Last week, I shared the news that a new California law was going to require vendors in the business of selling collectibles to provide certificates of authenticity. I linked to a post by a California bookstore arguing that the law was going to be difficult — if not impossible — to obey.

But the law blog Scrivener's Error sets that bookstore straight: seems that the California law is much more reasonable than the booksellers believed. The nut of it:

None of the recordkeeping requirements for "collectibles" (defined in § 1739.7(a)(2) as "an autographed item sold or offered for sale in or from this state by a dealer to a consumer for five dollars ($5) or more") apply to anyone except "dealers." Not to private citizens reselling stuff from their uncle's estate. Not to individual artists who sign their paintings or postcards or prints or sculptures. More to the point here, not to authors who sign books for fans at conventions or bookstores... or to bookstores that happen to have a few author-autographed copies lying around, or even that offer — amongst all of their other business — to have a book personalized by the author for a holiday internet order.

So let's be clear: booksellers in California are not being weighted down with an unnecessary and unwieldy new regulation. Booksellers can still sell signed stock. Everything is all right. Carry on.

Entre Ríos Books has a new book coming out, and they're here to make sure you know about it. The After is a single poem by Melinda Mueller, with artwork by Karinna Gomez. The book comes with a CD from the jazz duo Syrinx Effect, and includes a reading of the book by the poet.

They have three events coming up to celebrate the launch: a launch party this Saturday, the 8th, an artists reception this Sunday the 9th, and another event in November. Be sure to check out our sponsors page for all the details, and to see spreads from this marvelous work.

It's thanks to sponsors like Entre Ríos Books, and readers like you, that we're able to keep the pixels lit up here at the Seattle Review of Books. We've just released our next block of sponsorship opportunities. Check them out on the sponsorship page, and grab your date before they're gone.

Over the weekend, the New York Review of Books — no relation — published a piece of reportage that supposedly outed the author behind the pseudonym Elena Ferrante. Considering that Ferrante is an international bestseller and a global literary sensation, this piece immediately became an internet phenomenon.

I’m not going to link to the piece, and I recommend you do not read it. I have no interest in who Elena Ferrante really is, and I don’t believe there’s a single good reason why NYRB should have uncovered her name. This is not journalism; there’s no compelling cause to reveal the author behind the pseudonym aside from unchecked curiosity.

Pseudonyms have existed for about as long as writing has. Sometimes authors use pseudonyms for practical reasons — whistleblowers will often hide behind aliases, for example — but other times, the selection of a pseudonym is purely aesthetic. A writer might feel freer when they publish under a different name, or perhaps they don’t want the books to be judged against their other body of work. There are as many reasons to adopt a pseudonym as there are reasons to write a book.

Maybe one of the above reasons is why the author or authors behind Ferrante decided to use the pseudonym. Maybe not. But whatever the reason, there’s no compelling case for revealing the truth behind those decisions without an author’s consent. Something readers forget sometimes: authors don’t owe us anything. A novelist shouldn’t have to reveal their personal lives to readers. Poets don’t have to tell the truth in their poems. And readers are not entitled to the answer to the question “how much of your fiction is real?”

If a pseudonym is part of a fiction, we have no right to the truth behind that name. We should be grateful that the author shared their work at all, not try to pry into the life of a person who clearly would rather keep out of the public’s eye. (And yes, there have been cases where outing a pseudonym is useful — pseudonyms that exploit subcultures like J.T. LeRoy and Forrest Carter deserved to be outed, for instance. That doesn't seem to be the case with Ferrante.) Shame on the NYRB, and shame on the four newspapers that worked with NYRB on this entirely useless investigation.

Louis Collins has been selling used books out of a storefront on Capitol Hill since 1984. It’s easy to miss — Louis Collins Books is a squat building at the corner of 12th and Denny, with nothing but a small white sign to identify it. Though Collins comes in to the store nearly every afternoon, the store is only open by appointment, so you can’t just wander in and check out the shelves of books visible from the street. If you’ve shopped for antiquarian books online, though, chances are good that you’ve encountered one of Collins’s titles. He lists some 23,000 titles on a number of online sites and his own site.

Collins co-founded the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair almost four decades ago, and he works on the show year-round. This year’s edition happens this weekend at Seattle Center, but as soon as this year’s show is through, Collins says he’ll start work on the next one. The Antiquarian Book Fair is an extension of Louis Collins Books, and it’s a real point of pride for him.

