Lit Lounge: The People’s art
February 28 2025
“Like a lot of Black women, I have always had to invent the power my freedom requires...” — June Jordan
Special thanks to Danny Ngan Photography
What People Are Saying
“I had an amazing time at Lit Lounge. We desperately need this space in Seattle to experience the literary excellence for Black and brown writers.”
— JEnna
"I’m an enrolled Snoqualmie tribal member who grew up in Rainier Vista in the 90s, before my tribe was federally recognized and before the neighborhood’s large-scale redevelopment. Seattle’s ever-changing landscape often displaces its people, so to see a minority-owned business emerge alongside a literary and cultural community gathering like Lit Lounge fills my heart and represents everything I want for Seattle.”
— iz white, author of all read: poems
“I’ve found a unique warmth at the Lit Lounge. It was beautiful to enjoy cookies with new friends while we soak in the stories and wisdom shared by the readers.”
— Elissa
“Lit Lounge is the closest it gets to Love Jones’ “The Sanctuary” - a special & unapologetic space that beautifully transcends the limits and lies of this world.”
— Beelyn naihiwet, author of moonful: poems
Hospitality
hannah nishimoto
zaliYa MoRRIS
sophia som
lilia Fratini
leilani lewis
READERS
-
MONICA WEST
-
QUenton baker
-
kristen millares young
-
READERS - MONICA WEST - QUenton baker - kristen millares young -
monica west
“I didn't know how much Seattle needed Lit Lounge until Jodi-Ann started Lit Lounge; now, I can't imagine the cultural landscape here without it. Lit Lounge is a necessary space for writers of color to share our stories and voices with a community that is hungry for them, and I'm grateful that I could be part of it.” — Monica west
Monica West is the author of Revival Season, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, a Barnes and Noble Discover selection, and short-listed for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She received her B.A. from Duke University, her M.A. from New York University, and her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was a Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellow. She has received fellowships and funding from Bread Loaf, Hedgebrook, Kimbilio Fiction, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She currently teaches at the University of Washington and is working on her second novel.
kristen millares young
Kristen Millares Young is a journalist, essayist, and author of the novel Subduction, named a staff pick by The Paris Review and called “whip-smart” by the Washington Post, “a brilliant debut” by the Seattle Times, and “utterly unique and important” by Ms. Magazine. Subduction was selected as one of “the year’s best books” by Electric Literature and featured by journals such as BOMB, the Believer, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Ploughshares.
A 2025 resident of the Storyknife Writers Retreat, Kristen was the researcher for the New York Times team that produced “Snow Fall,” which won a Pulitzer Prize. Her essays, book reviews, and investigations appear in the Washington Post, the Guardian, Literary Hub, and the anthologies Advanced Creative Nonfiction, Latina Outsiders, and Alone Together, winner of a Washington State Book Award. A former Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House, she is also the editor of Seismic: Seattle, City of Literature.
She teaches in the low residency MFA program at Oregon State University-Cascades. Her memoir Desire Lines will be published by Red Hen Press on October 6, 2026.
“As a stage performer, you can sense the quality of attention in the room. The power, beauty and focus of Black Women Write was in full effect on Friday night. Lit Lounge gave me life and light.
Right now, it would be easier to stay home, worry and weep. But that doesn’t energize us to do the work. To be with community — to see the determination and hope in people’s faces — is to know there are qualities which cannot be taken.
On my walk home from The Station, I hugged Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde from mam’s books. Listo.”
— kristin millares young
quenton baker
Quenton Baker is a poet, educator, and Cave Canem fellow. Their current focus is black interiority and the afterlife of slavery. Their work has appeared in The Offing, Jubilat, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus and elsewhere. They are a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from Artist Trust. They were a 2019 Robert Rauschenberg Artist in Residence and a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. They are the author of we pilot the blood (The3rd Thing, 2021) and ballast (Haymarket Books, 2023).
