Third Place Books welcomes poets Jeanine Walker, Susan Rich, and Erin Malone to our Seward Park store! Walker, Rich, and Malone will be reading from their latest poetry collections, The Two of Them Might Outlast Me, Blue Atlas: Poems, and Site of Disappearance. This event is free and open to the public.

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About The Two of Them Might Outlast Me. . .

A first collection from a poet of traumatic intensity and transcendence.

The death of a horse in the opening poem, a storm of violence throughout worth chasing, and one of love, loss, suicide, divorce, family, excursions both imaginary and all too real, remembered and created on the page, the poems in Jeanine Walker’s first book are intensely personal, the poems of someone who has been around, and, at the same time, poems that achieve the visionary impersonality marking truly transcendent poetry.

This generous collection contains poem after poem that its reader will want to return to time and again.

About Blue Atlas: Poems. . .

Blue Atlas, the sixth book of poems from award-winning poet Susan Rich, is her most original work to date.

Blue Atlas is a lyrical abortion narrative unlike any other. This one-of-a-kind collection follows a Jewish woman and her ghosts as they travel from West Africa to Europe and, finally, to the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The speaker searches repeatedly for a new outcome, seeking answers in a myriad of mediums such as an online questionnaire, a freshman composition essay, and a curriculum vitae. The raw, often far from idyllic experience of a global love affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy is examined and meditated upon through a surreal prism. The Blue Atlas, a genus of the common cedar tree first found in the High Atlas of Morocco and known for its beauty and resilience, becomes a metaphor for the hardship and power of a fully engaged life.

About Site of Disappearance. . .

In her second full-length poetry collection Site of Disappearance, Erin Malone’s spare and resonant lyrics confront the silence that followed her 11-year-old brother’s death. Decades later, as her own son approaches this age, she finds herself returning to her childhood landscape, remembering for the first time in years the abductions and murders of two boys that shook her small town that same season. Through archival research and with tenderness and precision, she steps carefully through the wreckage left by tragedy, in which brother/ boy/ son blur and revolve, and “time stands still because it has a body.” Site of Disappearance is an intimate reckoning with personal and collective grief guided by an acute awareness of language’s power to reveal and transform.

Jeanine Walker is the author of The Two of Them Might Outlast Me (Groundhog Poetry Press, 2022). She has received writing fellowships from Artist Trust, The Jack Straw Cultural Center, Wonju, UNESCO City of Literature, and Inprint. Her poems, essays, and translations have appeared in Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, HAD, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. A poet with a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston, Jeanine is a long-time poetry teacher in Seattle and has recently taught English at Kangwon National University in Chuncheon, South Korea.

Susan Rich is the author of eight books, including Blue Atlas, Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems, Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue: Poems of the World. Her poetry has earned her awards from Fulbright Foundation, PEN USA, and the Times Literary Supplement (London). Individual poems appear in the Harvard Review, New England Review, O Magazine, and Poetry Ireland, among other places. Susan is co-editor with Kelli Russell Agodon of Demystifying the Manuscript: Creating a Book of Poems and co- editor with Brian Turner of The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing About Travel. She teaches at Highline College and directs Poets on the Coast: A Writing Retreat for Women from Seattle. Susan currently resides in Seattle, Washington.

Erin Malone‘s new book, Site of Disappearance, was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and is out now from Ornithopter Press. She’s also the author of Hover, winner of the Patricia Bibby First Book Award (Tebot Bach Press, 2015), and a chapbook, What Sound Does It Make (Concrete Wolf, 2008). Her recent honors include the Coniston Prize from Radar Poetry and the Robert Creeley Memorial Prize from Marsh Hawk Press. Erin has received grants and fellowships from Washington State Artist Trust, 4Culture, Jack Straw, and the Colorado Council of the Arts; and residency support from Kimmel-Harding Nelson Center, The Anderson Center, Ucross, and Jentel Foundations. Her poems have appeared in FIELD, New Ohio Review, Salamander, Cimarron, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Formerly Editor of Poetry Northwest, Erin has taught at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, the University of Washington, Hugo House, and with Seattle’s Writers in the Schools. She lives on Bainbridge Island, WA and works as a bookseller.

About Third Place Books

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle’s Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.