UW Castalia
Castalia is a monthly reading series featuring graduate students, faculty, and alumni from the University of Washington MFA program. Use the “Tickets” button above to register for the Zoom meeting. Readings begin at 7:30 pm.
This month’s reading features Ryan Kingsley, Zahra Al Zuwayed, Miranda Schmidt, and Pimone Triplett.
About the Readers
Ryan Kingsley is a poet from Massachusetts. He is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. He holds Bachelor’s degrees in English and Political Science from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. When, or if, he ever moves to Seattle, he will be looking for a running buddy to show him around the city and the PNW.
Zahra Al Zuwayed is a writer, translator and a visual artist. Originally from Saudi Arabia. She’s been enjoying exploring interdisciplinary approaches to storytelling here at the UW and in Seattle. She had her first essay published this summer at Kohl Journal, and it was translated into Arabic, Farsi and Italian. Zahra doesn’t think of writing as a hobby or a void art, rather, a necessary form of reclaiming power and agency. When not having a panic attack over unanswered emails, Zahra enjoys imagining herself being old and successful, imparting wisdom on her book tour. It always starts with, when I was in my twenties, ….
Miranda Schmidt is a writer, editor, and teacher whose work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Orion, Catapult, Electric Literature, and other journals. She has taught creative writing at the Loft, Portland’s Literary Arts, the University of Washington, and Portland Community College and edited for the Seattle Review, Phantom Drift, Sun Star Review, Lambda’s Emerge Anthology, and other publications. A Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Writers Fellow, they are also a graduate of the University of Washington’s MFA program. They are currently at work on a novel about haunting and a series of ecological lyric essays. Miranda grew up in the Midwest and she now lives in Portland, Oregon with their wife, child, and two cats.
Pimone Triplett is the author of Supply Chain (2017), her most recent collection of poems published by the University of Iowa Press. She is also the author of the book-length poetry collections Rumor (2009), The Price of Light (2005), and Ruining the Picture (1998). A former faculty member of the Kundiman Asian American Poetry Workshop, and the MFA programs at Warren Wilson and the University of Oregon, she is the recipient of publication awards and residencies from the Larry Levis Four Way Books Prize, the Oregon Book Award, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Fine Arts Work Center. With Daniel Tobin, she is the co-editor of Poet’s Work, Poet’s Play, a collection of essays on craft by Warren Wilson MFA Program professors. Her poems regularly appear in nationally recognized literary journals such as American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, New England Review, Iowa Review, and the Paris Review.
