Jill Bronfman & Rena Priest

Celebrating the release of Bronfman's Thanks for Meeting Me Here and Priest's latest book Positively Uncivilized
About this Event

Jill Bronfman and Rena Priest visit the store to celebrate the release of Bronfman's Thanks for Meeting Me Here and Priest's latest book Positively Uncivilized.

Registration is not required, but helps us anticipate audience size.

About Thanks for Meeting Me Here

Winner of Raven Chronicles Press's 2026 Keepers of the Fire Prize for Fiction

Thanks for Meeting Me Here is a story about a woman finding her place in a political and technological world that is beyond what we’re used to. Through a series of disasters, Miranda has wound up with a mix of biological and artificial body parts. Now she and her daughter are in danger because their government is waffling on whether she deserves any human rights. She’s determined to find some hope for her future, and to reunite with her be-loved daughter as they meet in a tea shop in London to catch up on their troubling past.

“Thanks For Meeting Me Here will astonish you. Reading it feels a bit like being caught in a gentle explosion, or strapped into a dazzling and twisty roller coaster ride—a ride that manages, at the same time (and sometimes in the same sentence) to be both elegantly unruly, and deeply moving. I absolutely loved it.”—Molly Gloss, author of The Dazzle of Day and Wild Life

"Thanks for Meeting Me Here is a book that understands what science fiction has always known: to write the catastrophe is to refuse it. Jill Bronfman moves through a technocratic future in flash and flare, but what endures in these pages is older than any system of control—the bond between a mother and daughter, yes, but also the deeper kinship between humans and the animate world that no state can legislate away. This novel is an artifact of resistance. Read it as a warning. Read it as a promise."—CMarie Fuhrman, author of Salmon Weather: Writing From the Land of No Return

About Positively Uncivilized

Winner of Raven Chronicles Press's 2025 Keepers of the Fire Prize for Non Fiction

From an Indigenous perspective, Positively Uncivilized examines the impact of human inhabitants on the planet earth. Alongside personal accounts of the deterioration of salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest and the loss of Indigenous history, the twelve essays in this collection emphasize the necessity of community to overcome the damage done by human socioeconomic and political systems designed to isolate and shame those vulnerable to those unfair systems.

"Priest reflects on the traditional ecological knowledge of her ancestors, details the destructive history of the “fish wars” between her people and extraction industries, and recounts the heartbreaking journey of Tokitae and the beautiful lessons that Orcas impart to their human kin. She vividly reminds us how precious our natural world is, giving voice to the beings that have sustained us for millennia."—Tiffany Midge author of Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s

"Rena Priest’s Positively Uncivilized is a necessary read. Priest writes with lyrical curiosity, sharp resistance, and immense tenderness. This is an essay collection rooted in storytelling—singing forth with gratitude, community, indigenous futures, and entangled relation. As Priest insists: 'Stories are powerful.'"—Jane Wong, author of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City

Jill Bronfman was one of 12 Aspiring Novelists Selected for the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2025, was the Barnes & Noble National Essay Contest Grand Prize Winner, and was shortlisted for the 2025 Moon Meridian Novella Prize. She was named a semi-finalist for both the James Applewhite Poetry Prize and The Waking’s Flash Prose Prize, and received an honorable mention in the Storm Cellar Force Majeure Flash Contest. Her poetry chapbook, Second Cities, will be published in late 2026. She has been accepted to residencies and conferences including La Baldi, Looking Glass, Elk River, Squam, WonderMountain, and LitCamp. She is an upper-tier reader for The Masters Review. She volunteers with 826 Valencia and ScholarMatch helping kids write poetry and teens write their personal essays for college applications. She has an MFA from Pacific University and teaches writing at all levels from graduate to kids.

Rena Priest is an enrolled member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation and served as the sixth Washington State Poet Laureate (2021-2023). She is the first Indigenous person to hold this post. Priest is also the recipient of a Washington State Book Award and an Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award. She has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Indigenous Nations Poets, Nia Tero, and the University of Washington Libraries. Her first collection, Patriarchy Blues, received an American Book Award. Her second collection, Sublime Subliminal, was published as the finalist for the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. She has published a non-fiction book, Northwest Know-how: Beaches, with Sasquatch Books, and is the editor of two anthologies: I Sing the Salmon Home: Poems from Washington State and The Larger Voice: Celebrating Native Arts and Culture Foundation Literature Fellows. Priest holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Bellingham, Washington. You can learn more at renapriest.com.