Jack Straw Reading Series: Michael Spence, Rebecca Hoogs, Judith Skillman, and Sharon Cumberland May 29, 2008

Poet and Jack Straw Writers Program curator Judith Roche hosts three readings at Jack Straw Productions in May that feature new work by the 2008 Jack Straw Writers. This is the last of the three events. Admission to each reading is a $5 suggested donation, and comes with a gift of the 2008 Jack Straw Writers Anthology. Look out for the podcast preview of the series on May 1 at http://www.jackstraw.org/blog.

Michael Spence has driven public-transit buses in the Seattle area for 20 years. His poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Poetry Northwest, The New Republic, Antioch Review, Yale Review, Georgia Review, and Southern Review. He has published two poetry collections, The Spine (Purdue University Press) and Adam Chooses (Rose Alley Press), and has been included in the anthologies Poetry Comes Up Where It Can (University of Utah Press) and Limbs of the Pine, Peaks of the Range (Rose Alley Press). He lives in Tukwila, WA, with his wife, writer and teacher Sharon Hashimoto.

Rebecca Hoogs is the author of a chapbook, Grenade, and her poems have appeared in Poetry, AGNI, Crazyhorse, Zyzzyva, The Journal, Poetry Northwest, The Florida Review, and others. She is the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Artist Trust. In 2007, she presented commissioned work at the Seattle Poetry Festival and The Roethke Readings, a presentation of the ACT Theatre. She is the Director of Education Programs for Seattle Arts & Lectures, and is the new curator for its Poetry Series.

Judith Skillman’s tenth book, Heat Lightning, New and Selected Poems 1986-2006, was published by Silverfish Review Press. “The Carnival of All or Nothing” was a finalist in the American Poetry Journal contest and is forthcoming from Cervéna Barva Press. Skillman is the recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets, The King County Arts Commission, and the Washington State Arts Commission. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she has completed residencies at Centrum and Hedgebrook. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, FIELD, The Iowa Review, and many other journals. An educator, editor, and translator, Judith lives with her husband in Kennydale, WA.

Sharon Cumberland has been writing poetry since 1983, and has published in a wide variety of magazines and journals, including Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Kalliope, and Verse. After a career in New York as an arts administrator working for the Lincoln Center Theater Company and the Metropolitan Opera, she earned a Ph.D. in English from City University of New York. She is now an Assistant Professor of American Literature and Poetry at Seattle University.

Official Website: http://www.jackstraw.org