Collins says this year’s Book Fair will have “kind of an ephemera focus,” with a special appearance from the Ephemera Society of America. He says they’ll exhibit different library collections including Civil War letters, obscure Pacific Northwest baseball ephemera, and other paper goods from times long past.

For first-time visitors to the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair, Collins recommends that you “just look and see what strikes your fancy. Look at the program and follow your interest.” Collins says you’ll find plenty of specialty dealers at the fair, for those with particular interests like arctic travel or railroads, but many of the almost 100 dealers are general-interest, so “it’s best to just look around. You’ll see things that you will not see again.” And if you see something that’s in a glass case, don’t be shy, Collins says. “If you see something that piques your interest,” Collins says, “just ask the dealer about it. They’ll show it to you and tell you about it. They’re pretty good at that.”

Collins is proud of his collection at Louis Collins Books, but you can tell that he believes the Antiquarian Book Fair is really something special. For the weekend that it’s around, he says, when all the dealers combine their stock under one roof, “it’s the best bookstore in America.” And then, “when everybody packs up and goes home, it’s gone.”

My Son, the Prince of Fashion

What a wonderful piece by Michael Chabon on his son Abe, and his love of fashion. This is one you want to stay around for the ending, but I found the whole thing so charming, honest, and beautifully written that reaching the end was no issue at all.

Abe was just a kid who loved clothes. He loved talking about them, looking at them, and wearing them, and when it came to men's clothing, in particular the hipper precincts of streetwear, he knew his shit. He could trace the career path of Raf Simons, from Raf to Jil Sander to Dior and now to Calvin Klein. He could identify on sight the designers of countless individual articles of men's clothing—sneakers, shirts, jackets, pants—and when he didn't know for sure, the guesses he made were informed, reasoned, and often correct. He seemed to have memorized a dense tidal chart of recent fashion trends as they ebbed and flooded, witheringly dismissing a runway offering as “fine, for 2014” or “already kind of played out last year.” His taste as reflected in the clothes he wore was impeccable, interesting, and, in its way, fearless.

It’s Not About Race!

John Metta explaining why he speaks with emotion when he speaks about race, and what his response was to a man who asked if he could "rise above emotions" and have an "intellectual discussion". This is some prime unpacking.

Culture is how we pass information about our world across generations. It’s why our children speak our language, it’s how they learn from us. Culture is why some humans eat with a fork, and some eat with chopsticks. Culture explains why someone standing really close while they talk to you might feel threatening to a European, but comforting to a West African. Culture defines what acceptable volumes are when speaking, and how women are expected to act in social situations. … The society here in America needed a way to justify the enslavement of a people for no other reason than they looked a bit different. Like the Normans, they used culture to do it. Slaves were made to speak English but were forbidden to read and write. In fact, the myth was promoted that they were slow and couldn’t even be taught.

Iceland’s Proposed Fix for its Banking Crisis? Feminizing an Entire Industry.

An excerpt from GS Motola's photography book exploring gender equality in Iceland.

It is important to acknowledge that both women and men were analysing the behaviour of the bankers, not blaming men specifically. Icelanders believed the problems were caused by untempered hyper-masculine behaviours, such as aggression, competitiveness, risk-taking and a lack of emotional awareness. Feminine qualities, such as risk-aversion, openness, emotional awareness and empathy might have averted the disaster. They were not saying that men are the problem and women are the solution — both sexes exhibit masculine and feminine behaviours and can exhibit imbalances of either as encouraged or discouraged by a culture’s gender construct. But the fact remains that banking culture in Iceland, like elsewhere, is overwhelmingly masculine. This balance of behaviours and qualities affects not only the world of banking and finance, but the world at large.

What My Best Friend And I Didn’t Learn About Loss

A story by Zan Romanoff about being best friends through thin and thick.

When a mutual friend called six months into Allison’s pregnancy to say that something had happened, I was too shocked to cry. The baby had died in utero: Her death was the result of a rare complication with the umbilical cord, the kind of accident that doctors take great pains to assure you occurs so infrequently that it doesn’t bear worrying about. It probably won’t happen. And there’s nothing you can do about it if it does.

Every week, the Seattle Review of Books backs a Kickstarter, and writes up why we picked that particular project. Read more about the project here. Suggest a project by writing to kickstarter at this domain, or by using our contact form.

What's the project this week?

Denise Levertov Plaque. We've put $60 in as a non-reward backer — that's our normal $20, plus $40 from the fund for the two unsuccessful projects we've backed that we decided to put towards this campaign.

