information from SWSHS

West Seattle author Harold Taw and the current Washington State Poet Laureate, Elizabeth Austen, will each be featured at the July 11th event (postponed one week because of the July 4th holiday). Taw is the author of the novel Adventures of the Karaoke King (Lake Union Publishing 2011), a karaoke grail quest about transplanted people from around the globe who keep falling just short of their dreams. Austen will be reading from her debut collection, Every Dress a Decision (Blue Begonia Press, 2011), a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, which tests the boundaries between the known and the unknowable.

Harold Taw’s writing has been featured on NPR, in a New York Times bestselling anthology, and in The Seattle Times; his screenplay Dog Park has garnered recognition in domestic and international film festivals and competitions. Taw is currently completing a novel about a turbulent adolescence in Southeast Asia, collaborating on a musical with Seattle rock band Poland, and co-authoring a graphic-novel adaptation of his dark fable “The Repository of Broken Dreams” (available in What to Read in the Rain 2013). He is also participating as a bookwriter in The 5th Avenue Theatre’s Writers Group, a two-year New Works initiative that culminates in staged readings of one-act musicals in 2014 and of two-act musicals in 2015. A Yale Law School graduate and a Fulbright Scholar, Taw’s research and writing has been supported by, among others, 826 Seattle, Artist Trust, Centrum, the Helen Riaboff Whiteley Center, Humanities Washington, Jack Straw Productions, and Wing Luke Museum.

Public radio poetry commentator Elizabeth Austen travels to all the state’s 39 counties, offering writing workshops and giving readings. She’s also the author of two chapbooks, The Girl Who Goes Alone (Floating Bridge Press, 2010) and Where Currents Meet (Toadlily Press, 2010). Her poems have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily, in the Los Angeles Review, Bellingham Review and Willow Springs. She is noted for her engaging public performances of poetry, and has been featured at Poets House in New York City, Minneapolis's The Loft, the Skagit River Poetry Festival, Spokane's Get Lit!, Seattle's Cheap Wine and Poetry and Bumbershoot, among others. Austen produces poetry programming for NPR-affiliate KUOW 94.9, earned an MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles, and teaches at Richard Hugo House. She makes her living at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where she also offers poetry and journaling workshops for the staff.

The public is invited to this FREE series, from 5 to 7PM, at Barnes & Noble/Westwood Village.

Other local authors will be featured in this free FIRST FRIDAY book talk series in coming months at Barnes & Noble in Westwood Village.

Additional information on future presentations can be obtained by calling Dora-Faye Hendricks, “Words, Writers & West Seattle” chair, by phone at 206-280-9983, or by e-mail at Dora-Faye@comcast.net.