Subhaga Crystal Bacon w/ Kathleen Flenniken, Cindy Veach, & Abby Murray

Poet Subhaga Crystal Bacon visits the store for their fifth collection, A Brief History of My Sex Life. They will be joined by fellow poets Kathleen Flenniken, Abby Murray, and Cindy Veach.

A Brief History of My Sex Life examines the sexual history of a lifetime from a sexualized childhood to confused sexual awakening to the whys and hows of mature sexual and gender expression. Exploring the impacts of family and culture, and a late life recollection of early childhood sexual abuse, these poems unravel an emergent nonbinary and transmasculine gender identity. Its poems confront the difficult with clarity, humor, and vulnerability and find companionship in nature. As trans people are under attack by lawmakers who fail to understand their basic humanity, this is a timely and valuable collection.

"A Brief History of My Sex Life is a poetic memoir that traverses the self: it begins in the terrain of childhood and arrives at a profound peace. Subhaga Crystal Bacon captures the complications of family inheritance while presenting the detailed richness of Americana. Beneath these deeply textured poems is an abiding search for self and an unrelenting honesty. Subhaga narrates their own story with freedom, precision, and humor: “It’s Shakespearean; I’m a man / disguised as a woman playing a boy. / What a precious, private thing it is.” A Brief History of My Sex Life reminds us that poetry has the power to investigate the innermost part of ourselves. Subhaga claims that power. 'Now do you see?' they ask, 'You can love what you are / without flinching.'” —Jessica Cuello, author of Yours, Creature

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them), is the author of five collections of poetry including, A Brief History of My Sex Life, from Lily Poetry Review Books; the Lambda Literary finalist, Transitory, 2023, winner of the BOA Editions, Ltd. Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry; Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, winner of the Red Flag Poetry Chapbook Prize, 2023, released in an expanded second edition in the summer of 2024. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, Subhaga is an AWP Writer to Writer mentor and teaching artist working in schools and libraries with youth and adults, as well as private students. Their work appears or is forthcoming in a variety of print and online journals including Terrain, West Trestle, The Bellevue Literary Review, Ciderpress Review, Smartish Pace, and others. A Queer elder, they live in rural north central Washington on unceded Methow land.

Kathleen Flenniken is the author of Dressing in the Dark (Lynx House Press, 2025) and three other poetry collections. 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 Poetry Unbound anthology and podcast, and in the documentary film Richland, now streaming on Apple TV. She served as Washington State Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014.

Cindy Veach’s most recent poetry collection is Monster Galaxy, a finalist for the Sally Albiso Award. She is also the author of Her Kind, an Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal finalist, and Gloved Against Blood, a Paterson Poetry Prize finalist and Massachusetts Center for the Book ‘Must Read.’ Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Philip Booth Prize and Samuel Allen Washington Prize. Cindy is poetry co-editor of MER.

Abby E. Murray (they/them) is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. Their first book, Hail and Farewell, won the Perugia Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, while their second book, Recovery Commands, won the Richard-Gabriel Rummonds Poetry Prize and was released by Ex Ophidia Press in 2025. Abby served as the 2019-2021 poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, and has been teaching multi-genre writing workshops to communities impacted by military service and trauma around the country for years. They are the current writing instructor and fellowship program manager for Army War College fellows at the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies.

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