Who is the Creator?

Paul E Nelson / SPLAB.

What do they have to say about the project?

A plaque to be installed outside of Levertov's last home, in Seattle's Seward Park neighborhood.

What caught your eye?

We're fans of Levertov, here at the Seattle Review of Books. Our co-founder, Paul Constant, wrote a dedicated plea for her to be better recognized last year in LitHub. We love the idea of a plaque, one of those urban markers that cement the past to the present. We love the idea of the city bearing a tattoo of her presence, and the idea that it may lead a few curious bypassers to investigate her name, and discover her work.

Why should I back it?

Because you're a Levertov fan who feels that her work is under appreciated. Because you like the idea of the history of a place informing and shaping it. Because you're a booster and fan of local poetry, and marking something like this, albeit a small gesture in the grand civic scheme, puts a thumb-print on the city that says: this work was important to us; this woman was important to us. Let's take a moment to recall her.

How's the project doing?

52% there, with five days to go. We'd love to see this worthy project backed. If you can afford to, please get involved.

Do they have a video?

Kickstarter Fund Stats

• Projects backed: 39
• Funds pledged: $780
• Funds collected: $660
• Unsuccessful pledges: 2
• Fund balance: $260

Yesterday, I told you that In Other Words, the feminist bookstore featured in the TV show Portlandia under the fictional name Women & Women First, had put a "Fuck Portlandia" sign in its window, and when the Willamette Week reached out for comment, bookstore staff told the Week to "go fuck themselves."

Now, In Other Words has written a post explaining the sign. Also titled "Fuck Portlandia," the post makes a great case for why In Other Words doesn't want to play by the show's rules anymore:

This was a direct response to a particular egregious filming of the show in our space which saw our store left a mess, our staff mistreated, our neighbors forced to close and lose business for a day without warning, and our repeated attempts to obtain accountability or resolution dismissed.

The post, which you should definitely read, explains a bunch of specific reasons why the store staff decided not to be involved with the show anymore: insufficient pay for use of the space, the questionable trans politics of the "deeply shitty joke" of Fred Armisen in a dress, and the fact that Portlandia staff reportedly asked In Other Words to remove the "Black Lives Matter" sign from their front window, along with other points.

It will no doubt be easy for reporters to make cheap "unfunny feminist" jokes about this post, but In Other Words makes a legitimate case here as to why they don't want to participate in Portlandia any more. I'll be curious to see if the show even bothers to respond to their allegations. If they do, I'll let you know.

Every Friday, Cienna Madrid offers solutions to life’s most vexing literary problems. Do you need a book recommendation to send your worst cousin on her birthday? Is it okay to read erotica on public transit? Cienna can help. Send your questions to advice@seattlereviewofbooks.com.

Dear Cienna,

I wanted my son to be a nerd. I introduced him to A Wrinkle in Time and the Narnia series probably way too early, and I’m happy to report that it stuck: when it comes to books, he loves everything nerdy. He reads fantasy and science fiction, thereby making him a perfect compromise of a human being between my wife and I. (She detests fantasy; I’m not much of a sci-fi guy.)

Problem is, though we have successfully molded our son into a nerd, he’s still a bully. He’s good at sports, and he’s been caught a few times shaming and ridiculing other kids. Last week, he even beat a weaker kid up; which is my personal nightmare as a parent, speaking as someone who was always the weaker kid in school.

I’m not asking you for parenting advice, Cienna. he’s our kid and we’ve got to be responsible for him. We’ve got him with a good therapist and we’re working through it. I’m sure he’s going to be okay.

But I’m honestly a little surprised by how surprised I am about the failure of these nerdy books to mold our son into a compassionate human being. When I was growing up, the gentle kids always read sci-fi and fantasy, and the assholes always liked sports. I guess I thought correlation was causation—that nerdy books created more compassionate nerdy people. My son has blown up that belief. Is he an exception to the rule? Or is my entire life a lie?

Edgar, Totem Lake

Dear Edgar,

Lots of compassionate human beings start out as shitheads and honestly, some kids are practically begging to be bullied – and the quickest way for a kid to learn compassion for others is to be picked on, so in a way your son is performing a valuable community service. Let’s not make assumptions about your son until we conduct a simple test. The next time you’re eating dinner together as a family, casually ask your son this question:

If you came upon a wrecked ice cream truck, would you help yourself to a cone before checking on the driver?

