The House Party: A 25th Anniversary Community Celebration
Presented by the Lee and Claudia Brooke Foundation
You're invited to celebrate Hugo House's 25 years as Seattle's beloved community literary hub, and to help kick off the next 25 years to come! Enjoy activities and reading throughout the House, plus drinks, desserts, and a dance party to finish off the festive evening!
We're excited to announce some of the marvelous friends of The House who will be with us to cheers to 25 years in the books and 25 years (and more) to come. Taking the Hugo House stage at The House Party:
– Sonora Jha, essayist, novelist, researcher, and Hugo House instructor
– Amber Flame, interdisciplinary creative, activist, and Hugo House instructor
– Nicole Hardy, memoirist, poet, and Hugo House instructor
– Janae Johnson, poet, performer, and educator
But wait, there's more!
Works in Progress open mic will be happening throughout the evening in the Salon. Plus Janae Johnson will keep the vibes going into the night with a dance party, spinning as DJ SummerSoft.
Admission is offered on a sliding scale, from $0-$250. 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.
Tickets will be available for sale online until 4 pm on Friday, October 20. A limited number of tickets will be available day-of at the door starting at 7 pm. Be sure to arrive early to snag your tickets.
Janae Johnson
Janae Johnson is an award-winning poet, performer, and educator. Her writing celebrates and centers on Black queer masculinity, kinship, and belonging. She is a former National Poetry Slam Champion, Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, and a founder of two nationally recognized poetry venues: The Root Slam (Oakland, CA) and The House Slam (Boston, MA). Janae’s full-length poetry collection Lessons on Being Tenderheaded is forthcoming in Spring 2022 by Write Bloody Publishing. Janae currently resides in Tacoma, WA.
Amber Flame
Amber Flame is a Black, queer, nonbinary, Disabled multi-disciplinary artist making work at the nexus of grief and joy, caregiving and self, the speculative and the natural world. Raised in the church, Flame brings gospel and spiritual inquiry to writing and singing blues about Black queer life with the band Last of the RedHot Mamas. Flame’s writing has been published in diverse arenas and anthologies, including Wanting: Women Writing About Desire. Ordinary Cruelty, Flame’s full-length poetry collection, published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press; the second book, apocrifa, launched May 2023 from Red Hen Press, with a third collection forthcoming in fall 2027. Flame’s work has been supported and recognized by Jack Straw, Hedgebrook, Storyknife, Millay, Shunpike, Hugo House, and more. Co-founder of Generous Press, a romance house publishing diverse love stories, Flame is at work writing essays and a romance novel while raising a talented kid in Tacoma, Washington.
Nicole Hardy
Nicole Hardy is the author of the memoir Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin and the poetry collections This Blonde and Mud Flap Girl's XX Guide to Facial Profiling — a chapbook of pop-culture inspired sonnets.
Sonora Jha
Sonora Jha is the author of four books, including the novel The Laughter, winner of the 2024 Washington State Book Award. Her previous books are the novel Foreign (2013) and the memoir How To Raise A Feminist Son (2021). After a career as a journalist covering crime, politics, and culture in India and Singapore, she moved to the United States to earn a Ph.D. in media and public affairs. Sonora’s work has been featured in The New York Times, on the BBC, in literary anthologies, and elsewhere. She is a Loyola Endowed Professor at Seattle University and lives in Seattle. Her new novel, Intemperance, will be out from Harper Via in October 2025.
