Kathleen Flenniken w/ Melissa Kwasny & Peter Pereira, DRESSING IN THE DARK

Former Washington State Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken visits the store to present her new collection of poetry, Dressing in the Dark, alongside fellow poets Melissa Kwasny and Peter Pereira.

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.

"Sometimes I long for a spare and perfect book of poems, one I can read in a single morning, then ever after want to open at will, one that will fill me the way the imagination fills me, with gentle surprise, softening the sharp edges of the rational world with fresh metaphors and meaning. Writing with rare clarity and care—for the young, the scared, the old man standing in line at the post office—Kathleen Flenniken gifts us such a book. 'Open yourself like a hymnal,' she advises, and does, reconstructing not only what has been loved but what has been lost—a breast, a mother, a childhood home—and returning them to a place of honor, the human 'honor system, the most honorable of all.'”—Melissa Kwasny

Kathleen Flenniken is the author of Dressing in the Dark (Lynx House Press, 2025) and three previous poetry collections: Post Romantic, Plume, and Famous. Her honors include fellowships from the NEA and Artist Trust, a Pushcart Prize, a Washington State Book Award, and an ALA Notable Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Image, Orion, the anthologies Cascadia Field Guide and Poetry Unbound, and in the documentary film Richland, now streaming on Apple TV. She served as Washington State Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014.

Melissa Kwasny is the author of seven collections of poems, including The Cloud Path, Where Outside the Body Is the Soul Today, Pictograph, and The Nine Senses, which contains a set of poems that won the Poetry Society of America’s 2008 Cecil Hemly Award. She is also the editor of two anthologies: I Go to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Poets in Defense of Global Human Rights and Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry 1800-1950. She was Montana Poet Laureate from 2019-2021, a position she shared with M.L. Smoker.

Peter Pereira is a family physician and poet in Seattle. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review and other magazines. They have also been featured on The Writer’s Almanac, BBC Radio, and in The Best American Poetry anthology. His books include Saying the World and What’s Written on the Body, both from Copper Canyon Press, and the limited-edition chapbook, The Lost Twin, from Grey Spider Press.

Purchase Dressing in the Dark here.

Host or Publisher Elliott Bay Book Company