'The Serious World' Book Launch Featuring Laura Read

with Special Guest Kathleen Flenniken

Award-winning poet Laura Read will read poems from her latest collection, 'The Serious World.' WA State Poet Laureate alumna Kathleen Flenniken will join her. Auntie's Bookstore will sell books.

About the presenters: 

Laura Read was born in New York City and has lived most of her life in Spokane, WA. She is the author of The Serious World (BOA Editions, 2025), Dresses from the Old Country (BOA Editions, 2018), Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012, winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry), and the chapbook The Chewbacca on Hollywood Boulevard Reminds Me of You (winner of the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award, 2011). A recipient of a Washington State Artists Trust Grant, a Florida Review Prize for Poetry, and the Crab Creek Review Prize for Poetry, Laura presents regularly at literary festivals and conferences throughout the Northwest, including GetLit!, Write on the Sound, Litfuse, and the Port Townsend Writers Conference. Laura served as Spokane’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, and she currently teaches at Spokane Falls Community College and at Eastern Washington University.

Kathleen Flennniken is author of the poetry collection Dressing in the Dark, part of the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series edited by Linda Bierds and forthcoming in September 2025 with Lynx House Press. Her three previous collections include Post Romantic (University of Washington Press, 2020), named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award,  Plume (University of Washington Press, 2012) winner of the Washington State Book Award and a finalist for the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and Famous (University of Nebraska Press, 2006), winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and named a Notable Book by the American Library Association. She lives in Seattle.

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