Lit Crawl Seattle

We crawl... run, roll, struggle, and thrive through intersections as Trans and Queer Black and Brown folks. We roam our communities, creating joy and sharing vulnerability and heartache with music and poetry. It’s a movement - and for one night, find Ana Walker, Luzviminda “Lulu” Carpenter, J Mase III, and Nic Masangkay in one spot, together offering their work as local TQPOC arts activists.  

Featured Artists
Singer-songwriter, music producer, and poet Nic Masangkay came of age in the mid-2000s, crooning along to anything that resonated: from Usher and Alicia Keys’ “My Boo” to Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” Masangkay was drawn to songs that allowed their pre-teen, closeted self to embody their truth. Years later, now openly queer and trans, they synthesize their eclectic inspiration and lived experience into a multidisciplinary arts perspective. Pop, electronic, R&B, soul, punk, alternative, hip-hop, and spoken word are all genres echoed throughout Masangkay’s sound and performance. The unifying result: fierce and captivating art that is creative as it is authentic.

J Mase III is a Black/trans/queer poet & educator based in Seattle, by way of Philly. He is the author of “If I Should Die Under the Knife, Tell my Kidney I was the Fiercest Poet Around”, as well as “And Then I Got Fired: One Transqueer’s Reflections on Grief, Unemployment, and Inappropriate Jokes about Death”.
As an educator, J Mase has worked with thousands of community members in the US, the UK, and Canada on the needs of LGBTQIA youth and adults in spaces such as K-12 schools, universities, faith communities, and restricted care facilities among others.

He is the founder of awQward, the first ever trans and queer people of color specific talent agency. Currently, he is co-editing The #BlackTransPrayerBook with awQward artist Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi.
As a performer, he has shared stages with world renowned artists like Chuck D and the Indigo Girls. His work and musings have been featured on MSNBC, NBC OUT, Essence Live, Atlanta Black Star, GO Magazine, Believe Out Loud, Everyday Feminism, Black Girl Dangerous, Upworthy, the New York Times, Buzzfeed, the Root, the Huffington Post and more.

Ana Walker is a queer person of color raised in Seattle, Washington. Ana writes to heal, question themself and the society they live in, and practice vulnerability. Their accomplishments include: going to Brave New Voices on the Youth Speaks Seattle team twice, performing at venues such as Town Hall, the Seattle Art Musuem, and Bumbershoot. Their main sources of inspiration are Social Justice Issues and the nuances of growing up.

Luzviminda Uzuri “Lulu” Carpenter is the 5th-8th Grade Performance & Media Arts Teacher, 8th Grade Production Teacher, and 8th Grade Advisor. She is a performance artist, radio host, producer, promoter, consultant, and community organizer and came to SGS as a cultural worker & cultural strategist who utilizes art and education to prevent violence with youth, young adults, and other marginalized communities. Currently, she is working on a storytelling project and educational institute with Alphabet Alliance of Color (AAoC) which she found in 2017 and supports the allyship among communities of color that identify as Queer and Trans and serves on the Teacher Advisory Board at MoPop Museum. She integrates the ideas of somatics (body), voice, art, performance, radio, and media justice through building curriculum and practices to empower students to take ownership and (re)create their image through photography and video. She has worked and performed for over 14 years in Seattle with community organizations, such as Ladies First Project of Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA), VoicesRising, Asian Pacific Islander Women and Family Safety Center (now APIChaya), Pinay sa Seattle (now GABRIELA-Seattle). She was an ambassador forOnTheBoards (OTB), to make connections between community, social justice, and innovative art and performances. Ms. Lulu has also served as a Commissioner and Co-Chair of the City of Seattle LGBT Commission and worked as a consultant at organizations such as Roots Young Adult Shelter when she was not performing on stage, on radio, or in a middle school classroom.

From the Second Shift to the Gender Pay Gap, there are myriad reasons women feel like they're just ""a step on the boss-man's ladder."" Yet, women make up nearly half of the labor force. This event features three female authors reading about work and labor: Kristen Millares Young, Jane Hodges, and Jean Ferruzola. Nicole Keenan-Lai, Executive Director of Puget Sound Sage, will host.

Featured Artists

Jane Hodges is a Seattle-based writer and the founder of Mineral School, an artists' residency near Mt. Rainier. Her fiction has appeared in The Brooklyn Review and her essays have appeared in The Seattle Weekly, The Magazine, and Seal Press anthologies. She is working on a memoir about the fallout from her Southern family's loss of wealth in a 1970s Ponzi scheme.

