PORT ANGELES — This year’s event just might be a bit edgier than before. And it certainly has a bigger, more diverse lineup, promises Janet Lucas, organizer of the 18th annual Reading for Hunger Relief this Friday night.
Poets, novelists and performers of varying styles will get together for two kinds of sustenance at 7 p.m.: food for the body and food for the soul.
The reading, in the Port Angeles Library at 2210 S. Peabody St., benefits Port Angeles and Sequim’s food banks, with an admission charge of $5 or a donation of nonperishable food.
For $10, guests can take home a chapbook of the evening’s poetry and stories.
“It would be hard to gather a more wonderful group,” said Lucas, who in recent years has invited the North Coast Writers group of Port Angeles to join Peninsula College professors and staffers in sharing their words.
With the two sets joining forces, the reading has become “enormously successful,” she added, with “quite a harvest for the food banks.”
Fifteen writers
Fifteen poets and prose writers will appear Friday, including Peninsula College instructors who don’t often get to present their work to the community.
There are two newcomers: college writing teacher Molly Hollenbach and Clay Muwin River, who is married to returning writer Angie River.
In 2012, Angie’s “wonderful stage presence and edgy zest . . . added a new dimension,” said Lucas.
“Clay will be yet another step in that direction.”
A member of the Passamaquoddy Native American tribe, Clay is a self-described gender-queer spoken-word poet and performance artist from West Philadelphia.
Both Clay and Angie have performed in multimedia shows such as September’s “Bodies of Witness” at Studio Bob in Port Angeles.
On Friday night, Clay will perform “The Mayor of Philadelphia,” a spoken-word piece that touches on the history of Philly and challenges listeners to think beyond what they see.
Angie will offer two pieces: a short love poem she wrote for Clay titled “One Part Wolf, One Part Wind” and a community poem, “I Hunger,” which she’ll compile on the spot with input from those who come to the event.
Other participants
Also readying their stories and poems for the event are:
■ Sally Albiso, winner of 2011’s Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award among other honors.
■ Suzann Bick, a New Orleanian and author of the forthcoming story collection Twelve Stepping through the French Quarter.
■ Mary-Alice Boulter, theater artist, costumer and writer of prose and poetry.
■ Jim Fisher, Peninsula College online instructor and inventor of “sonnettes” poems.
■ Carmen Germain, poet and author now retired after more than 20 years of teaching at Peninsula College.
■ Giovanina “Jen” Gouge, a novelist, poet and writer of scholarly works on the social aspects of aging.
■ Hollenbach, a Peninsula College writing teacher and member of North Coast Writers.
■ Wildlife biologist, musical instrument maker, poet and novelist Patrick Loafman.
■ Lucas, Peninsula College professor of English and rhetoric.
■ Michael Mills, Peninsula College professor and playwright who created last year’s “Freak Like Me” play.
■ Diana Somerville, science writer, Sequim Gazette columnist and author of Inside Out Down Under: Stories from a Spiritual Sabbatical.
■ Mark Valentine, a schoolteacher, actor and writer.
■ Charlotte Warren, author of the Washington Prize-winning poetry collection Gandhi’s Lap and Jumna: Sacred River, a memoir of her childhood in India and her coming of age in the United States as it entered the 1960s.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
