Maria Giesbrecht and Elise Powers — 'A Little Feral' and 'Size of Your Joy'

Third Place Books welcomes poets Maria Giesbrecht and Elise Powers to our Ravenna store for a conversation about their new books. Maria's traces personal resurrection after leaving a conservative Mennonite upbringing, while Elise's investigates the complex and often contradictory experiences of womanhood.

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 books!

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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In A Little Feral, Maria Giesbrecht delivers a debut collection that navigates faith, family, and personal resurrection through a voice at once wild, intimate, and quietly rebellious. Written in the aftermath of leaving a conservative Mennonite upbringing, these poems chart a parallel journey of breaking away— from father, from God, from the confines of obedience. Giesbrecht’ s language is lyrical and unflinching, a cadence that moves between tenderness and defiance, weaving ancestral memory with moments of stark revelation.
A Little Feral asks readers to reimagine where holiness might be found— in the fractures of family, in the undoing of inherited faith, and even in the loneliness of a world shaped by patriarchy and exile.

For every woman who's ever held joy and sorrow in the same breath—this debut is a tender, powerful reminder that you are not alone​.
The Size of Your Joy is an intimate and empowering exploration of the complex and often contradictory experiences of womanhood, offering an unflinching look at how identity, resilience, and self-worth are shaped by the intersections of love, grief, and longing.
Through the birth of her daughter, the vital yet complicated relationships between the women in her life, and the realities of being a woman in the world, Powers reflects on how ideas of beauty, desire, and shame are quietly passed from one generation to the next, and what it takes to break those cycles. She examines the hunger—for belonging, autonomy, and joy—that women are taught to suppress, while imagining a path forward defined by liberation and self-acceptance.
A celebration of reclamation, The Size of Your Joy asks how we might carry both sorrow and joy, loss and love, as dual forces that shape the stories we inherit and the lives we choose to create. This collection invites readers to embrace joy not as the absence of struggle, but as an act of defiance and hope.

Maria Giesbrecht is a Canadian poet whose work explores her Mexican and Mennonite roots. Her writing has appeared in The Literary Review of Canada, Grain, Contemporary Verse 2, San Pedro River Review, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2025 Jack McCarthy Book Prize, a Best of Net nominee, and the founder of Gather, an international writing community that connects poets worldwide. Born in Durango, Mexico, she now lives in Toronto, Canada with her fiancée.

Elise Powers received a BA in English Literature from Western Washington University. Her poems reflect on identity, womanhood, and the ordinary moments that make up a life. Her work has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies including Gather and Only Poems, and has been shortlisted for the Central Avenue Poetry Prize, awarded second place in the Black Horse Review Poetry Contest, and nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology. Her debut poetry collection, The Size of Your Joy, is forthcoming from Central Avenue Publishing in spring 2026. She lives in Seattle with her husband and daughter, where she writes, collects sea glass, and savors life’s tender joys. Find more of her work on Instagram @elisepowerspoet and on Substack at Two Raw Sugars.

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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