Inspired by Iceland

This event is part of a city-wide celebration of writing during the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Seattle.

About the poets

Katy Didden is the author of Ore Choir: The Lava on Iceland (Tupelo Press, 2022), and The Glacier’s Wake (Pleiades Press, 2013). Her poems, essays, and reviews appear in journals such as Public Books, Poetry Northwest, Ecotone, Diagram, The Kenyon Review, Image, 32 Poems, The Spoon River Poetry Review, The Sewanee Review, and Poetry. She has received fellowships and residencies from The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Hambidge Center, MacDowell, and the Listhús Residency in Ólafsfjörður, Iceland. She was also a 2013-2014 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. Collaborating with members of the Banff Research in Culture’s Beyond Anthropocene Residency, she co-created Almanac for the Beyond (Tropic Editions, 2019). Her work has been featured on Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. Katy is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Ball State University.

Sierra Nelson is a poet, lyric essayist, avid collaborator, multimedia performance artist, and teacher. Nelson’s books include The Lachrymose Report (PoetryNW Editions), collaborations with visual artist Loren Erdrich including I Take Back the Sponge Cake (Rose Metal Press) and artist book Isolation (Hudson Press), and Vis-à-Vis Society collaborations including Who Are We? with 7-inch vinyl record and forthcoming 100 Rooms (Entre Rios Press). Winner of the Carolyn Kizer Prize, Joan Grayson Poetry Prize, and National Hackney Award, her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies as well as in Seattle Metro buses, at the Seattle Aquarium and the Slovenian Natural History Museum, and with Nordic runes on lava stones in an interactive installation debuting at SÍM Gallery (Samband Íslenskra Myndlistarmanna), and later remounted at Seattle’s The Project Room. She is also president of Seattle’s beloved Cephalopod Appreciation Society and more information about her work can be found at songsforsquid.tumblr.com(Opens an external site).

Melanie Noel is the author of The Monarchs (Stockport Flats, 2013) and a Ringing (Goodmorning menagerie). Her poems have appeared in Thermos, Spiral Orb, GUEST, The Volta, The Arcadia Project, and shelf documents. She’s written poems for installations and as live scores for short films. She was a co-curator of the dance, music and poetry series APOSTROPHE and curated Impala, a reading series that took place in her grandmother’s car. She facilitates classes in woods, zoos, and parks, as well as hospitals. She also facilitates astrological chart interpretations. She holds Masters degrees in Performance Studies (Listaháskóli Íslands) and Poetry (Iowa Writers’ Workshop). She thinks and dreams about antennae and giants.

Katie Prince is a poet, essayist, and graphic designer. In the spring of 2017, she served as artist-in-residence at Klaustrið, in Iceland’s Fljótsdalur valley, and in 2019 she received a GAP Award from Artist Trust to continue working on the project she began in Iceland. Her debut poetry book, Tell This to the Universe, won the 2021 Pamet River Prize and is forthcoming from YesYesBooks. Her work has been published in Electric Literature, Fugue, the Adroit Journal, and Poetry Northwest, among others. You can find her online at www.katieprince.com(Opens an external site).