Write Our Democracy: Writers for Reproductive Rights
Hugo House is pleased to welcome the return of our collaborative programming with Write Our Democracy. Join us for a new reading and community event hosted by Julia Hands and Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum.
How do we as writers and community members best utilize our voices, both on and off the page, to combat the ongoing onslaught of legislative violence? Write Our Democracy returns to confront these questions and to alchemize our rage into progressive action.
We will assemble with six writers from across Washington state as they share the stage and their writing on the topic of reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy.
We will share opportunities to donate to the Northwest Abortion Access Fund as well as further information on how to take action for reproductive rights.
[Originally launched as Writers Resist, a movement that inspired nearly 100 worldwide events on January 15, 2017, Write Our Democracy is an initiative to gather and mobilize writers and focus public attention on the ideals of a free, just, and compassionate democracy.]
Jane Wong
Jane Wong is the author of How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James, 2021) and Overpour (Action Books, 2016). A Kundiman fellow, she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from Harvard's Woodberry Poetry Room, the U.S. Fulbright Program, Artist Trust, Hedgebrook, Willapa Bay, the Jentel Foundation, and others. Her debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, is forthcoming from Tin House. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Western Washington University. Her poetry art installations have been shown at the Frye Art Museum and the Richmond Art Gallery.
Julia Hands
Julia Hands is a writer and editor out of Seattle. She has previously served on the board of Lit Crawl: Seattle and is the current Editor-in-Chief at Crab Creek Review. Her poems and stories have appeared in various publications, including Cream City Review, Evansville Review, The Shore, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, among others.
Kait Heacock
Kait Heacock is a writer, book publicist, and events coordinator at Elliott Bay Book Company. Her work has appeared most recently in Liber Review, Evergreen Review, Women's Review of Books, PANK, and Literary Hub, and in her debut story collection, Siblings and Other Disappointments. Kait is currently at work on a novel about how women face their fears, both superficial and existential, as played out at an immersive horror-themed sleepaway camp for adults.
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.
Corinne Manning
Corinne Manning's debut story collection We Had No Rules has received starred reviews from Booklist and Publisher's Weekly the latter noting it "exquisitely examines queer relationships with equal parts humor, heartache, and titillation." Corinne has taught for Hugo House since 2011.
Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum
Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum is the author of three collections of short fiction, most recently What We Do With the Wreckage, which won the 2017 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and was published by UGA Press in 2018. Her earlier collections are Swimming With Strangers (Chronicle, 2008) and This Life She's Chosen (Chronicle, 2005). Her short fiction has been published in Ploughshares, McSweeney's, One Story, and North American Review, among other journals, and she has been the recipient of a PEN/O. Henry Prize. Kirsten teaches fiction writing at Hugo House and 9th–12th grade English at a small independent school near Seattle.
Maya Jewell Zeller
Maya Jewell Zeller is the author of the interdisciplinary collaboration (with visual artist Carrie DeBacker) Alchemy For Cells & Other Beasts, the chapbook Yesterday, the Bees, and the poetry collection Rust Fish; her prose appears in such places as Brevity and Gettysburg Review. Recipient of a Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation as well as a Residency in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Maya is Associate Professor of English for Central Washington University, and Affiliate Poetry Faculty for Western Colorado University's low-res MFA. Find Maya on Twitter @MayaJZeller.
Michelle Peñaloza
Michelle Peñaloza is the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019). She is also the author of two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015), and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). The recipient of fellowships and awards from the University of Oregon and Kundiman, Michelle has also received support from Lemon Tree House, Caldera, 4Culture, Literary Arts, VONA/Voices, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, among others. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives in rural Northern California.
