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Reinventing the Poem of the American Family: A Benefit Craft Class

SAT MAR 23 · 10 AM - 12 PM

Join us for a ticketed craft class by authors Keetje Kuipers, Erika Meitner, and Geffrey Davis. This event is a fundraiser to benefit both Get Lit! Programs and Spark Central. The class will be capped at 25 people, and a link to purchase tickets will be provided soon.

Get Lit! and Spark Central are both non-profits with low budgets that work tirelessly to encourage creativity and learning in the Spokane area. This event is a great opportunity to support the community while listening to these accomplished poets.

Erika Meitner is the author of five books of poems, including Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, 2018), Copia (BOA Editions, 2014), and Ideal Cities (HarperCollins, 2010), which was a 2009 National Poetry Series winner. Meitner is a recipient of numerous awards and honors including the Fullbright Scholarship for Poetry, and her most recent collection Holy Moly Carry Me is a finalist for the National Book Critics Award and won the National Jewish Book Award. She is well-known for autobiographical poetry that explores her experience as a first-generation American and being the child of a refugee. Meitner is currently an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech, where she directs the MFA and undergraduate creative writing programs.

Geffrey Davis is the author of Night Angler (BOA Editions 2019), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, and Revising the Storm (BOA Editions 2014), winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Finalist. Other honors include the Anne Halley Poetry Prize, the Dogwood Prize in Poetry, the Wabash Prize for Poetry, and fellowships from Bread Loaf, Cave Canem, and the Vermont Studio Center. A native of the Pacific Northwest, Davis teaches with the University of Arkansas’s MFA in Creative Writing & Translation and with The Rainier Writing Workshop low-residency MFA program. He also serves as poetry editor for Iron Horse Literary Review.

Keetje Kuipers has been a Stegner fellow, a Bread Loaf fellow, and the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, her poems, essays, and short stories have appeared in numerous publications. Her first book, Beautiful in the Mouth, was selected by Thomas Lux as winner of the 2009 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and was published by BOA Editions. Her second book, The Keys to the Jail (BOA, 2014), was a book club pick at The Rumpus, and her third book, All Its Charms, is forthcoming from BOA in 2019. Senior Editor at Poetry Northwest and faculty at Hugo House, Keetje lives with her family on an island in the Salish Sea where she is at work on a novel and a memoir.

Join us for the free reading March 22nd at 7 pm at Spark Central, and the ticketed craft class on the 23rd at 10 am. Tickets for the craft class are $30 or $20 for students and the class will be capped at 25 people. Stay tuned for a link to purchase tickets!