Putsata Reang is an author and journalist whose debut memoir, “Ma and Me” (MCD/FSG May 2022) was a recipient of the 2023 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association award for nonfiction and a finalist for the 2023 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Washington State Book Award and Lambda Literary Award. Her writing has appeared in national and international publications including the New York Times, Ms magazine, the San Jose Mercury News, Politico, and the Guardian. She has lived and worked in more than a dozen countries including Cambodia, Afghanistan and Thailand. Putsata is an alum of Hedgebrook, Mineral School and Kimmel Harding Nelson residencies, and was a fellow of the Jack Straw writers program. In 2005, she was awarded an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship that took her back to her homeland, Cambodia, to report on landless farmers. She is a public speaker and memoir teacher with Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools program.
Tara Conklin is a writer and former lawyer whose first novel, The House Girl, (William Morrow) was a New York Times bestseller, #1 IndieNext pick, Target book club pick and has been translated into 8 languages. Her second novel, The Last Romantics (William Morrow) was published in February 2019 to wide acclaim. An instant New York Times bestseller, The Last Romantics was a Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick, IndieNext Pick, and was selected by Jenna Bush Hager as the inaugural read for The Today Show Book Club. Her latest novel Community Board is out now and available in stores and online in all the usual places. The recipient of an Artist Trust grant, Tara's writing has appeared in Vogue, the Berkshire Eagle and elsewhere.
Before turning to fiction, Tara worked for an international human rights organization and at corporate law firms in London and New York. She was born in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands and grew up in western Massachusetts. She holds a BA in history from Yale University, a JD from NYU School of Law and a Master of Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Tara now lives in Seattle with her family where she writes, teaches at Hugo House and The Novelry
Shin Yu Pai is the 2024 Shelley Memorial Award winner. She was The City of Seattle's Civic Poet from 2023-2024 and served as the former Poet Laureate of The City of Redmond from 2015-2017. She is the author of 13 books, most recently No Neutral (Empty Bowl, 2023) and Less Desolate (Blue Cactus, 2023). Her work has received awards from The Academy of American Poets, Artist Trust, 4Culture, and The Awesome Foundation. Her poetry films have screened at the Zebra Poetry Film Festival and the Northwest Film Forum. Shin Yu is also the creator and host of Ten Thousand Things, an award-winning podcast on Asian American stories that she produced for KUOW, Seattle's National Public Radio affiliate for three seasons and now produces independently.
Ten Thousand Things exhibition opens on March 7 and will be on display through early 2027.
Young-Chhaylee is a singer/songwriter from The PNW. Young-Chhaylee’s experience as a first generation Cambodian-American has profoundly shaped his songwriting. Elements of soul, pop, & folk blend to create a sound that resonates from within. His voice is powerful yet flutters, simultaneously strong & vulnerable.
Whether solo, duo, trio, or more, the energy of each performance is uniquely for that moment. Young-Chhaylee appears on Doe Bay Artist in Residence (2024), & he released Some Kinda Love & Rooftop (2020), First Up & Let Me (2019), & Sorry Don’t Help & Man Like Me (2018).
Tammi Salas identifies as a sober, dignified, creative woman in long-term recovery. Her last drink was on Groundhog Day 2015. She is a mixed-media artist, writer, diligent list-maker, certified coach, skilled facilitator, and former co-host of The Unruffled Podcast. She leads private workshops, courses and alcohol-free retreats around the world. She currently lives in Oakland, CA and makes a beautiful mess as often as possible at Moonflower Studio in Berkeley, CA.
Monika Sengul-Jones, PhD, (she/they) writes, teaches, works, and lives in Shoreline, Washington, in the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. While she grew up in the rain and moss, she ventured farther afield in her twenties and thirties—crosscutting Central and Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and California. She works or has worked as a university lecturer in media, technology, and communication studies, a program director, digital ethnographer, tech journalist, travel guide editor, tour guide, feminist Wikipedia trainer, and UX evangelist. She embraces an expansive definition of verisimilitude in her long-standing love affair with words and finds hope in subtle rhetorical rebellions. She's studied writing with Amanda Castleman, Sabrina Orah Mark, Jessica Dore, and Cari Luna. Her work has been funded by UC San Diego, Art + Feminism, the Knight Foundation, the Rotary Foundation, the Wikimedia Foundation, the UC Humanities Consortium, and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. She loves reading, walking, swimming, barre, and plum cake. She is married and a mother to two wonderful children. She lectures at the University of Washington and teaches with Hugo House; she writes a free newsletter, The Gift.