Jack Straw Reading 2026 Cohort

Gabriella Garcia, Maiah A Merino, BeeLyn Naihiwet, Diane Nguyen, Alejandro Pérez-Cortés, & Sayantani Roy w/ Claudia Castro Luna
About this Event

Writers from the 2026 Jack Straw Writers cohort visit the store for a reading of their selected work. The readers include Gabriella Garcia, Maiah A Merino, BeeLyn Naihiwet, Diane Nguyen, Alejandro Pérez-Cortés, and Sayantani Roy. This year's program was curated by Claudia Castro Luna, who will introduce the speakers.

Gabriella Garcia is a writer from the Sonoran Desert. Her chamber opera, A Spring Like This, a collaboration with composer Nehemiah Jones, was developed and performed in 2025 with the support of the Seattle Opera’s Jane Lang Davis Creation Lab. She is a graduate of Wellesley College and lives in Seattle, WA, where she teaches poetry, sings, and takes lots of long walks with a camera in hand.

Maiah A Merino, a first and second-generation Mexican-American/Chicana Poet, mixed-genre writer, teaching artist. and therapist, has poems in A New Season: Poems from a World in Flux Anthology; In Xóxitl, in cuícatl: Flor y Canto, Antología de poesía; I Sing the Salmon Home: Poems from Washington State; and Windblown I, and is a regular contributor and past co-editor of The Yellow Medicine Review Journal. A 2025 “Garden Poet,” a 2021 Writing the Land Poet, and a recipient of the 2021 Artist Trust GAP award, Maiah utilizes her training as a narrative therapist and writer in support of others reclaiming their own stories. She currently teaches Poetry through Path with Art and her private practice. She is a single mom who lives with 3 cats and is often hunted, as prey, daily.

BeeLyn Naihiwet is a nonfiction writer and poet with roots in Tigray. She is the author of two poetry collections, Plenty. and Moonful (Finishing Line Press). Her work explores memory, wilderness, and the shaping of the self. BeeLyn is currently working on a collection of personal essays. She enjoys all forms of art, especially motherhood.

Diane Nguyen is a transgender multi-genre, multi-talented artist based in Seattle. Identifying primarily as a musician, she briefly attended McNally Smith College of Music for guitar performance before transferring to complete her Bachelors of Music in piano performance and composition from Cornish College of the Arts. Her creative work is informed by her Trans- and Queer-ness, growing up Vietnamese-Laotian in midwestern America, and the challenges of finding identity as a minority. Through narrative essay and autofiction, she seeks to challenge conventional stereotypes about trans women, queer relationships, and Asian Americans by plainly rendering scenes of everyday life. Diane has performed with Marina DeMarco, Julian Finch, Payday, and other acts as guitarist, keyboardist, and cellist. Her writing has been previously published in Fruitslice. Diane currently teaches programming and video game design with youth arts organization Coyote Central. Away from work she spends most of her time on the couch with her cat Iroh and exploring Seattle’s food scene with her partner River.

Alejandro Pérez-Cortés’s poems and short stories have been published in newspapers in his home state of Colima, Mexico since 1996. In 2000 his work was included in the Anthology Cage of Verses / Jaula de Versos, published by the literary workshop Chessboard / Tablero, coordinated by the local poet Efrén Rodríguez. In 2002 his manuscript won first place in the XVI Literary Creation Contest of ITESM, Zacatecas, Mexico. In 2018 Alejandro’s first English poems were included in the anthology Soundings from the Salish Sea, A Pacific Northwest Poetry Anthology (Edmonds, Washington). In 2021 his manuscript Ima and Coli are the tree that was never a seed won the Octavio Paz Poetry Prize organized by the National Poetry Series and the Miami Book Fair at Miami Dade College (Spanish – English bilingual edition). In 2024, his poem “Alejandra Pizarnik and her 4 sister dolls” won first place in the fifth poetry contest organized by DePaul University and the literary magazine Contratiempo in the city of Chicago. The Colibrí publishing house will publish his new book of poetry in mid 2026. He currently teaches Spanish in Washington State.

Sayantani Roy has placed work in several journals including Emerge Literary Journal, Grist (forthcoming), MAYDAY, TIMBER, West Trestle Review, and Wordgathering. She is an MFA candidate at the Rainier Writing Workshop, and her work has been supported by AWP.

Claudia Castro Luna is a 2014 Jack Straw Writing Fellow, an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate fellow (2019), WA State Poet Laureate (2018–2021) and Seattle’s inaugural Civic Poet (2015–2018). She is the author of Cipota Under the Moon (Tia Chucha Press, 2022) and Killing Marías (Two Sylvias Press, 2017) both shortlisted for the WA State Book Award in poetry, 2023 and 2018 respectively. She is also the author of One River, A Thousand Voices (Chin Music Press, 2020) and the chapbook This City (Floating Bridge Press, 2016). Her most recent non-fiction is in There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis (Vintage) and in Memory’s Vault: The Poetic Heart of Fort Worden (Empty Bowl). Born in El Salvador, Castro Luna lives in English and Spanish.