2026 Cascadia Poetry Festival 10
Seattle Schedule
Friday, October 9, 2026 (pdf)
8:00–9:00 am
Registration
Location:
Rainier Beach Community Club
6038 S Pilgrim St, Seattle, WA 98118
9:30 am–12 noon
Workshops
Startling the Poem Awake
Tess Gallagher
Location: Rainier Beach Community Club
Flickers of the Poetic, A Watch Party
Rodrigo Toscano & Roxi Power
Location: Meet at Rainier Beach Community Club, and walk to Kubota Garden.
12:00–1:00 pm
Lunch Break (Try Red Wing, or Umami Kushi)
2:00–4:00 pm
Workshops
Concerning Work and Poetry (of Course the Mundane is Generative!)
Gary Copeland Lilley
Location: Rainier Beach Community Club
Bringing the wild in
There are no redwoods north of southern Curry County, Oregon. Poems don’t care. Bring your animal body to a generative workshop in Chinook Beach Park, where facts go feral and poems sing the blues from another dimension. Naturalist Jim Demetre opens with a look at the park’s wild plants and creatures.
Dion O’Reilly
Location: Meet at Rainier Beach Community Club, and walk to Chinook Beach Park (Zach Charles & Alicia Hokanson, hosts.)
5:00–7:00 pm
Dinner Break (Try Jude’s or Pizzeria Pucinella)
7:00–9:00 pm
Reading:
Tess Gallagher, Gary Copeland Lilley
Location: Rainier Beach Community Club
6038 S Pilgrim St, Seattle, WA 98118 (Matt Trease emcee.)
9:30–11:00pm
Cascadia Unfiltered with Greg Bem, Zach Charles, Mateo Quispe & Ankober Yewondwossen
Rhea Melina and other poets. Location: (Posted at RBCC.)
Saturday, October 10, 2026
Location: Rainier Beach Community Club
6038 S Pilgrim St, Seattle, WA 98118
9:15–9:30 am
Invocation by Mateo Quispe
(Paul Nelson emcee).
9:30–12:00 noon
Cascadia as a Field of Action (Bioregional Poetics)
Jeanne Heuving, Paul E Nelson, Alicia Hokanson moderator.
Cascadia as a Field of Action (Poetry as Politics)
Rodrigo Toscano, Alex Gallo-Brown, Ching-In Chen, Gary Copeland Lilley, Roxi Power moderator.
12:00–2:00 pm
Lunch Break (Try Red Wing, or Umami Kushi)
2:00–3:15 pm
Greg Bem, Bill Carty, with Matt Trease mc. Los Cerezos announcement. Somos Ajolotes with José Juan Gómez Becerra and Gabriella Gutiérrez Y Muhs as mc.
3:30–5:00 pm
Entrance Journal
Dion O’Reilly discusses the online journal she created in a talk called:
“Becoming Unaccountable: Craft, Conjuring, and the Moment Before Knowing.”
Also, Ching-In Chen, Nadine Maestas, Mateo Quispe & Geneviève Hicks w/ Matt Trease, mc
5:00–7:00 pm
Dinner Break (Try Jude’s or Pizzeria Pucinella)
7:00–8:00 pm
Main Stage Reading
Amaranth Borsuk with Terri Witek, Rodrigo Toscano. (Roxi Power emcee).
8:00–9:00 pm
Cascadia mono-poem
1 poem per poet, no intros. Gabriella Gutiérrez Y Muhs emcee.
Sunday, October 11, 2026
8:00–10:00 am
Learn about Cascadia Poetics LAB with board members and key volunteers at Red Wing Cafe
11:00 am–12:30 pm
Kubota Garden Reading
Xavier Cavazos, Alex Gallo-Brown, Ankober Yewondwossen, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Tess Gallagher, with Paul E. Nelson emcee
12:30–2:00 pm
Lunch Break (Try Red Wing, or Umami Kushi)
2:00–3:00 pm
Memorial Reading: Honoring Poets We Lost in 2026
Tribute to Margareta Waterman by Michael Hureaux, Richard Meadows on John Brehm, Paul E Nelson on Koon Woon, Alicia Hokanson on Wendell Berry and Annie Dillard, Denis Mair on Yan Li, Jeanne Heuving on Rachel Blau Du Plessis, and Dan Clarkson on David McCloskey. Lowell Murphree emcee.
3:00–4:30 pm
Winter in America (Still
Roxi Power (emcee), Greg Bem, Brasswax, Denise Calvetti-Michaels, Zach Charles, Jim Dott, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Alicia Hokanson, Lowell Murphree, Rhea Melina, Dion O’Reilly, Rodrigo Toscano, Matt Trease and others.