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Essay White City by Elissa Washuta is now available

Fremont Bridge writer-in-residence Elissa Washuta’s essay White City is now available for everyone to read. In addition, a podcast of Washuta reading an excerpt of the essay at the Seattle Public Library‘s Central branch is available here.

Elissa Washuta was commissioned 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. While in the tower, she researched, and wrote, White City a literary work, based on the history of the Puget Sound, including the lives of this region’s first peoples, the “landscape surgery” that defined the creation of Seattle’s waterways for purposes of commerce and industry, and the city of rapid change that we experience today.

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 SalonThe Chronicle of Higher EducationBuzzFeed, and elsewhere. Elissa 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.

Elissa has received fellowships and awards from Artist Trust, 4Culture, Potlatch Fund, and Hugo House. Born and raised in New Jersey, she called Seattle home for the last ten years, and will join the faculty at Ohio State University in the Fall of 2017.