Singing Seattle: A Reading and Celebration
Singing Seattle: A Reading and Celebration
Â
Three authors read poetry and creative nonfiction that speaks to our moment, followed by a Q&A and book signing. Samina Najmi reads from her debut memoir-in-essays Sing Me A Circle: Love, Loss, and a Home in Time, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha from her award-winning poetry collection Something About Living, and Kalehua Kim from her debut poetry collection Mele. The readings will be followed by a Q&A and book signing.
Samina Najmi
Samina Najmi is a professor of English at California State University, Fresno. Her memoir-in-essays, Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss, and a Home in Time, won the Aurora Polaris Award in Creative Nonfiction and was published Oct 1 by Trio House Press. It has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and is featured among Poets & Writersâ five creative nonfiction debuts of the year. Samina is enrolled part-time in Fresno Stateâs MFA program in creative nonfiction, and this is keeping her humble. Daughter of multiple migrations, Samina has lived in Fresno since 2006 and watched with wonder her children, her students, and her citrus grow.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist and translator. Her most recent book, Something About Living (UAkron, 2024), was listed as a 2025 notable book by the American Library Association, and was winner of the 2024 National Book Award, the 2025 Washington State Book Award, and the 2025 Arab American Book Award. Something About Living will be published by the 87Press in the UK and Ireland, where it is a finalist for the PEN Heaney Prize. She is also the author of Kaan and Her Sisters (Trio House, 2023), finalist for the Firecracker Prize, and Water & Salt (Red Hen, 2017), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award. Tuffahaâs writing has been published in journals including Los Angeles Review of Books, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Nation, Poets.org, and Prairie Schooner and in anthologies including The Long Devotion and We Call to the Eye and the Night. She was the translator and curator of the 2022 series âPoems from Palestineâ at the Baffler magazine. In 2024, she was a guest editor for Words Without Borders where she curated the series Against Silence. For more about her work, visit www.lenakhalaftuffaha.com
Kalehua Kim
Kalehua Kim is a poet living in the Pacific Northwest. Born of Hawaiian, Chinese, Filipino and Portuguese descent, her multicultural background informs much of her work. A 2023 winner of the James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Denver Quarterly, Calyx, and âĹiwi, A Native Hawaiian Journal. As a recipient of the 2024 Trio House Press Editor's Choice Prize, her first collection of poems, Mele, was released byTrio House in 2025.
