Seattle Arts and Lectures

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.