Wage Slaves: Tales from the Grind
Seattle’s favorite reading series about work is back with another installment. Anastacia-Renee, Bruce Barcott, Kate Lebo, Sam Ligon, and Brian McGuigan share their stories and poems about labors of love and commerce—from pot shops and pie racks to racism, parenting, and the local lit scene. Sierra Golden and Michelle Goodman emcee. The event is free and the bar will be serving beer, wine, and cocktails. In keeping with Wage Slaves tradition, free Top Pot donuts will be served.
Anastacia-Renee is a queer super-shero of color moonlighting as a writer, performance artist, and creative writing workshop facilitator. She has received awards and fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Jack Straw, Ragdale, and Artist Trust. She was recently selected as Hugo House’s 2015–16 poet-in-residence. Her chapbook, 26, published by Dancing Girl Press, is an abbreviated alphabet expression of the lower and uppercase lives of women and girls. A 2015 Pushcart nominee, her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have been published widely. This year she began a year-long theatrical mixed-media project in collaboration with the Project Room, 9 Ounces: A One Woman Show.
Bruce Barcott, a Guggenheim Fellow in nonfiction, contributes longform journalism to Time magazine, National Geographic, the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and other national publications. His most recent book, Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America, examines the social, cultural, legal, and political ramifications of America’s changing attitude towards pot. His previous book, The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw, was reviewed on the front cover of the New York Times Book Review. The Measure of a Mountain, Barcott’s biography of Mt. Rainier, won the Washington State Governor’s Award and remains in print nearly 20 years after its original publication.
Kate Lebo is the author of two cookbooks, Pie School and A Commonplace Book of Pie. Her essays and poems have appeared or are forthcoming from Best American Essays 2015, Best New Poets 2011, New England Review, Hobart, AGNI, and Ninth Letter, among other places. She works with food writers privately to midwife their cookbook manuscripts, and she teaches creative writing at literary arts centers across the nation. A graduate of the University of Washington’s MFA program, she’s the recipient of a Nelson Bentley Fellowship, the Joan Grayston Poetry Prize, and a grant from 4Culture.
Sam Ligon is the author of Drift and Swerve, a collection of stories, and Safe in Heaven Dead, a novel. His new novel, Among the Dead and Dreaming, is forthcoming in 2016. His stories have appeared in The Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, StoryQuarterly, New England Review, and elsewhere. He teaches fiction at Eastern Washington University in Spokane, edits Willow Springs, and is the artistic director of the Port Townsend Writer’s Conference.
Brian McGuigan’s work has appeared in Gawker, The Rumpus, Salon, The Stranger, The Weeklings, City Arts, and elsewhere and has received support from 4Culture, Artist Trust, and Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. In 2010, The Stranger shortlisted him for their Genius Award in Literature, and in 2011, City Arts named him one of Seattle’s Power 50 Culture Makers. When he’s not writing, Brian’s the co-founder/curator of Cheap Wine & Poetry and Cheap Beer & Prose; the director of Lit Crawl Seattle; and an ambassador for On the Boards. Currently, Brian’s working on a memoir. For about a decade, he worked at Hugo House.
Sierra Golden received her MFA in poetry from North Carolina State University. Winner of the program’s 2012 Academy of American Poets Prize, Golden’s work appears or is forthcoming in literary journals such as Prairie Schooner, Permafrost, and Ploughshares. She has also been awarded residencies by Hedgebrook, the Island Institute, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Although she calls Washington State home, Golden has spent many summers in Alaska, working as a commercial fisherman. She now works in communications.
Michelle Goodman is the award-winning author of The Anti 9-to-5 Guid and My So-Called Freelance Life, both published by Seal Press. Her essays and journalism on careers, commerce, and creativity have appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon, Vice, Bust, Bitch, The Bark, Seattle Times, Seattle<e/m> magazine, and several anthologies. She’s been awarded residencies by Hedgebrook and Whiteley Center. Before becoming a full-time freelance writer two decades ago, she played admin to an array of dazzlingly bad bosses.
