2026 Cascadia Poetry Festival 10 – Seattle Poets

allia abdullah-matta

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Greg Bem

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Amaranth Borsuk

Amaranth Borsuk is a poet, scholar, and book artist working at the intersection of print and digital media. Her most recent book, W/\SH (Anhinga, 2026), is a work of speculative poetry created with poet and artist Terri Witek. The book includes visual poems, fragments, and epistles envisioning a correspondence between women in two disastrous climate futures who reach for one another across their worlds, hoping to course-correct for the sake of their children. Borsuk is the author of the poetry collections Pomegranate Eater (Kore Press, 2016) and Handiwork (Slope Editions, 2012) as well as three other collaborative books of poems including: Abra (1913 Press, 2016), with Kate Durbin and Ian Hatcher; As We Know (Subito Press, 2014), with Andy Fitch; and Between Page and Screen (Siglio Press 2012, SpringGun Press, 2016) with Brad Bouse. Her contribution to the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, The Book, is a concise introduction to the book’s changing technologies that bridges book history, artists’ books, and electronic literature to reconsider an object we think we know intimately. She has collaborated on installations, art bookmarklets, interactive works, and poems, and is Associate Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell.

Bill Carty

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Xavier Cavazos

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Zach Charles

In BR [BioRegional] Basics: 22 Ways to Come Home, David McCloskey writes about several ways, 22 to be exact, to live with the rhythms of the planet, to live effectively as the small part of a much larger organism that we as homo sapien are. These manners of living emerge from many places: simply sitting and listening to the land and the water, from deep study of the land and the water, and from certain human traditions, often from indigenous peoples around the world. In the 21st way, he consolidates this down to 6 practices of “‘The Real Work’ of Our Time: 1–Restore Integrity of Ecosystems, 2–Rebuild Infrastructure Along Ecological and Community-Based Lines, 3–Revitalize Communities, 4–Regenerate Ties of Local-Regional Economies, 5–Grow a Restorative Life-Place Politics, 6–Celebrate the Place and Build a New Grounded Culture.” Zachary Brett Charles (They/He) sees art, and especially poetry, as a powerful and peaceful medium through which to change the human imagination. They feel their role as a member of Cascadia 2050 is an opportunity to use art and poetry to help their friends, peers, and fellow Cascadians move toward living their lives in a manner consistent with the rhythms of the planet. They volunteer at the Cascadia Poetry Lab as a member of the Cascadia 2050 Youth Committee, Poetry Postcard Fest project board, the Podcast committee, and wherever else is helpful at the moment.

Ching-in Chen

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Stephen Collis

Stephen Collis is the author of fifteen books of poetry and prose, including The Commons (2008), the BC Book Prize winning On the Material (2010), and Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten (2018)—all published by Talonbooks. A History of the Theories of Rain (2021) was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for poetry, and in 2019, Collis was the recipient of the Writers’ Trust of Canada Latner Poetry Prize. The Middle, the second volume in a trilogy, was published in October 2024, and Knock Down House, an experimental memoir, was published by Pamenar Press in 2025. In 2026 he will deliver the Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poet Lecture at Vancouver Island University. He lives on Burnaby Mountain, unceded Coast Salish Territory, and teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University.

Gary Copeland Lilley

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Alex Gallo-Brown

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Tess Gallagher

Tess Gallagher, Irish American poet and short story writer, from the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, has been awarded the prestigious international Fondazione Roma – Ritratti di poesia Prize for her Lifetime Achievement in Poetry. She is the first American ever to receive this award. She will accept this honor in Rome, Italy in day long festivities which includes her reading her poems on national Italian television on April 14 and being interviewed with her translator of over 35 years, Riccardo Duranti. Gallagher’s eleventh volume of poetry, Is, Is Not, was published May 2019 by Graywolf Press and received the Pacific Northwest’s 2020 Book of the Year Award.  Midnight Lantern: New and Selected Poems, is the most comprehensive offering of her poems. Other poetry includes Dear Ghosts and Moon Crossing Bridge. Gallagher’s The Man from Kinvara: Selected Stories is the basis for film episodes under development. Gallagher divides her time between her hometown of Port Angeles, Washington, and her cottage in the West of Ireland. She is the literary executor of her late husband, Raymond Carver. In July, 2023, she will teach for the third time at the Port Townsend Writers’ Festival in Port Townsend, Washington. She has also recently accepted the honor to serve as the inaugural writer-in-residence for the Field Arts and Events Hall in Port Angeles opening in late summer of 2023.

