On a dark Might night that appeared finest suited to introverted lethargy, 60 folks shuffled into Widespread Space Upkeep (CAM) in Belltown. Congregating below the builder house’s lofted ceilings, marinating in its artsy attract, and snarfing down cozy snacks from Off Alley, attendees appeared completely happy to mingle in a cultural venue that stands out alongside an in any other case dive bar- and NFT Museum-dominated stretch of Second Avenue.
The group was gathered for the tenth version of Nonfiction for No Motive (NFNR), a literary studying sequence highlighting native nonfiction writers hosted by the occasion’s founder, Katie Lee Ellison. A foil to the low-energy drizzle pattering on CAM’s massive entrance home windows, NFNR supplied a dynamic forged that rewarded extroversion and pleasure for what Seattle-based writers can carry to the desk.
Moonyeka, an interdisciplinary artist usually discovered at Jack Straw Cultural Middle, kicked the evening off by recounting their accomplice’s woeful experiences navigating medical programs as a trans individual. (“Trans healthcare is fairly rubbish,” they concluded.) Putsata Reang likened her sexuality to a river operating by Phnom Penh. Anu Taranath described her younger daughter’s sense of solidarity with an aged Black couple—the one different folks of coloration at a gospel efficiency close to Seward Park—and their constructive response to her daughter’s enthusiasm. Kamari Vivid offered some spoken and video essays, together with an entreaty for strangers to cease commenting on her womb. And Jay Aquinas Thompson meditated on grief and queerness and Catholicism.
The occasion didn’t appear to deliberately carry a theme, however all eight readers centered on id. With writers sharing work steeped in private expertise, listeners—whereas consuming duck rillettes and sipping wine—risked being the fallacious viewers to match such vulnerability.
However a mixture of sincerity and levity all through the lineup saved the viewers attentive and able to assembly the second. Some writers even deftly channeled a variety of tenors, together with Amy Hirayama, who, to shut out the occasion, traced her lineage by way of Hawaii to her household’s ancestral hometown on Okinawa, describing the Japanese island’s experiences of colonialism and conflict—all by the pork and different delicacies she ate whereas touring the realm together with her father. Hirayama’s studying was a grasp class in discussing deeply severe subjects by applicable and delicate levity.
NFNR was born final yr and resulted from a disappointing writers’ conference. The Affiliation of Writers & Writing Applications (AWP) and its 12,000 annual conference-goers descended upon the Seattle Conference Middle in March 2023. Yearly, these writers, lecturers, publishers, and editors assemble in a unique metropolis to rub shoulders and make amends for the most recent and biggest in literature. In most cities internet hosting the convention, native literary establishments will kick their programming into excessive gear, platforming a area’s writers to the business’s who’s who by offsite readings close to the conference facilities. In Seattle, a UNESCO-certified “Metropolis of Literature,” the convention struggled to showcase a wholesome regional literary group.
To Ellison, a Seattle-based author who grew up in Los Angeles, the Emerald Metropolis’s lackluster exhibiting for AWP was an iodine hint for the ails afflicting the realm’s writers. She was a fellow at Hugo Home—as soon as the state’s largest writing-focused nonprofit and an anchor locally—between 2016 and 2017. However in 2020, the group started weathering a monetary disaster following allegations of racial discrimination and its govt director’s ensuing resignation, and it’s nonetheless struggling to recuperate. Ellison says the nonprofit’s dwindling presence in Seattle, along with the results of the COVID-19 pandemic on cultural programming, made her really feel “completely unmoored” and not sure of the place Seattle’s writing group stood. It additionally meant Seattle writers had few methods to advertise their work whereas a doubtlessly career-altering convention was on the town; if town’s literary establishments had been stronger, Ellison thinks she and different native authors would have had a presence on the convention.
Ellison hopes to make NFNR greater than only a Seattle factor—she’s already hosted occasions in Los Angeles and Tokyo. BILLIE WINTER
As a substitute, lots of the metropolis’s writers heard crickets. “Once I knew AWP was coming right here in March of 2023, I used to be like ‘Are you guys fucking severe? No person’s going to ask me to learn wherever,’” Ellison says. “So I stated, ‘Fuck it, I’m gonna simply do my very own [reading], and I’m gonna make it the dream studying that I need it to be.’”
The ultimate results of Ellison’s efforts passed off at Capitol Hill nightclub the Woods; it was considerably informally and unintentionally cohosted by the literary publication The Rumpus, on account of scheduling and venue SNAFUs. The studying noticed greater than 100 folks in attendance and forged a highlight on writers like Wolfish creator Erica Berry, brief story author Corinne Manning, Portland essayist Katherine D. Morgan, and journalist Kristen Millares Younger.
