Open Books Schedule

Open Books, one of two all-poetry bookstores in the U.S. (The only one west of Cambridge, MA.)

Three important upcoming readings:

Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 07:30 PM

BRENDA HILLMAN

Brenda Hillman reads from Practical Water (Wesleyan University Press), the third volume, following Cascadia and Pieces of Air in the Epic, in her series of meditations on the elements. She is the author of eight collections of poetry and, with Patricia Dienstfrey, the editor of The Grand Permission: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood. She is the Olivia Filippi Professor of Poetry at Saint Mary’s College and works with CodePink, a social justice organization against war. Ms. Hillman received the William Carlos Williams Award for Pieces of Air in the Epic.

Thursday, December 03, 2009 at 07:30 PM

THOMAS PRUIKSMA

Thomas Pruiksma joins us to present Give, Eat, and Live: Poems of Avvaiyar (to be published in November by Red Hen Press), a bilingual selection of poems he translated from the work of the 12th century Tamil poet Avvaiyar, considered one of the most important female poets in Tamil’s 2500-year literary history, and one of the best known of either gender. He will read the poems both in English and in Tamil. A resident of Vashon Island, his other books include A Feast for the Tongue: Forty Servings of Spoken Tamil with Helpings of Equally Spoken English, co-authored with Dr. K.V. Ramakoti, and The Body and the Earth: Notes from a Conversation, with the artist C.F. John.

Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 07:30 PM

MAGED ZAHER

Maged Zaher joins us to read from Portrait of the Poet as an Engineer, published by Pressed Wafer. A resident of Seattle, he was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, where he earned an M.Sc. degree in structural engineering, specializing in computer aided design. In 1995, he led the team that did the analysis of the seismic effect on the Meridian high rise hotel in Giza, Egypt. In 1998 he earned a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Akron, Ohio. He has worked at many large software companies, and participated in building products such as AutoCad, Hotmail, Windows Presentation Foundations, and Microsoft Student. His main areas of interest are API (Application Programming Interface) design and building scalable and flexible SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) systems. His collaboration with Pam Brown, Farout Library Software, was published by Tinfish Press in 2007.

About Splabman

Poet & interviewer Paul E Nelson founded SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB) & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Since 1993, SPLAB has produced hundreds of poetry events & 600 hours of interview programming with legendary poets & whole systems activists including Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Robin Blaser, Diane di Prima, Daphne Marlatt, Nate Mackey, George Bowering, Barry McKinnon, José Kozer, Brenda Hillman & many others. Paul’s books include American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018) American Sentences (2015) A Time Before Slaughter (2009) and Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies (2013). Co-Editor of Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia (2015), 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards (2017) and Samthology: A Tribute to Sam Hamill (2019) Make it True meets Medusario (2019), he’s presented poetry/poetics in London, Brussels, Nanaimo, Qinghai & Beijing, China, has had work translated into Spanish, Chinese & Portuguese & writes an American Sentence every day. Awarded a residency at The Lake, from the Morris Graves Foundation in Loleta, CA, he’s published work in Golden Handcuffs Review, Zen Monster, Hambone, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2014 Robin Blaser Award from The Capilano Review, he is engaged in a 20 year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia and lives in Rainier Beach, in the Cascadia bioregion’s Cedar River watershed.
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