RASP: Redmond Association of Spokenword

Ching-In Chen is author of The Heart's Traffic: A Novel in Poems; Recombinant (2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry); Shiny City (forthcoming in 2025, and chapbooks To Make Black Paper Sing and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters. Chen is coeditor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities. They are a Kelsey Street Press collective member, Airlie Press editor, and current Redmond poet laureate.

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Jana Harris has taught creative writing at the University of Washington and at the Writer's Workshop in Seattle among other institutions. She is editor and founder of Switched-on Gutenberg. Her publications include You Haven't Asked About My Wedding or What I Wore, Poems of Courtship on the American Frontier (University of Alaska Press), and the memoir, Horses Never Lie About Love (Simon & Schuster). Jana will be reading from a new manuscript: "The Girl Who Drew Horses, the Woman Who Painted Lions," poems on the life and art of French Painter Rosa Bonheur (1822–99).

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Peter Ludwin is the recipient of a literary fellowship from Artist Trust, the 2016 winner of the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award for his poem "Wolf Concerto," and the 2024 winner of the Trail to Table Editors' Award in Poetry for his new book, An Altar of Tides. The author of three previous books, two of which were nominated for other awards, he spent fourteen years as a participant in the San Miguel Poetry Week in Mexico, where he workshopped under top poets such as Mark Doty, Tony Hoagland, Joseph Stroud, and Robert Wrigley. Peter lives in Kent, and his website is https://peterludwin.com/.

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Frederick Livingston grew from the southern tip of the Salish Sea in Olympia. Sustainable agriculture and experiential education have since taken him around the world, from Peace Corps Tanzania to the University for Peace in Costa Rica and beyond. Since his sixth-grade debut on local-access television reciting "Ode to a Chair," his work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, scientific journals, and public spaces. He is the author of The Moon and Other Fruits and Trees are Bridges to the Sky, which won the Prism Prize for Climate Literature. Visit https://fredericklivingston.com/.

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Iz White is an enrolled member of the Snoqualmie Tribe in King County. He grew up homeless in Seattle, well below the poverty line, in the 1990s. His tribe was federally recognized in 1999 and it has continued to strengthen its efficiency and stability in financial development. That has given Iz both a unique perspective and breathing room to pursue his biggest obsession in life, which has been to improve his craft of writing. He is an up-and-coming poet who speaks on social issues not only for his people, but all people affected by an ever-changing demographic in and around the greater Seattle area.

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• Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/ RedmondAssociationOfSpokenword/
• Twitter: @RedmondRASP
• Contact us: contact.rasp.read@gmail.com