The lineup additionally featured Anastacia-Reneé, previously a poet-in-residence at Hugo Home and the inaugural Seattle Civic Poet from 2017 to 2019, in the course of the metropolis’s first yr of UNESCO standing. They overlapped with Ellison at Hugo Home and served as her mentor, encouraging her to publicly share her works in progress: a method to get suggestions that nonfiction writers usually keep away from.
“As a hybrid author[-poet], it was releasing studying in an area that was prepared for nonfiction however [that was] receptive to humor and really severe issues all enmeshed in each other,” Anastacia-Reneé says. “It was a packed crowd, and I noticed the bringing collectively of the group. I learn a chunk that was in its draft state, and regardless that I used to be nervous, I didn’t really feel unsafe.”
A way of propulsion following the March studying—vocal curiosity from different writers, a seemingly countless record of eligible locals to platform—meant it was removed from Ellison’s final, as an alternative turning into NFNR’s inaugural occasion. Its programming is rising in frequency and scale, however NFNR continues to harbor small however mighty intentions by fostering a way of writerly group and unabashedly celebrating it, by offering some remuneration to writers, and by providing a discussion board for writers to advertise upcoming work. Or, hell, to even efficiently promote one thing they’ve printed.
These final monetary tenets aren’t notably horny however are particularly necessary in Seattle, the place artists, together with writers, are struggling to maintain up with town’s quickly rising price of residing.
Hirayama, for instance, who learn on the Might occasion, grew up in Shoreline and nonetheless lives there. She exemplifies the irritating chasm between very good talent and materials shortcomings that appears to outline being a author in Seattle. She juggles 4 jobs—roles at South Seattle Faculty, Writers within the Colleges, Clarion West, and CAM—to make ends meet. “I feel my mode of working might be not for everybody,” she admits.
Ally Ang, an area poet and editor who beforehand labored at Hugo Home and now makes their revenue as a grant author for a reproductive justice nonprofit, carried out at NFNR’s second occasion in 2023. They stated NFNR strikes a wholesome medium as a noninstitutionalized however dependable house the place persons are coming collectively “for the love of it.”
“It’s necessary to not solely depend on establishments which might be usually beholden to boards of administrators or… don’t essentially signify the wants of the group, and to as an alternative ensure that we’re creating areas that actually do signify us,” they are saying.
Ellison is working to slowly rework NFNR right into a modest Seattle-based establishment, whereas protecting true to its roots and its small-scale values. She’s taken the sequence on the highway, internet hosting occasions in LA and Tokyo, and he or she showcased writers with Seattle origins—together with Anastacia-Reneé—at E-book Membership Bar in New York on September 12. She’s secured fiscal sponsorship and is seeking to land bigger grants in 2025; she additionally desires to pay writers extra, and pay herself extra. Of the $7,500 Ellison has raised to date that hasn’t gone to venue charges or taxes, she’s distributed $25 to every of this system’s 80 taking part authors and paid herself $2,100 for lots of of hours of labor. She acknowledges that that remuneration is much from sufficient for the writers, and he or she is aware of that NFNR is much from sustainable revenue relative to her output.
“A variety of instances it’s a must to both select to be community-based and DIY or extraordinarily polished and intensely beholden to the funders, and I really feel like that’s bullshit,” Ellison says. “You possibly can have a very fucking good factor that additionally platforms folks you’ve by no means heard and pay them some huge cash… That’s lots of the motivation for doing this. It’s creating one thing that does truly do it in a different way from how we’ve all been advised it must be carried out.”
It’s not simply Ellison who appears doggedly dedicated to centering literature in Seattle’s future. NFNR contributors named a variety of areas to that finish—Mam’s Books within the C–ID, Charlie’s Queer Books in Fremont, Open Books in Pioneer Sq., Writing Black @ The Home—lots of that are lower than a yr previous.
“Writers in Seattle actually do assist one another… which does make me hopeful, even if it’s actually exhausting to reside right here as an artist or a inventive individual,” Ang says. “They hold elevating my hire yearly, so who is aware of. However I really like residing in Seattle, and I need to keep right here so long as I can afford to.”
This season’s Nonfiction for No Motive occasions are Friday, October 11, at Little Saigon Inventive, and Friday, November 1, at Northwest Movie Discussion board. Discover extra information at nonfictionfornoreason.com.
