For the Reporter
Poetry at the Rainbow Café presents the works of Kelli Russell Agodon and Polly Buckingham on Monday, May 2.
The program is from 7 to 9 p.m. at the café, 112 E. Main St.
Coffee and conversation follow readings. It is an open mic opportunity. The public is invited.
About the poets
Kelli Russell Agodon is an award-winning poet, writer, editor and essayist from the Pacific Northwest.
Her most recent books are a third collection of poems, “Hourglass Museum”, a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards and short-listed for the Julie Suk Poetry Prize honoring the best book of poems published by a small press and “The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice”, which she co-wrote with Martha Silano.
Agodon is also the author the award-winning collection of poems, “Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room” (2010), winner of the White Pine Poetry Prize chosen by Carl Dennis, winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Prize in Poetry and a finalist for the Washington State Book Award.
“Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room” was also chosen as one of the 20 best books of poetry for the GoodRead’s Readers’ Choice Awards.
Agodon is also the author of “Small Knots” (2004), “Geography” (2003), and co-editor of “Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry”.
Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, O, The Oprah Magazine, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, as well as on “The Writer’s Almanac” with Garrison Keillor’s and in Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times anthology.
Born and raised in Seattle, Kelli was educated at the University of Washington and Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop, where she received her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing.
Agodon is the co-founder of Two Sylvias Press, where she works as an editor as well as being the co-director of “Poets on the Coast: A Retreat for Women Poets”, and a member of the Seattle7 Writers, a nonprofit group that raises awareness and money for literacy organizations in the Pacific Northwest.
Polly Buckingham’s collection, “The Expense of a View”, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction (due out in November).
Her chapbook, “A Year of Silence”, won the Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award for Fiction (2014), and she was the recipient of a 2014 Washington State Artists Trust fellowship.
Her work appears in The Gettysburg Review, The Threepenny Review, Hanging Loose, Witness, North American Review, The Moth, New Orleans Review, Poetry Daily and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award in 2011, 2012, and 2013.
Buckingham is founding editor of StringTown Press. She teaches creative writing at Eastern Washington University and is associate director of Willow Springs Books, Eastern’s student run literary press.
===
Special Thanks to the Rainbow Café, Striped Water Poets, the NorthWest Renaissance, the Auburn Arts Commission, City of Auburn, and King County 4Culture.