If he answers yes, ask him:

How many cones would you help yourself to before calling emergency services?

If his answer is one, he’s fine and will likely grow up to have a successful career in law enforcement. If it’s two, you should consider sending him to Aunt Cienna’s Summer Kamp for Kids. If it’s three or above, your son is a pre-diabetic psychopath that no amount of wrinkles in time can fix.

About Aunt Cienna’s Summer Kamp for Kids: Located in a basement in beautiful southern Idaho, Aunt Cienna’s Summer Camp for Kids offers 300 square feet of spider-packed excitement and exposed wires, a.k.a “live learning opportunities.” For the low price of a box of wine a week, your young delinquent will learn compassion for other children, a.k.a prey, while developing a healthy respect for authority.

You see, when your delinquent exhibits delinquent behavior, he will have the option of attending a spider comedy routine about euthanasia OR spending an hour with Aunt Cienna writing limericks that poke fun at his physical and emotional flaws. (We call this “learning through preying.” It’s a Christian thing.)

When your delinquent is good, he will have access to all the books he can read, as well as a pit filled with squirrels and stray cats that children fondly refer to as the “petting pit.” What is a petting pit, you ask? It is like a petting zoo but in pit form.

Empirical data shows that three weeks spent at Aunt Cienna’s Summer Kamp for Kids is enough to turn the most calloused bully back into a sensitive child that desperately craves the affection of his parents and approval of his peers.

Kisses,

Cienna

Each week, Christine Marie Larsen creates a portrait of a new author for us. Have any favorites you’d love to see immortalized? Let us know

Thursday September 29th: Writing for a Cause

At a time when Donald Trump can block newspapers he doesn’t like from covering his campaign, this is more relevant than ever: Journalists Muatasim Qazi, Frederica Jansz, and former Seattle PI reporter Mike Lewis will discuss censorship. Jansz and Qazi both came to US after facing censorship abroad, only to find new threats here.

Hugo House, 1021 Columbia St., 322-7030, http://hugohouse.org. Free. All ages. 7 p.m.

• The Short Run Comix and Arts Festival has unveiled their schedule of events, and it's a doozy. It begins next week at Elliott Bay Book Company with the launch party for Seattle cartoonist Sarah Glidden's brand-new book Rolling Blackouts. I'll be interviewing Glidden onstage about her book, which documents Glidden's travels through Turkey, Syria, and Iraq with several reporters from the Seattle Globalist. I hope to see you at Elliott Bay next week, and I hope you'll consider attending all the Short Run events over the next two months.

• You have until November 15th to apply for Artist Trust's Arts Innovator Award, which gives $25,000 annually to two artists of any discipline "who are originating new work, experimenting with new ideas, taking risks, and pushing the boundaries of their respective fields." We would love to see an author take home one of these bad boys, okay?

• If you are a woman aged 50 or older, you have until November 30th to submit your unpublished poetry collection to Two Sylvias Press's Wilder Series Book Prize. One book of poetry will be selected as the winner. The winning author will get a thousand dollars and her book will be published by Two Sylvias.

• The feminist bookstore featured in the comedy series Portlandia posted a sign in their front window reading "Fuck Portlandia! Transmisogyny – Racism – Gentrification – Queer Antagonism – Devaluation of Feminist Discourse." When the Willamette Week asked the bookstore for comment, they eventually responded with a note that read:

After some consideration and research we've decided to officially tell the Willamette Weekly to go fuck themselves. Your paper has absolutely zero journalistic professionalism and you are scummy rape apologists. Thanks for the opportunity tho! Have a great night.

• Over in Pullman, the Washington State University Museum of Art is hosting a neat-looking survey of Northwest cartooning featuring artists like Peter Bagge, Ellen Forney, Jim Woodring, Eroyn Franklin, David Lasky, and Mita Mahato.

• It looks like a new California law requiring a Certificate of Authenticity for every signed item just made it a lot more difficult to sell autographed books. Eureka Books published a blog post earlier this week about the spot this puts them in:

Here’s the problem: We sell greeting cards by local artist John Wesa. He signs each one. If we sell one for $5, under this law, we have to provide a certificate of authenticity, and we have to keep our copy of the COA for seven (7!) years. For a $5 greeting card.

• It's Banned Book Week, and the Humble Bundle right now contains a number of banned books and comics for you to buy for cheap. Proceeds benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which defends cartoonists everywhere from injustices like shitty work conditions and dumb citizens who try to block their freedom of speech.

