Past Dates/Events

Dec 6

The inaugural Unsung Poetry event was co-hosted by Jonathan Wittmaier, Manager of the Student Resource Network and Prof. Juan Carlos Reyes, Associate Professor of Creative Writing and featured the following poets listed below. For a recap of the event, be sure to check out the blog post on the main library website!

Gabrielle Bates is the author of Judas Goat (published by Tin House in 2023), an NPR Best Book of 2023, a New York Times Book Review Critics Pick, and finalist for the Washington State Book Award in Poetry. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she currently lives in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium and co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Ploughshares, and Best American Experimental Writing, and she has served as visiting faculty for a variety of universities, arts organizations, and museums, including the University of Washington Rome Center and the Tin House Writers' Workshops. 

Quenton Baker is a poet, educator, and Cave Canem fellow. Their current focus is black interiority and the afterlife of slavery. Their work has appeared in The Offing, Jubilat, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus and elsewhere. They are a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from Artist Trust. They were a 2019 Robert Rauschenberg Artist in Residence and a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. They are the author of we pilot the blood (published by The 3rd Thing, 2021) and ballast (by Haymarket Books, 2023). 

Serena Chopra is a writer, dancer, filmmaker and a visual and performance artist. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Denver and is a MacDowell Fellow, a Kundiman Fellow, a RedLine Artist In-Residence and a Fulbright Scholar. She is the author of This Human (Coconut Books 2013) and Ic (Horse Less Press 2017). Her third book, Dayawati, Of Mercy, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2026. She has two films, Dogana/Chapti (2019, Official Selection at Frameline43 and Seattle Queer Film Festival) and Mother Ghosting (2018). She was a featured artist in Harper's Bazaar (India), Revry, as well as in the Denver Westword’s “100 Colorado Creatives.” She has recent publications with The Academy of American Poets, Burrow Press Review, Sink, Foglifter, and the anthology Alone Together: Love, Grief and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19 (Washington State Book Award, 2021). She also has critical essays in Matters of Feminist Practice (Belladonna Collective, 2019), Rehearsing Racial Equity: A Critical Anthology on Anti-Racism and Repair in the Arts (Amherst College Press, forthcoming 2025) and in the republication of Judy Grahn’s The Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition (Sinister Wisdom, Fall 2023). Serena is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Seattle University. You can find out more at SerenaChopra.com 

May 2

The second Unsung Poetry event was be held on Friday, May 2 once again in the Byte Cafe. For a recap of the event, check out the article in The Spectator featuring interviews with our featured readers and students!

Paul Hlava Ceballos is the author of banana [ ], winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, and also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His collaborative chapbook, Banana [ ] / we pilot the blood, shares pages with (SU alum and reader at our last Unsung event) poet Quenton Baker and essayist Christina Sharpe. Paul is a CantoMundo fellow, and has been featured on the Poetry Magazine Podcast and The Stranger. He currently is the Poetry Editor of the Seattle Met and practices echocardiography. 

Ally Ang is a gaysian poet & editor based in Seattle. They are an NEA fellow and a MacDowell fellow, and their debut poetry collection, Let the Moon Wobble, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in November 2025. Along with Cody Stetzel, they co-host Other People’s Poems, a monthly poetry open mic and reading series. You can find more of their work at allysonang.com or follow them on Instagram @TheOceanIsGay.