AWP | Write Bloody Poetry Super Showcase & Sock Hop
Join Write Bloody Publishing for an evening of poetry and dancing! The event begins with readings by Amber Flame, Courtney LeBlanc, Taylor Mali, Sheleen McElhinney, Kimberly Nguyen, and Seema Reza. Then, it's time to ditch our shoes and boogie down in our sock-clad feet!
The House bar will be open to serve alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.
Admission is offered on a sliding scale, from $0-$25. Revenue from ticket sales directly supports Hugo House's mission to provide space for all to read words, hear words, and make their own words better. We encourage you to pick a ticket price that is right for you.
Please note: Our venue can accommodate seating for 150 attendees. Pre-registration to this event is strongly encouraged, and will be open until 1 hour before the start of the event. After this, walk-in registration will be available at the door.
To learn more about AWP Conference & Bookfair, visit their website here.
To learn more about Hugo House’s AWP events, visit our AWP page here.
Kimberly Nguyen
Kimberly Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American diaspora poet originally from Omaha, Nebraska but now living in New York City. Her work can be found in diaCRITICS, Hobart, Muzzle Magazine, The Minnesota Review, and others. She was a recipient of a Beatrice Daw Brown Prize, and she was a finalist for Frontier Poetry’s 2021 OPEN and New Poets Awards and Palette Poetry’s 2021 Previously Published Poem Prize. She was a 2021 Emerging Voices Fellow at PEN America and is currently a 2022-2023 Poetry Coalition Fellow.
Sheleen McElhinney
Sheleen McElhinney is the author of Every Little Vanishing, a Write Bloody book. Her poems have also appeared or are forthcoming in Abandon Journal, Lily Poetry Review, Bayou Magazine, Slant, Laurel Review, and elsewhere. She is from Bucks County, Pa where she currently lives with her three children.
Courtney LeBlanc
Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the full-length collections Her Whole Bright Life (winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Prize, Write Bloody, 2023), Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart (Riot in Your Throat, 2021) and Beautiful & Full of Monsters (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2020). She is a Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellow (2022) and the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning. Read her publications on her blog: www.wordperv.com. Follow her on twitter: @wordperv, and IG: @wordperv79.
Seema Reza
Seema Reza is the author of the books A Constellation of Half-Lives and When the World Breaks Open. She is the CEO of Community Building Art Works, a non-profit organization that brings workshops led by professional artists to service members, veterans, and clinicians and is featured in the 2018 HBO documentary We Are Not Done Yet. Her writing has been widely anthologized and has appeared in the Washington Post, McSweeney’s, The LA Review, LitHub and Electric Literature among others. Case studies from her work with military populations have appeared in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Related Diseases in Combat Veterans.
Derrick C Brown
DERRICK C. BROWN is a novelist, comedian, poet, and storyteller. He is the winner of the 2013 Texas Book of The Year award for Poetry. He is a former paratrooper for the 82nd Airborne. He is the owner and president of Write Bloody Publishing, which Forbes and Filter Magazine call “…one of the best independent poetry presses in the country.” He is the author of eight books of poetry and four children’s books. The New York Times calls his work “…a rekindling of faith in the weird, hilarious, shocking, beautiful power of words.” He lives in Los Angeles.
Amber Flame
Amber Flame is an artist and performer, whose work has garnered artistic merit residencies with Hedgebrook, The Watering Hole, Wa Na Wari, Vermont Studio Center, and Yefe Nof. Flame served as the 2017-2019 poetry Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House in Seattle, and is a queer Black dandy mama who falls hard for a jumpsuit and some fresh kicks.
Taylor Mali
TAYLOR MALI is a four-time National Poetry Slam champion and one of the original poets on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. The author of six books of poetry including Late Father & Other Poems, he is also the inventor of Metaphor Dice, a game that helps writers think more figuratively. He lives in Brooklyn.