Kristen Millares Young is the author of the novel Subduction (Red Hen Press, April 14, 2020). A prize-winning journalist and essayist, Kristen is the current Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House. Her writing appears in the Washington Post, the Guardian, Poetry Northwest, Crosscut, Hobart, Proximity and Moss, as well as the anthologies Pie & Whiskey, Latina Outsiders, and Advanced Creative Nonfiction (Bloomsbury, 2021). She was the researcher for the New York Times team that produced “Snow Fall,” which won a Pulitzer and a Peabody. Kristen serves as board chair of InvestigateWest, a nonprofit newsroom she co-founded in 2009.

Jean Ferruzola received her MFA from the University of Washington and was a 2014/15 Made at Hugo House fellow. Her writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Brevity, The Offing, Entropy Magazine, and ELLE Magazine among others. She was a recipient of Artist Trust’s Grants for Artist Projects in 2016. You can follow her work at jeanferruzola.com.

Nicole Keenan-Lai got her start as a cleaner at a children's clothing store. Since then, she's cleaned hundreds of toilets, toured the world as a musician, walked thousands of dogs, served thousands of meals, contributed to books, crafted reports covered by international media, co-founded a thriving worker center, served as an adviser to countless labor-standards campaigns across the country, and co-crafted climate policy that shaped the presidential debate. Most importantly: she is the big sister to six, a wife, and still a musician.

There was life in Seattle's Central District and beyond. Kids grew up playing ball, eating their mama's feasts, welcoming newcomers. For awhile everybody was at home. Then came displacement. Join three artists exploring growing up, moving in, stepping out in a place they were once safe and belonged.There was life in Seattle's Central District and beyond. Kids grew up playing ball, eating their mama's feasts, welcoming newcomers. For awhile everybody was at home. Then came displacement. Join three artists exploring growing up, moving in, stepping out in a place they were once safe and belonged.

Featured Artists

Robert Francis Flor, PHD, is a Seattle native raised in the city’s Central Area and Rainier Valley. His poems appeared in Raven Chronicles, the Soundings Review, Four Cornered Universe, 4 and 20 Journal, the Wanderlust Journal, the Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry Review, the Baseball Bard, Poets Against the War, the Seattle Post Intelligencer (2005), the Field of Mirrors anthology (2008) and Poetry on the Bus (2014). In 2012, several poems will be published in two anthologies “Voices of the Asian American Experience” by the University of Santa Cruz and “Where Are You From?” the Thymos Book Project, Portland, Oregon. His chapbook “Alaskero Memories” was published in 2017. Also a playwright, his play “Mabuhay Majesty” was performed in 2017 at the Rainier Arts Center and his four short plays in 2018 at the Filipino Community Center. He is currently completing “The FAYTS – The Filipino American Young Turks”, a full-length play.

Kathya Alexander is a writer, actor, storyteller, and teaching artist. Her writing has appeared in ColorsNW Magazine, Arkana Magazine, Raising Lilly Ledbetter, and the Pitkin Review. She has won the Jack Straw Artist Support Program Award; 4Culture’s Artists Projects Award; and the WRAP Award, Youth Arts Award, and the CityArtist Award from Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture. Her play, HomeGoing, was chosen for residency at Hedgebrook Women’s Writer's Retreat and her play, Black To My Roots: African American Tales from the Head and the Heart, won the Edinburgh Festival Fringe First Award in Edinburgh, Scotland for Outstanding New Production.

Mary Anne Moorman is a writer, performer, teacher and radio host working at the intersection of family, social justice and story. Recipient of 4Culture, King County, the City of Seattle, Commonwealth of Virginia, Massachusetts Arts Commission grants, she is a producer/director and writer of over 250 industrial videos, authored numerous manuals, and workbooks on the prevention of sexual and racial discrimination training on multi-cultural pluralism. Moorman is co- author of plays including “The Grand Imperialist Circus,” “Revolution,” “Foolery”, “I’d Hang Too”, “White Flight, Black Ground.” Her stories and poems have appeared in the Yale Drama Review, Sewanee Review, “The Shenandoah Literary Review”, “National Storytelling Magazine”, Landmark News Service, Knight Ryder News Service, “Utilities Fortnightly,” “American Public Power” “Bent Chap Book,” “Line Art Chapbook,” “Seventeen Magazine “and “The Stranger.” She has received awards from: the American Press Association, American Psychological Association, Virginia Commonwealth University, Drama Critics of the South, Virginia Press Association and Virginia Arts and Humanities. Washington State Sex Equity Commission, Women Plus Business, Society for Human Resources Management and City University. A founding board member of Women in Trades, she currently serves on the board of FAR-West Music Conference, Seattle Storytellers Guild, and Women Against Violence.

