Reading in Port Townsend on May 24; Cascadia Community College Class

Jeannine Hall Gailey is the Seattle-area author of Becoming the Villainess and She Returns to the Floating World, which is an Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist for 2012. Her upcoming collaborative book of poetry and art, Unexplained Fevers, is forthcoming from Kitsune Books in 2013. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in journals like The Iowa Review, The Seattle Review, and Prairie Schooner. She volunteers as an editorial consultant for Crab Creek Review and currently teaches part-time at the MFA program at National University.

Annette Spaulding-Convy’s full length collection, In Broken Latin, will be published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2012 as a finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, In The Convent We Become Clouds, won the 2006 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Crab Orchard Review and in the International Feminist Journal of Politics, among others. She is co-editor of the literary journal, Crab Creek Review, and is co-founder of Two Sylvias Press, which has published the first eBook anthology of contemporary women’s poetry, Fire On Her Tongue.

Northwind readings are free, though donations are gladly accepted to support Northwind Arts Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting the arts to our community. For more information contact Bill Mawhinney 360-437-9081

…….

In other news, I visited my friend Jared’s Intro to Poetry class at Cascadia Community College yesterday to talk about persona poetry with the students. For a lot of the students, this class is their first exposure to poetry. I had a lot of fun talking with them about pop culture, persona, and how to make a poem that is really more of a short story or dramatic dialogue. Visiting the class reminded me of how much fun I always have with these in-person visits. I think I really have a lot more fun when I can interact with students in-person versus online; it reminded me on the benefits of real-space teaching versus online interaction.
The weather has been blustery and cold. In the last few days, we’ve visited tortures upon ourselves…trips to Ikea, loading up vans with furniture and clothes, buying potting soil and pricing laundry machines at various hardware stores. Looks like moving day is almost upon us. I know I will feel like a prickly and yowly cat until we’re totally into the new place – I hate being in this in-between space, where I can’t remember which place I left my favorite shampoo or shoes. But it will be worth it, if for nothing else than not having to move again next year! Wish us luck!