For Programs from 2023 click here.
For programs from 2021 and 2020, click here.
For 2022, click here.
- Lucas Smiraldo interviewed by Kristi Nebel Lucas Smiraldo is a Pacific Northwest writer, performing poet and twelve-time produced playwright. His performance credits include opening poet at Def Poetry Jam’s College Tour, featured poet at the National Black Pilot’s Conference, commissioned performances at the Tacoma Art Museum and the Museum of Glass, and featured poet during Seattle’s Hip Hop Awards. He joined forces with master griot and kora player, Foday Musa Suso, to present a unique performance of spoken word, song, and social and political narrative.
Smiraldo received the Tacoma Arts Commission’s Arts Projects funding in 2010 and Tacoma
Artists Initiative Program funding in 2008 to create two spoken word projects combining film
and music. In 2010, he created an original touring work in affiliation with collaborating writers,
entitled “Eleven Days in the Life of Dr. King,” which explored Dr. King’s life through 12
original spoken works put to stage with music and choreography. Smiraldo completed a touring
play with co-writer April Nyquist in affiliation with the Broadway Center titled “The Bridges: A
Civil Rights Journey.”
As 2013-2015 Tacoma Poet Laureate, Smiraldo led and participated in over 85 events,
workshops, and readings, serving over 5600 people. One of the major projects of his tenure is the
Laureate Listening Project, an interactive online audio anthology showcasing the voices of
community members from Tacoma and greater Pierce County. The Laureate Listening Project
can be viewed and heard online at http://wspdsmap.ci.tacoma.wa.us/website/PoetryTour/.
- David Gilmour Interviews Simon Petty Simon Petty has led a circuitous life as a songwriter and singer of songs, settling in Los Angeles at the turn of the century. Originally from the UK, he arrived with his band Minibar to make their debut record with legendary producer T Bone Burnett, and somehow never left, continually touring the contiguous United States with Pete Yorn, The Wallflowers and Crowded House, among many more.
Following three albums with the band, he recorded a solo LP in deepest Texas called The Sea, The Sea, under the moniker Solomon’s Seal. It was produced by Seth Rothschild of Gingersol, a creatively fruitful partnership that they revisited on their joint release Recovery Time in 2018. In between, he recorded The Sad Carousel in a makeshift studio in Joshua Tree with Darrin Tehrani at the production helm.
These days, he is happy to co-pilot the acoustic duo Petty Chavez with his partner in all things, Celia Chavez. They met backstage at a David Bowie tribute gig in 2013 and have been singing and songwriting together ever since. They live with their small dog Chester in west Los Angeles.
- Koon Woon sitting in for David Gilmour interviews his old friend and mentor Allen Henkins reading from his poetry collection.
Part 1
Part 2
- The Poetry of Laura Lippman Laura graduated from Bryn Mawr College where she studied with Kate Millett and Lila Karp in one of the nation’s first women’s studies programs. She also attended the University of Oregon, majoring in biology, and received her M.D. from the Medical College of Pennsylvania. She practiced medicine for almost forty years and raised two children with her husband in the Pacific Northwest. She has been fortunate to practice medicine in many places in the world. Since retiring she has rediscovered her early love of reading and writing poetry. She enjoys the outdoors and shares her love of nature with her family and friends.
Part1
- David Fewster Parts 1 and 2 – David Fewster is a poet, musician, and humorist living in Tacoma WA. His work has appeared in the LA Weekly, Seattle Times, and the anthologies ‘Revival :Spoken Word from Lollapalooza 94’ (Manic D Press) and ‘Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader Vol. 2’ (Black Sparrow Press.) He was also a recipient of a 2003-4 Tacoma Artists Initiative Grant for his book “Diary of a Homeless Alcoholic Suicidal Maniac & Other Picture Postcards.
Part 1
Part 2
- Ken Waldman, “Alaska’s fiddling Poet” – Parts I and 2 His twenty books consist of sixteen full-length poetry collections, a memoir about his life as a touring artist, a volume of
acrostic poems for kids, and a hybrid book that’s part creative writing manual, part memoir, part full-length collection of
poems (about writers and writing). And there’s his twentieth, the novel.
A former college professor with an MFA in Creative Writing, he’s been a visiting writer at over 100 colleges and universities, a visiting artist at over 250 schools in 35 states, and has led workshops from Alaska to Maine.
As a performer, he’s played from the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage to the Woodford Folk Festival (Queensland, Australia),
occasionally as a soloist, more often as leader of one of his ever-changing troupes of nationally recognized musicians.
Part 1
Part 2
- David Gilmour Interviews Priscilla Long Pricilla Long is a Seattle-based writer, author, poet, and writing teacher with awards and citations far to many to list here. She co-founded a Boston consciousness-raising group that contributed to Bread and Roses. A longtime anti-war activist,
Long was arrested in the 1963 Gwynn Oak Park sit-in. You can find out more
about her at https://www.priscillalong.net/.
- Deb Ewing Part I Debora Ewing has traveled the United States extensively, from California to the Mid-Atlantic region where she now resides. She draws inspiration from her
family’s roots in Appalachia and pioneer Texas, as well as her Midwestern childhood. She says about herself:
“I am a U.S. writer, artist, and oracle. I drop my wisdom like a crystal bowl at your feet.”
