Charles D’Ambrosio 

Author, Loitering, The Dead Fish Museum

Pick: A Passage to Juneau, Jonathan Raban (2000)

“Loneliness is a dominant theme, with loads of madness and suicide, where no fate is worse than being an outcast. All of this seems to reside deep in the place, a weather that never goes away, and Raban’s not alone in feeling haunted by it, nor am I.”

Kathleen Flenniken

State Poet Laureate, Washington

Pick: The Profile Makers, Linda Bierds (1997)

“It’s such an imaginative collection, combining bits of history and art and incredible insight.”

David Shields

Author, Reality Hunger, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead; Professor, University of Washington 

Pick: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, Mary McCarthy (1972)

“Because the perceiver by her very presence alters what's perceived.”

Ed Skoog  

Poet, Rough Day, Mister Skylight

Pick: Making Certain It Goes On: The Collected Poems of Richard Hugo, Richard Hugo (2013)

“Hugo is in spirit to Seattle and the Pacific Northwest what W. B. Yeats is to Ireland.”
 

Shin Yu Pai  

Poet, Aux Arcs

Pick: Water Chasing Water, Koon Woon (2013)

“Koon Woon has spent several decades living in and writing about Seattle's International District from the perspective of an Asian American immigrant and restaurant laborer. Wild, inventive, and intelligent, his work is incomparable to any other writer working in Seattle.”

Maged Zaher  

Poet,  Thank You for the Window Office, Portrait of the Poet as an Engineer

Pick: Larynx Galaxy, John Olson (2012)

“A tremendous book. John Olson is a stylist and a lover of words who can create worlds out of his text. He is a Seattle treasure.”