This workshop is for fiction writers and storytellers of all levels who are interested in telling one story from multiple points of view. Why tell one story from more than one perspective? What can perspective shifts do for storytelling? What happens when writing from multiple points of view also means writing across differences in identity? How and when do writers decide to shift point of view? What about moving between first and third person? In this forty-five minute workshop, writers will try a fun and motivating point of view writing exercise, look at examples from a variety of fiction writers working in this mode, and walk away with new skill-building suggestions for fiction writing from multiple perspectives.

TICKETS $5
Link to Tickets: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/user/eventreports.html?events=4413665

Three wonderful local children’s authors will share diverse but equally entertaining readings from their works. We’ll meet a Mexican boogeyman, a bear with a wish (that actually gets granted) and a middle schooler who can really fart. Features Mark Maciejewski author of the “I am Fartacus” series and new works by Donna Barba Higuera’s and Kim Baker.




Featured Artists:




Donna grew up in the oilfields of central California, where chupacabras posed as coyotes and La Llorona disguised herself as dust devils. Donna melds folklore with her own life experiences to reinvent storylines for her MG and picture books. Donna lives in Washington State with her family, three dogs and three two frogs, and five glow-in-the-dark fish. Donna's backyard is a haunted 19th century logging camp. (The haunted part may or may not be true—she makes stuff up.)




Kim Baker has worked as teacher, crisis counselor, waitress and mail sorter. She was born in Wyoming to a Mexican-American mother and white father, a heritage that informs her works. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book Pickle: The Formerly Anonymous Prank Club of Fountain Point Middle School. It was selected for the 2018 Global Reading Challenge and winner of the 2013 Crystal Kite West award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, among numerous other honors. Her latest book, The Waters Bear, will hit shelves in April 2020. Kimbakerbooks.com




Mark Maciejewski is the author of I Am Fartacus, and the Kirkus-starred I Am Fartacus: Electric Boogerloo. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, gardening, watching movies, and napping. His love of comics and graphic novels is a major influence on his work. He lives in Seattle with his wife, kids, three dogs, two frogs, and a bunch of glow-in-the-dark fish. You can find him at MarkMaciejewski.com or on Twitter @Magicjetski

Tina Blade, Kat Humphrey, Emily Orrson, and Sarah Stuteville comprise a multi-genre, multi-generational slate of women writers whose topics include mental health and motherhood; the art of sleep deprivation; glamorous ways of saying no; and how Baba Yaga confronts ageism.

Featured Artists:

Kat Humphrey has taught creative writing; worked as an art therapist; curated art shows and a short lecture series; exhibited her artwork; and published poetry, journalism, and jokes. She's told true personal stories onstage without notes, in the style of those on The Moth Radio Hour. One of her favorite moments as a teacher was when a second grader asked her, "Miss Kat, does your hair want to be doing that?"

Tina Blade lives in Washington State's Snoqualmie Valley just east of Seattle. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Tulip Tree Review, Mid-American Review, California Quarterly, Calyx, and Seattle Review. She is currently working on her chapbook, Pomegranate.

Sarah Stuteville is a writer, memoirist, writing educator and nonprofit media consultant. A former journalist with a passion for storytelling, Sarah has reported from over a dozen countries in the Middle East, East Africa, South Asia and the Former Soviet Union. She wrote a column for the Seattle Times on social justice issues. She helped to co-found The Seattle Globalist, a non-profit journalism organization that trains diverse media makers.

Her memoir writing has been published in Mutha (where her piece, “No One is Watching” was one of the most read on the site all year) and Prometheus Dreaming and her piece, “Windstorm,” won “Honorable Mention” in the Hunger Mountain Nonfiction Writing Contest this year. She is currently working on a memoir, “Staring Problem,” about feminism, journalism, motherhood and mental health.


