Maya Jewell Zeller with Jane Wong & Elizabeth Bradfield — 'Raised by Ferns'

Third Place Books welcomes author Maya Jewell Zeller to our Ravenna store for a conversation about her new memoir, . Told in a series of interweaving essays, Raised by Ferns is a story about identity, survival, liminality, and change. Maya will be joined in conversation by Jane Wong () and Elizabeth Bradfield ().

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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Born in a Pacific Northwest gas station to itinerant, countercultural parents, Maya Jewell Zeller came of age in a landscape where poverty, wildness, and self-reliance intertwined. Raised by Ferns traces the path of a feral girl craving both freedom and safety to a middle-class adult life shaped by academia, motherhood, and uneasy privilege. Refusing tired narratives of bootstrap triumph, Zeller instead renders rural America with intimate complexity. She writes with sharp lyricism and attention about what it means to live between worlds-material scarcity and cultural wealth, inherited distrust and institutional legitimacy. From leaking rentals to library stacks, from ferns and fire codes to scholarship and marital strife, Zeller's life resists easy packaging yet finds form in layered essays that explore the complicated pursuit of belonging. Raised by Ferns offers a vital, compelling new take on the forces that shape identity and the choices that define home. It is a story of survival, but more importantly, of questioning for what-and who-it is worth surviving for.

Maya Jewell Zeller is a multi-genre author of several books and collaborations, most recently the memoir Raised by Ferns (Porphyry Press, March 2026); The Wonder of Mushrooms (AdventureKEEN, fall 2025); out takes/ glove box, selected by Eduardo Corral as winner of the 2022 New American Poetry Prize; and the co-authored textbook (with Kathryn Nuernberger) Advanced Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024). Maya’s prose appears widely, and her essay, “Scavenger Panorama,” was honored by Vivian Gornick as a Notable in Best American Essays 2023. Maya is Professor of English for Central Washington University, and Affiliate Faculty of Poetry and Nature Writing for Western Colorado University’s low-residency MFA program. Maya lives in the Pacific Northwest with her children, their two tuxedo cats, and an ever-expanding library.
Jane Wong is the author of the memoir (Tin House, 2023), winner of the 2024 Washington State Book Award. She also wrote two poetry collections: (Alice James, 2021) and (Action Books, 2016). She grew up in a Chinese American take-out restaurant on the Jersey shore and is an Associate Professor at Western Washington University.
Poet/naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield’s most recent book is SOFAR: Poems, which includes poems that were published in The Atlantic Monthly, The Sun, Poetry, and Orion. She is also author of Interpretive Work, which won the Audre Lorde Prize in Lesbian Poetry and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and co-creator of Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, winner of a Pacific Northwest Book Award among other honors. She is also author of the poetry collections Approaching Ice, Once Removed, and Toward Antarctica, and her awards include a Stegner Fellowship and a Bread Loaf Scholarship. Liz works as a naturalist and field assistant on Cape Cod, directs the Poetry Concentration for the low-residency MFA at Western Colorado University, and edits Broadsided (www.broadsidedpress.org). When asked about her multiple interests, she says, "I am an aspiring generalist." Forever queer, forever curious, you can learn more at www.ebradfield.com

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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