• Google fed over ten thousand books to its artificial intelligence in an effort to teach it colloquial language. Problem is, Google didn't ask permission from the authors, or even offer to pay them for their work. One author tells the Guardian:

“Is this any different than someone using one of my books to start a fire? I have no idea ... I have no idea what their objective is. Certainly it is not to bring me readers.”

• Skyfall director Sam Mendes is producing (and may direct) a movie adaptation of Spokane author Jess Walter's bestselling novel Beautiful Ruins. At the very least, it will be a gorgeous film.

• NPR is publishing interviews that went into Studs Terkel's incredible book Working, about the day-to-day lives of workers, from prostitutes to mechanics.

• Michiko Kakutani's review of a new biography of Hitler's rise is a masterpiece of shade: Kakutani uses the book as an excuse to write at length about Donald Trump without ever once using the word "Trump." It's one of the better reviews Kakutani has published of late.

I agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates that Jonathan Hickman’s series Secret Wars was a high point for Marvel Comics — it was the culmination of a time in which Marvel seemed to be doing new things with its superhero comics, exploring old concepts with fresh eyes. At roughly this time last year, Marvel Comics felt as though it was humming with possibility; as Marvel's films came to dominate the blockbuster box office, the comics division seemed ready to move forward into a new age.

One year later, Marvel Comics seems to be almost as creatively bankrupt as they were in the dreaded late 90’s, when the company hovered near bankruptcy. What happened? Specifically, their crossover series Civil War II stopped the entire line dead. The series, written by the ubiquitous Brian Michael Bendis, re-examines the same premise as the 2006 Mark Millar/Steve McNiven series Civil War: superheroes fight over a philosophical dispute. The original Civil War has not aged well — the moronic way the comics mirrored the Bush administration’s civil rights violations is painful to read now, and Millar’s dialogue is as thick as day-old oatmeal — and the new one is stale right out of the box.

Part of the problem is that Civil War II’s premise makes no sense. Supposedly, the superheroes get in a fight over a new hero who can predict the future. Some of the heroes want to preemptorily catch bad guys before they commit crimes, others say that’s a violation of free will and civil liberties. But Marvel Comics has always had plenty of superheroes with precognitive powers; why is this one any different? It’s unclear.

In any case, the superheroes all make a bunch of speeches about profiling and saving lives and duty and liberty and it’s all about as subtle as dental surgery performed with a chainsaw. Then they fight. (Superheroes spend a lot of time fighting each other these days, and very little time fighting villains; I’m not clear why that is, though “bad writing” is maybe the most obvious answer.) And the fight sprawls across all Marvel’s comics, killing any forward momentum the line may have had. (Of the crossover series I’ve read, only G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel series has actually incorporated the Civil War storyline into its own to advance the narrative it was already telling; Wilson is getting to be an old hand at advancing her protagonist’s plot even in the face of corporate-mandated blockbuster event storytelling.)

Marvel’s sales have been hurting since Civil War II began, and upcoming crossovers — including another fight between superheroes and Spider-Man story about clones another reprisal of an earlier awful Marvel story — indicate that Civil War II was not a fluke. So far as Marvel Comics is concerned, everything is awful, and only getting worse.

This is a problem of serial storytelling. Sometimes — especially after a particularly high point — everything seems to break down all at once. This happens with long-running TV shows, and with serialized fiction. Marvel Comics needs a top-down shakeup in order to throw off this institutional case of the blahs that has seized the company. The year-long deceleration that has sapped the line of its vitality and creativity threatens to undo everything that Hickman had built.

Wednesday September 28th: Eye on India

The latest in a series of panels about the Indian/South Asian diaspora brings novelist Amitava Kumar, here with a book of essays titled, delightfully, Lunch With a Bigot; novelist Karan Mahajan; and musician Vidya Shah. The latter will perform some songs, and all will discuss what it means to be an Indian artist. Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E Prospect St., 624-6600, http://seattleartmuseum.org. $10. 7 p.m.

Thursday September 29th: Writing for a Cause

At a time when Donald Trump can block newspapers he doesn’t like from covering his campaign, this is more relevant than ever: Journalists Muatasim Qazi, Frederica Jansz, and former Seattle PI reporter Mike Lewis will discuss censorship. Jansz and Qazi both came to US after facing censorship abroad, only to find new threats here. Hugo House, 1021 Columbia St., 322-7030, http://hugohouse.org. Free. All ages. 7 p.m.