Emily Orrson is a writer. She is the founder and director of the Magazine of Glamorous Refusal, a pop art magazine about saying no in a world that conditions us to say yes. Seattle Magazine named her Seattleite of the month in April 2019 for her work glamorizing refusal in our community. She is a featured contributor on HuffPost.

Y-WE cultivates the power of diverse young women to be creative leaders and courageous changemakers through transformative programs within a collaborative community of belonging. We envision a society rooted in social justice, where all young women live their truth, achieve their dreams, and change our world.

Reading will feature: Robin Hall, Azure Savage and Lucia Santos

Featured Artists:

Samantha Pak is Seattle-area native who has been working in journalism since 2008. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Washington and is senior editor for Sound Publishing's Eastside media group, where she writes a bimonthly column called Windows and Mirrors, which focuses on telling the stories of people whose voices are not often heard. She also writes book recommendations for the Northwest Asian Weekly. In her spare time, she enjoys reading and volunteers as a mentor for Young Women Empowered, a local nonprofit focused on building leadership skills in teenaged girls.

Robin Hall is a 18 year old college student at Bellevue College. She is excited to share her book with the world, and hopes that it will inspire ideas, and deepen connections. Robin is a passionate artist, and is looking forward to creating more with her project.

Azure Savage is a high school senior, and this past summer he finished and self-published his first book “You Failed Us: students of color talk Seattle schools.” The book explores the racism within schools from the perspective of students of color. Azure uses his own experiences and those of his peers to illustrate the systematic issues at hand. He aims to center the voices of marginalized students throughout the push for equity in schools.

Lucia Santos is a 16-year-old artist and writer from Seattle, Washington. She attends The Center School and Seattle Central Community College. She has been a participant in Young Women Empowered since 2017 and has attended the Y-WE Write summer program for two years. Lucia values learning about the world around her and sharing this knowledge through creativity. As an artist, Lucia works primarily through painting as well as
 written pieces and has shared her work at the 2019 Hedgebrook gala, at AXIS Gallery in Pioneer Square, and as a contributing illustrator for Rookie Magazine.

International Girl Gang Tales is about womxn/femmes of color who grew up watching their parents send money via Western Union to family in the homeland and making long distance calls with international calling cards. For girls who switch between codes and languages, girls who message their family on WhatsApp. Girls who were told they had difficult names to pronounce. Girls who collect stamps in their passport, girls who dream of a faraway (or nearby) land, still have foreign currency in their wallets. Girls who have had international flings, keep coming home to something nowhere else has. Indigenous girls reppin their tribe and their clan, their corner of the earth. International Girl Gang tales are many different stories from everywhere.

Featured Organization

Women.Weed.Wifi is an expansive, international, and intergalactic network of women of color artists that use our ancestral and learned knowledge; our melanin, spiritual guides, and our natural talents to teach through holistic healing and plant magic.

The Seattle Youth Poet Laureate (YPL) program aims to identify youth writers and leaders who are committed to poetry, performance, civic and community engagement, education, and equity across the Puget Sound region. This year's Lit Crawl will feature members of the YPL cohort, including Youth Poet Laureate Wei-Wei Lee, Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador Maia Pody, and Youth Poet Laureate Finalist Marina Chen.

Featured Artists:

Wei-Wei Lee (Youth Poet Laureate) is seventeen years old and attends Nathan Hale High School. She grew up in Taiwan, but was born in the States, and Seattle is the first city in the States she has ever known and loved. As the 2019/2020 Youth Poet Laureate, she hopes to pay tribute to both Taiwan and America in her writing, and she hopes to do them proud.

Maia Pody (Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador) is in her senior year at The Center School. She has been writing poetry for the entirety of her high school career, and a little bit before that as well. She likes to write about herself and other people, and she takes inspiration from books, films, and the world around her. Several of her poems can be found online, via the Seattle Arts and Lectures and Town Hall Seattle blogs. She is interested in science, literature, and the culture of the city of Seattle, where she has lived all her life. 

Marina Chen (Youth Poet Laureate Finalist) is a high schooler and poet from the greater Seattle area. Her work has been recognized by the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, AIPF, Live Poets Society of New Jersey, and others. She is published in Urban Galaxy: the Female Renaissance, the 2019 edition of the journal; she is honored to be a member of the Seattle Youth Poet Laureate cohort.