Samar Abulhassan & Sierra Nelson

Samar Abulhassan is a teaching artist and poet living in Seattle. She is a Jack Straw Writer and holds an M.F.A. from Colorado State University. Born to Lebanese immigrants and raised with multiple languages, she is a 2006 Hedgebrook alum and the author of six chapbooks, including Farah and Nocturnal Temple. Samar has worked with Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools since 2008, with Hugo House since 2012, and as a teaching artist for the Skagit River Poetry Foundation since 2010. Samar also participated in the 2024 Skagit River Poetry Festival. In 2016, Samar received a CityArtist grant to aid in completing a novel-in-poems reflecting on memory, longing, and the Arabic alphabet.

Sierra Nelson is a Seattle-based poet, essayist, and multimedia performance and installation artist, with an M.F.A. from University of Washington. Nelson’s books include The Lachrymose Report (PoetryNW Editions), I Take Back the Sponge Cake (Rose Metal Press) made with artist Loren Erdrich and selected by Anne Carson for NYU’s Washington Square Collaboration Prize, and Three Hearts: An Anthology of Cephalopod Poetry (editor, World Enough Writers).