Kathleen Flenniken & Laura Read—'Dressing in the Dark,' 'The Serious World'

Third Place Books welcomes writers Kathleen Flenniken and Laura Read to our Ravenna store to celebrate their new collections of poetry. Kathleen's delves into memory, imagination, and recovery. Meanwhile, Laura's is a series of epistolary poems written to Sylvia Plath about depression, relationships, and art.

This event is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!

This event is free to attend. Registration is recommended in advance.

Please note: While RSVP helps us anticipate attendance, your RSVP may not guarantee a seat. Seating is first-come, first-served, and all events at our Ravenna neighborhood store are free and open to the public. Only standing room may be available for events with high interest.

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Volume XXVI in the Northwest Poetry Series

The poems in Kathleen Flenniken’s new collection move in and out of memory, imagination, and present time with a sure voice alive to meaning and the layered and complex unity that is a human life. Her speaker suffers the loss of a breast; the poems plot her recovery, calling forth her lost mother and her child self. They ask: is any given moment the pure experience of that moment, and what does it mean that the answer is no? These beautifully structured and voiced poems, with the generosity typical of all her work, answer: it means we are blessed.

The Serious World is a collection of epistolary poems written to Sylvia Plath about depression, therapy, friendship, family, and the struggling life of an artist. With humor, sensitivity, and deep reflection, Laura Read explores many themes including mental health, suicide, loss, feminism, motherhood, and aging, offering a fresh view of the world as seen through the feminist poet's searching spyglass.

Reaching back into history to talk with Plath and other historical figures who have suffered and wrote about their suffering, Read tries to make sense of what it's like to be alive and suffering now. These deeply felt poems include language from Plath's The Bell Jar and poems about Marguerite Duras and Simone de Beauvoir. Other strange bedfellows from pop culture also make appearances, among them Kenny Rogers, Dr. Seuss, Kurt Cobain, and Courtney Love.

Kathleen Flenniken is the author of Dressing in the Dark, selected for the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series by Linda Bierds and published by Lynx House Press in Fall 2025. Her other collections include Post Romantic (2020), Plume (2012) and Famous (2006). She is the recipient of fellowships from the NEA and Artist Trust, a Pushcart Prize, and a Washington State Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Image, Orion, the Cascadia Field Guide and Poetry Unbound anthologies, and in the documentary film Richland, now streaming on Apple TV.

Laura Read is the author of The Serious World, forthcoming from BOA in 2025; But She Is Also Jane (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023, winner of the Juniper Prize); Dresses from the Old Country (BOA Editions, 2018); Instructions for my Mother’s Funeral (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012, winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, selected by Dorianne Laux), and The Chewbacca on Hollywood Boulevard Reminds Me of You (winner of the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award, 2011). Recipient of a Washington State Artists Trust Grant, a Florida Review Prize for Poetry, and the Crab Creek Review Prize for Poetry, Laura teaches at Spokane Falls Community College and in the MFA program at Eastern Washington University.

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.

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