VWS: Washington State Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken

Washington State Poet Laureate, and MFA alum, Kathleen Flenniken ’07 is the next guest in PLU’s Visiting Writer Series Wednesday, May 2. Her visit starts with The Writer’s Story: Q&A at 3:30 p.m. at Garfield Books and concludes with a reading at 7 p.m. in the Scandinavian Cultural Center.

Flenniken’s first book, Famous (University of Nebraska, 2006), won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association and a finalist for the Washington State Book Award.

Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry, The Writer’s Almanac, Poetry Daily, American Life in Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies.

Her second collection, Plume, was selected by Linda Bierds for the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series and will be published in Spring 2012 by University of Washington Press.

Flenniken’s honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Artist Trust, a Pushcart Prize, and grants from Artist Trust and the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the PLU Rainier Writing Workshop and was awarded an Emerging Writer’s Fellowship by The Writer’s Center in Bethesda in 2010. Flenniken is a co-editor and president of Floating Bridge Press, a non-profit press dedicated to publishing Washington State poets.