Lit Lounge: The People’s art
january 24 2025
“I’m an artist… I’m trying to break your shit with every sentence I write.” — Kiese Laymon
What People Are Saying
“I haven't witnessed such a packed, electric, soul-stirring literary evening in so many years here in Seattle.”
— sonora jha, author of the laughter
“Lit Lounge was so life-giving! What a gift to spend an evening immersed in creative goodness and connecting with such welcoming folks. I really appreciated how intentionally inclusive this event was - truly an original and inspiring community function!”
— dorothy
"The energy in the room was thick—packed with people, powerful poetry, and a necessary sense of community. Seeing so many folks come together to share space, stories, and tasty libations filled my proverbial and literal cup. It was sexy, relaxed, inspired and intimate. In a time when connection can feel hard to come by, this felt necessary. I’ll definitely be back."
— Jyoti
“Lit Lounge was a treat at the end of a rough week! Our social landscape is filled with willful ignorance. It was refreshing to hear writers speak truth and bring to life real emotion.”
— stasea
“Seattle's literary ecosystem needs to be where the people are. Lit Lounge activates a space built for community by community. To see this kind of work brought on stage in my own neighborhood shows me how much I've been missing. The vibe was immaculate; I left replenished.”
— kristen millares young, author of SUBduction
“Lit Lounge: The People’s Art is the most vibrant literary convergence I’ve experienced in a long time. Gorgeously local, featuring this city’s most dynamic writers across genre, welcoming and celebratory—We are so lucky to have the brilliant and warm Jodi-Ann Burey bringing us together!”
— Gabrielle bates, author of judas goat
“Congrats on a brilliant opening night! Such nourishment & inspiration for our hearts, minds & souls.”
— EMILY
Hospitality
hannah nishimoto
zaliYa MoRRIS
lilia Fratini
leilani lewis
Event pics ^ special thanks to Aline Photography
READERS
-
AMBER FLAME
-
KEEONNA HARRIS
-
DUJIE TAHAT
-
READERS - AMBER FLAME - KEEONNA HARRIS - DUJIE TAHAT -
Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, activist and educator, whose work has garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Baldwin for the Arts, The Watering Hole, Vermont Studio Center, and YEFE NOF. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame’s work has been published in diverse arenas, including Def Jam Poetry, Nailed Magazine, Winter Tangerine, The Dialogist, Split This Rock, Black Heart Magazine, Sundress Publications, CityArts Magazine, FreezeRay, Redivider Journal and more. In her writing, Flame explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and the interstitial joy in it all. A 2016 and 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee, and Jack Straw Writer Program alum, Amber Flame's first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, was published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press. Flame was a recipient of the CityArtist grant from Seattle's Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs to write, produce and perform her one-person play, Hands Above the Covers, a series of character monologues drawn from diverse real-life interviews.
In early 2018, Flame co-curated the art installation Black Imagination at Core Gallery in Seattle. She had her first solo exhibit in 2019 with a project entitled ::intrigue:: 8, a multimedia installation that featured musical compositions inspired by the text of 8 different poets with original video content as well as text from the original poems, through Jack Straw Production's Artist Support and New Media Gallery fellowships. Hugo House's 2017-2019 Writer-in-Residence for Poetry, Flame’s second book of poetry, titled apocrifa, launched May 2023 from Red Hen Press. She’s currently making a film from her newest collection, supported by Black Cinema Collective.
In addition to creating change as Program Director of Hedgebrook, she continues to work as a writing instructor in community and for currently and formerly incarcerated women and youth while working on a third poetry collection, making music with her band Last of the RedHot Mamas, making art, and raising her awesome kid. Amber Flame is a queer Black dandy mama who falls hard for a jumpsuit and some fresh kicks.
amber flame
KEEonna harris
“I recently moved to Seattle in 2023, and it is the first place that has felt like home. A place that has embraced me as one of their own. It was beyond special to read (for the first time) from my debut memoir, Mainline Mama. In times like these we need community, art, and a safe place to gather and love on one another. Lit Lounge felt like a community hug!” — keeonna harris
Keeonna Harris (she/her) is a memoirist, creative nonfiction writer, and abolitionist scholar. Keeonna was born and raised in Watts, and other parts of South-Central Los Angeles, California. In her writing, Keeonna explores conceptions of motherhood, familial relationships, and wellbeing for Black women in the United States--focusing on the health disparities, relationships, and radical organizing for women connected to systems of mass incarceration. Keeonna's debut memoir "Mainline Mama" will be published with Amistad Press in 2025.
She has written for Salon.com and has a chapter in the anthology "So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth" edited by Aracelis Girmay (Haymarket Books, 2023) and an interview in "(Super)vision: On Motherhood and Surveillance" edited by Sophie Hamcher (Orbis, 2023). Keeonna is an inaugural recipient of the 2018-2019 PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship and the 2024-2025 Haymarket Writing for Freedom Fellowship. She also received the 2021 Tin House Summer Writing Residency, the 2023 Baldwin Center for the Arts Residency, a 2023 Hedgebrook Writer in Residence and the 2023 Edith Wharton Resident.
Keeonna worked as a chef for Hedgebrook in Seattle, Washington. Keeonna received her PhD from Arizona State University in 2021 and dis currently a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Health Systems and Population Health at the University of Washington.
dujie tahat
“As someone who came up in youth slam then dive bars, Lit Lounge felt like a kind of coming home. It wasn't so much a reading as much as a place for Black and brown and queer folk to get together and catch up — and there just so happened to be a reading. Lit Lounge is an event that reminds us that there should be more poems!—and more literature!—in more places that our people already are at! So much gratitude to Jodi-Ann for this slice of what this city has been and can be.” — Dujie tahat
Dujie Tahat is the author of three poetry chapbooks: Here I Am O My God, selected for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship; Salat, winner of the Tupelo Press Sunken Garden Chapbook Award and longlisted for the 2020 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection; and Balikbayan, finalist for The New Michigan Press / DIAGRAM chapbook contest and the Center for Book Arts honoree. Along with Luther Hughes and Gabrielle Bates, they cohost The Poet Salon podcast.