Friday September 30th: A Night with Wave Books

See our Event of the Week column for more details. Fred Wildlife Refuge, 128 Belmont Ave. E., http://wavepoetry.com. Free. All ages. 7 p.m.

Saturday October 1st: Catharsis: A Community Grief Ritual

Why wait for a funeral to cry in public and mourn? This event co-sponsored by the Hugo House and the Seattle People of Color Salon is a place for people of all backgrounds to come and “honor their emotions,” a safe space to grieve people—and places, and emotions—that are never coming back. Hugo House, 1021 Columbia St., 322-7030, http://hugohouse.org. Free. All ages. Noon.

Sunday October 2nd: Seattle Writes

Once when I worked in a bookstore, a customer asked me to help him find a book he’d heard about on NPR. He explained that in the book, “a man meets another man, and there’s a conflict.” Seattle novelist Karen Finneyfrock’s latest writing class is all about how every book has conflict at its heart.Delridge Library,5423 Delridge Way SW., 733-9125, http://spl.org. Free. All ages. 2 p.m.

Monday October 3rd: M Train Reading

Everyone is currently losing their mind over Bruce Springsteen’s new memoir, but if you’re gaga over The Boss and you haven’t read Patti Smith's second memoir, M Train, you’re missing out. Smith’s book—now out in paperback—is a literary marvel, a gorgeously written piece of art. Beat that, Bruce. University Temple Methodist Church, 1415 NE 43rd St, 634-3400-4255, http://ubookstore.com. $17.54. All ages. 7 p.m.

Tuesday October 4th: Citizen Scientist Reading

Mary Ellen Hannibal is not a scientist — by which I mean she did not spend the better part of a decade honing her scientific understanding in a university program. But her new book extols the joys of citizen science: observing the world, researching what happens, and reporting what you see. Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Ave., 652-4255, http://townhallseattle.org. $5. All ages. 7:30 p.m.

Wave Books has, in a relatively short span of time, become the second best poetry publisher in the Seattle area. The best, in case you’re new to town, is Port Townsend nonprofit publisher Copper Canyon Press; given that they’re probably the best poetry publisher in the country, there’s no shame here in a second-place finish.

And besides, Copper Canyon and Wave Books traffic in very different styles of poetry. Copper Canyon publishes, for lack of a better word, traditional poetry, which is to say they publish poems with the structure and the heft of generations. Their poets are continuing a long international poetry. Wave is further out on the edge. They publish experimental, risky poetry, kind of the poetic equivalent of modern art. If you were to coax your the average non-poetry-reading American into looking at a Copper Canyon title and a Wave title side-by-side, they’d most likely choose the Copper Canyon book over the Wave book simply because it would look more like what they’d expect.

But out on the edge is where the rapid advancements are made. Not every Wave Book is for everyone, but sometimes they strike some element of the collective consciousness just right, and when that happens, those books resonate through the ages. Seattle poet Don Mee Choi’s Hardly War is a perfect example of one of Wave’s winners. War, which I reviewed earlier this year, is a brilliant book combining collage, historical documents, and memoir to create something new.

This Friday at Fred Wildlife Refuge, Wave Books is hosting an evening with two Seattle poets (Choi and Wave editor Joshua Beckman) along with Wave writers Tyehimba Jess, Anselm Berrigan, and Lisa Fishman. Of those three, the one to watch is Detroit native Jess, who writes gut-punch poetry about race and music and memory that make no apologies.

One of Jess’s poems is titled “Mothafucka” and it’s dedicated to absent fathers:

will the real mother fucker please stand up?

are you the devoted fucker of mother,

one who would stay to raise his kids

to be bigger, badder, better motherfuckers?

are you one who simply fucks our mothers?

one who fucks any mother in sight?

one who, by fucking, left bastards behind?

Earlier this year, Seattle poet Maged Zaher wrote a scathing essay for the Seattle Review of Books praising Wave Books for its forward-thinking poetry, but also demanding that Wave do better in representing Seattle—Choi and Beckman pretty much represent the only Seattle writers Wave has published to date—and in representing writers of color. (Copper Canyon has done a much better job with both.) Based on the excitement I’ve seen among Seattle-area writers for this event, the community has a lot of enthusiasm for Wave; hopefully, this evening is a sign that Wave wants to do a better job of representing and including its community.

Fred Wildlife Refuge, 128 Belmont Ave. E., wavepoetry.com. Free. All ages. 7 p.m.