Words out Loud Spoken Word Series

Peggy Shumaker and Steve Abbott read from their poetry. Includes open mic and literary trivia quiz.

Peggy Shumaker served as Alaska State Writer Laureate and as the Rasmuson Foundation’s Distinguished Artist.  An NEA poetry fellowship recipient, she is the author of eight books of poetry, including Cairn, new and selected and a lyrical memoir, Just Breathe Normally. Professor emerita at University of Alaska Fairbanks, Shumaker teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA at PLU. She serves on the boards of Storyknife, the Alaska Arts and Culture Foundation, and the Raz-Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prizes. Shumaker edits Boreal Books (an imprint of Red Hen Press) and the Alaska Literary Series at U of AK Press, and is contributing editor for Alaska Quarterly Review.  www.peggyshumaker.com.

Steve Abbott was a founder in 1984 and continues to co-host The Poetry Forum, now the Midwest’s longest-running poetry reading series. A recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Excellence Award in Poetry and an OAC writing residency, he has edited three anthologies and published five chapbooks and two full-length collections, A Green Line Between Green Fields (Kattywompus Press, 2018) and A Language the Images Speaks (11thour Press, 2019), a collection of ekphrastic poems. He edits Ohio Poetry Association’s annual journal Common Threads and lives in Columbus with his wife Melanie Boyd and Loki, World’s Best Dog. www.steveabbott.us.