Always a pleasure to have a reading at Open Books, but last night was especially so as we launched our first play, Vicinity/Memoryall by Christine Deavel and J.W. Marshall.
Years ago, when I was still quite young and new to Seattle, I started going to Open Books… and through time and many dozens of books later, have been friends with these two kind and generous people. As someone who never had much poetry in college and never completed a degree, I can say, that they are the biggest influence I have had in my poetic education.
It has been a wonderful honor to publish a their first play and to have the type of collaborative experience I was hoping for when starting this publishing enterprise. I have learned so much from them as we have worked through this process together.
In addition to hearing pieces of their new play (to be produced in July 2019), we also screened Sarah Lintakoon‘s “Olive”. She was the winner of our Emerging Visions Award for 2018. We were delighted at the ways Sarah creatively worked with very little budget to tell her own story about memorialization and grief.