Gabriella Gutiérrez Y Muhs

Dr. Gutiérrez y Muhs is a poet, literary critic and professor in Modern Languages and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Seattle University. Gabriella is the author/editor of several poetry collections, books of literary criticism, first editor of Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, 2012, essays and opinion pieces and many other articles and loose poems, as well as her forthcoming memoir, Fresh as Lettuce (Martillo Press). She received her MA and PhD from Stanford University.  She has criss-crossed the nation giving keynote speeches and motivational talks, including the recent EKU Chautauqua keynote address: “(Inter)sectional (Inter)actions: Being Horizontal.” She has also edited several anthologies and has been anthologized and published in multiple journals and anthologies like Cascadian Zen,  As/Us: A Space for Women of the World, Bilingual Review: Revista Bilingüe, 25th Anniversary Issue, Quarry West Anthology, In Celebration of the Muse Anthology, Cruzando Puentes: Antología de Literatura Latina, Yellow Medicine Review, Puentes, Ventana Abierta, Camino Real,  Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social, Diálogo: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Last year she co-edited In Xochitl, In Cuícatl, a bilingual poetry anthology of Chicanx/Latinx poetry, published in 2021 in Madrid, Spain, (includes more than 60 poets) and another multigenre Latinx women’s anthology Indomitable/Indomables, forthcoming, with San Diego State University Press. Her latest collection ¿How Many Indians Can We Be? ¿Cuántos indios podemos ser? was published with Flowersong Press in 2022.

Alicia Hokanson

A native of Seattle, Alicia Hokanson grew up exploring the beaches, forests, and islands of Puget Sound, inspiring her deep attention to the natural world. Her first book, Mapping the Distance, was selected by Carolyn Kizer for the King County Arts Commission publication prize and it was released by Breitenbush Books in 1989. Brooding Heron Press published two chapbooks, Phosphorous and Insistent in the Skin. Her poems have appeared in a wide variety of journals and anthologies. Upon completing her B.A. and M.A. in English at the University of Washington, Alicia pursued a career teaching English in a variety of venues, from working with high-school students in South Australia to teaching grades 1-8 in a one-room schoolhouse on Waldron Island, 8th graders on Bainbridge Island, and middle-school English for 27 years at Lakeside School in Seattle. Named River of Words Poetry Teacher of the year in 2003 for her work nurturing young writers, she also held the Bleakney Chair in English at Lakeside upon her retirement in 2014. She now devotes her time to writing, reading, and advocating for social and environmental justice. Her latest book is Perishable World (2021).

Nadine Maestas

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Roxi Power

Roxi Power is a poet, performer, and publisher whose book, The Songs That Objects Would Sing was published in 2023.  She co-edited Winter in America (Again: Poets Respond to 2024 Election (Carbonation Press, 2025) and founded the trans-genre anthology series, Viz. Inter-Arts, at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she teaches.  Roxi podcasts and organizes readings for The Hive Poetry Collective in Santa Cruz. She performs Live Film Narration– “Neo-Benshi”–nationally. She received an AWP Intro Award and publications in American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, Puerto del Sol, Seneca Review, etc. and received an MFA in Poetry from Cornell University.

Mateo Quispe

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Linda Russo

Cedar Sigo

Sharon Thesen

Sharon Thesen grew up in small towns across Western Canada, and for many years she taught English and Creative Writing at Capilano College in North Vancouver and was an active member of the poetry scene in the Lower Mainland.  Since 2003 she has lived in the Central Okanagan and is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at UBC’s Okanagan campus.  She is the editor of two editions of  The New Long Poem Anthology, and was an editor of The Capilano Review and co-editor of Lake: A Journal of Arts and Environment.   She has also co-edited, with Ralph Maud, two editions of the correspondence between Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff.  Her recent poetry books include A Pair of Scissors, The Good Bacteria, and Oyama Pink Shale, from House of Anansi in Toronto, and the forthcoming The Receiver, from New Star in Vancouver. 

Miriam Tobin

Rodrigo Toscano

Matte Trease

Terri Witek