creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin.
Anastacia-Reneé (she/they) is a queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, speaker and podcaster. She is the author of (v.), (Black Ocean), and Forget It (Black Radish), as well as Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere and Sidenotes from the Archivist (Amistad). They were selected by NBC News as part of the list of “Queer Artist of Color Dominate 2021’s Must See LGBTQ Art Shows.” Anastacia-Reneé was former Seattle Civic Poet (2017-2019), Hugo House Poet-in-Residence (2015-2017), Arc Artist Fellow (2020) and Jack Straw Curator (2020).
Her work has been anthologized in: Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature, Home is Where You Queer Your Heart, Furious Flower Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Afrofuturism, Black Comics, And Superhero Poetry, Joy Has a Sound, Spirited Stone: Lessons from Kubota’s Garden, and Seismic: Seattle City of Literature. Her work has appeared in, Hobart, Foglifter, Auburn Avenue, Catapult, Alta, Torch, Poetry Northwest, A-Line, Cascadia Magazine, Hennepin Review, Ms. Magazine and others. Renee has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Ragdale, Mineral School, and The New Orleans Writers Residency.
Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, activist and educator, garnering residencies with Hedgebrook, Baldwin for the Arts, and more. Flame’s first collection, Ordinary Cruelty, published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press. Flame’s second book, apocrifa, a love story told in verse, launched 2023 from Red Hen Press. She serves as Program Director of Hedgebrook and continues to work as a writing instructor in community while working on a third poetry collection, making music with her band Last of the RedHot Mamas, making art and writing essays, and raising her awesome kid. Amber Flame is a queer Black dandy mama who falls hard for a jumpsuit and some fresh kicks.
