AWP Offsite: A 3rd Thing Convergence at Elliott Bay Book Company

“The third thing” is the idea that emerges when we use imagination instead of compromise to solve a problem, meet a need, repair an injury, right a wrong, answer a question, question an answer, to get where we’re going, to go somewhere new. Join Alissa Hattman, Aricka Foreman, Jennifer Calkins, M Freeman, Quenton Baker, and Summer J. Hart as Elliott Bay Book Company hosts the first in-person west coast convergence of artists published by The 3rd Thing, an Olympia-based independent publisher of necessary alternatives. This interdisciplinary lineup will read from works published by The 3rd Thing and elsewhere. Brief Q & A to follow. In addition to her debut novel Sift, Alissa Hattman is author of the zine POST (zines + things, 2021). Her writing has appeared in Carve, The Rumpus, The Gravity of the Thing, Shirley Magazine, Big Other, MAYDAY, and elsewhere. Alissa holds an MFA in Fiction from Pacific University and MA in Literature from Portland State University. She has worked as a fiction editor, book reviewer, zine librarian, writing group facilitator, and has been an artist-in-residence at several arts centers, most recently Gullkistan Center for Creativity in Iceland. Originally from North Dakota, she now lives in Oregon where she teaches creative writing workshops and college composition. More at www.alissahattman.com. Aricka Foreman is an American poet and interdisciplinary writer from Detroit MI. Author of Dream with a Glass Chamber (2016), and Salt Body Shimmer (2020, YesYes Books), winner of the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry, she has earned writing fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, and Millay Arts. Her poetry and essays have been featured in: Catapult, The Black Warrior Review, Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching On Black Life and Literature, ed: Dr. Ana-Maurine Lara and Dr. Drea Brown; Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, ed: Joanne V. Gabbin and Lauren Alleyne; The Academy of American Poets and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago. Jennifer Calkins (she/they) is an environmental litigator, evolutionary biologist and writer. Her most recent book is Fugitive Assemblage (The 3rd Thing, 2020). From 2018 to 2022, they collaborated with Anne de Marcken on an engagement with the climate crisis that emerged from interrupting Jen’s analysis in the 2018 law review paper, “Paris When it Sizzles.” Paris at the Hinterlands manifested in durational performances, international virtual events, in the manuscript, “Annihilation is Underway,” and on the website https://www.thehinterland.org/. Currently, Jen is curating Delisted 2023, a communal creative engagement with the extinction crisis. She resides within the territory of the Coast Salish Peoples (aka Seattle) with creatures including, at times, her college-aged human children. Media artist, writer, contemplative guide and independent scholar, M Freeman works at the intersections of reckoning and resiliency, queerness and film, and contemplative, creative and social art practices. They are author of The Illuminated Space: A Personal Theory and Contemplative Practice of Media Art (The 3rd Thing, 2020) and creator of Cinema Divina—short films made through and for guided contemplative practice. Their text and media arts essays have been published in or at The Fourth Genre, Ninth Letter, TriQuarterly, Blackbird, Rolling Stone and Abbey of the Arts. Their films are screened on PBS and in galleries, spirituality centers and festivals worldwide. More at marilynfreeman.com. Quenton Baker is a poet, educator, and Cave Canem fellow. Their current focus is black interiority and the afterlife of slavery. Their work has appeared in The Offing, Jubilat, Vinyl, The Rumpus and elsewhere. They are a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and the recipient of the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from Artist Trust. They were a 2019 Robert Rauschenberg Artist in Residence and a 2021 NEA Fellow. They are the author of we pilot the blood (The 3rd Thing, 2021) and ballast (Haymarket Books, 2023). Summer J. Hart is an interdisciplinary artist from Maine, living in the Hudson Valley, New York. Her written and visual artworks are influenced by folklore, superstition, divination, and forgotten territories reclaimed by nature. In addition to her debut collection Boomhouse (The 3rd Thing, 2023) she is the author of the microchapbook, Augury of Ash (Post Ghost Press). She is the recipient of a 2022 MacDowell Fellowship. Her poetry can be found in Waxwing, The Massachusetts Review, Northern New England Review, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. Summer is a member of the Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation.

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