Lena Khalaf Tuffaha with Gabrielle Bates — 'Something About Living: Poems'

Third Place Books is honored to welcome Lena Khalaf Tuffaha to our Lake Forest Park store for a discussion of her collection of poetry, Something About Living, which won the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry. Tuffaha will be joined in conversation by poet Gabrielle Bates. This event is free and open to the public.

“Something About Living opens with a single bird and ends in a dazzling meteor shower, and in between lies something of a marvel—an electric and sobering song crackling with possibilities for a homeland fractured and besieged by Empire. Lena Khalaf Tuffaha writes, ‘Love is paying attention,’ and this impressive collection serves as a powerful exemplar of devotion—brilliantly rendered in surprising forms—and profoundly teaches us 'a million ways to love.’”
—Judges’ citation, National Book Award for Poetry

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

2025 ALA Notable Book
Winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry
Winner of the 2022 Akron Poetry Prize
It’s nearly impossible to write poetry that holds the human desire for joy and the insistent agitations of protest at the same time, but Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s gorgeous and wide-ranging new collection Something About Living does just that. Her poems interweave Palestine’s historic suffering, the challenges of living in this world full of violence and ill will, and the gentle delights we embrace to survive that violence. Khalaf Tuffaha’s elegant poems sing the fractured songs of Diaspora while remaining clear-eyed to the cause of the fracturing: the multinational hubris of colonialism and greed.
This collection is her witness to our collective unraveling, vowel by vowel, syllable by syllable. “Let the plural be a return of us” the speaker of “On the Thirtieth Friday We Consider Plurals” says and this plurality is our tenuous humanity and the deep need to hang on to kindness in our communities. In these poems, Khalaf Tuffaha reminds us that love isn’t an idea; it is a radical act. Especially for those who, like this poet, travel through the world vigilantly, but steadfastly remain heart first. —Adrian Matejka, author of Somebody Else Sold the World

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist, and translator. She is the author of three books of poetry: Something About Living (UAkron, 2024), winner of the 2024 National Book Award and winner of the 2022 Akron Prize for Poetry; Kaan & Her Sisters (Trio House Press, 2023), finalist for the 2024 Firecracker Award and honorable mention for the 2024 Arab American Book Award; and Water & Salt (Red Hen, 2017), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award and honorable mention for the 2018 Arab American Award. Her writing has appeared in journals including Los Angeles Review of Books, Michigan Quarterly Review, the Nation, Poets.org, Protean, Prairie Schooner, and many others. Tuffaha’s work has also been anthologized widely, including in The Long Devotion (Georgia Press), We Call to the Eye and the Night (Persea Press), and Gaza Unsilenced (Just World Books). She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington and an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop. Tuffaha lives with her family in Redmond, Washington.

Gabrielle Bates is the author of the poetry collection Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023), a New York TimesBook Review 'The Shortlist' pick and a Chicago Review of Books 'must-read' book of 2023. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Bates currently lives in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium, co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon, and teaches occasionally through universities and arts organizations. A Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship finalist, her work has been featured in the New Yorker, Poem-a-Day, Ploughshares, The Slowdown show, and elsewhere. On Twitter: @GabrielleBates.

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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