Saturday, February 18, 2017; 2 – 3:30 p.m.
Central Library, Microsoft Auditorium
Seattle Public Library
1000 Fourth Ave. Seattle, WA 98104

Library events and programs are free and everyone is welcome. Registration is not required.

Elissa Washuta was selected by the Office of Arts & Culture (ARTS), in partnership with Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), to be the writer-in-residence in the northwest tower of the Fremont Bridge from June through August 2016. This residency project was funded by SDOT’s 1% for Art Funds and administered by the Office of Arts & Culture. While in the tower she researched, and wrote a literary work, based on the history of the Puget Sound. Washuta will present an excerpt from her writing, and discuss her residency with local writer Anca Szilagyi.

Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a writer of personal essays and memoir. She is the author of two books, Starvation Mode and My Body Is a Book of Rules, named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Her work has appeared in Salon, The Chronicle of Higher Education, BuzzFeed, and elsewhere. Washuta holds an MFA from The University of Washington and currently serves as the undergraduate adviser for the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington and a nonfiction faculty member in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Anca Szilagyi is a Brooklynite living in Seattle. Her fiction appears in Gastronomica, Fairy Tale Review, Washington City Paper, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction appears in Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, Jewish in Seattle, Kirkus, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from Made at Hugo House, Jack Straw Cultural Center, 4Culture, and Artist Trust. The Stranger hailed Anca as one of the “fresh new faces in Seattle fiction.”