Curators

Michael Dylan Welch was named after Dylan Thomas, and this gave him an awareness of poetry from a very young age. Originally from England, he grew up there and in Ghana, Australia, and Canada, and now lives in Sammamish with his wife and two children. He has an MA in English and works as an editor, writer, and publications manager. Michael has been a board member of the Washington Poets Association (WPA) and was vice president of the Eastside Writers Association, and first vice president of the Haiku Society of America. Michael is also a board member of he Redmond Association of Spokenword (RASP), whose monthly readings he also curates. Michael founded and directed the Poets in the Park conference in Marymoor Park in 2004 and 2005, helped to run the Burning Word poetry festival from 2004 to 2008, and has been directing Haiku Northwest’s Seabeck Haiku Getaway since 2008. In 2008 and 2009, he was coordinator of the Haiku Northwest group (which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2013). He curated the Haiku Garden reading series at Seattle’s Japanese Garden, and also edited Tundra: The Journal of the Short Poem, and before that he edited the haiku journal Woodnotes (1989 to 1997). Michael is also the editor/publisher of award-winning haiku and tanka books with his press, Press Here. He is a cofounder (1991) and director of the biennial Haiku North America conference, cofounder (1996) and webmaster of the American Haiku Archives, founder (2000) and past president (2000–2004) of the Tanka Society of America, and founder/director of National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo), held in every year in February (since 2011). He is also a contributing editor to Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society, and has presented papers on E. E. Cummings, Lewis Carroll, haiku, tanka, and other poetry at academic conferences in the United States, Canada, and Japan. He has taught haiku and other poetry workshops at Hugo House, the Skagit River Poetry Festival, the Whidbey Island Writers Festival, the Field’s End Writers Conference, the North Cascades Institute, and numerous other places. Michael was formerly a senior editor at IDG Books Worldwide (publisher of the For Dummies computer books) and has edited 200+ trade books on subjects ranging from 3D animation to Microsoft Office to soldering to memoir to forestry management. Michael has published several books of translation and his own poetry, edited dozens of poetry anthologies and books, and has judged or won first prize in numerous national and international poetry contests. His haiku, tanka, and longer poetry, as well as essays and book reviews, have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies (including three Norton anthologies) and have been translated into more than a fifteen languages. One of his waka (tanka) translations from Japanese appeared on the back of 150,000,000 United States postage stamps in March of 2012. Selections of Michael's poetry, essays, book reviews, and other writing appears at his website, Graceguts.

See you at a future reading!

If you’re interested in being a featured reader, visit the Interested in Reading? page for more information. To make a connection, please send an email message to Michael Dylan Welch (WelchM@aol.com).

Former Co-Curators

Thank you to Tanya McDonald for more almost three years of service as co-curator of SoulFood Poetry Night, from January 2012 to September 2014.

Tanya McDonald, a native Oregonian, now resides in Woodinville with her husband, their cat, and a ridiculous number of books. When she’s not composing haiku on buses or on walks, she is working on her urban fantasy novel. Her poems have appeared in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Bottle Rockets, The Heron’s Nest, Acorn, Dwarf Stars 2010, Where the Wind Turns: The 2009 Red Moon Anthology, A New Resonance 7, and Fifty-Seven Damn Good Haiku by a Bunch of Our Friends. Tanya has served as regional coordinator for Haiku Northwest, the Washington State region of the Haiku Society of America, coedited the organization's 25th anniversary anthology, No Longer Strangers, and codirected the Seabeck Haiku Getaway retreat from 2009 to 2012.

Thank you to Lana Ayers for more than five years of service as co-curator of SoulFood Poetry Night, from the first reading in July of 2006 to the end of 2011.

Lana Hechtman Ayers, originally from New York, made her way to the Pacific Northwest after a dozen-year sojourn in New Hampshire. She runs Night Rain Poetry, which offers poetry editing, a manuscript organization service, and writing and publishing workshops. She publishes the Concrete Wolf Poetry Chapbook Series, Late Blooms Poetry Postcards, and is poetry editor of Crab Creek Review. Visit her online at http://lanaayers.com/. Lana fell in love with language at an early age, but her passion for poetry fully ignited in the third grade when her teacher, Mrs. Sarfaty, began reading to the class from Stephen Dunning’s Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle . . . and Other Modern Verse. This book contained the work of such luminaries as Theodore Roethke, Maxine Kumin, Donald Hall, John Ciardi, and Dorothy Parker. Although, she’d been writing poems for many years, it was not until the spring of 1987 that her life as a poet began. It was then she attended a poetry workshop led by Ottone “Ricky” Riccio at the Boston Center for Adult Education. She entered the classroom with a two-page “masterpiece” and left with about five salvageable lines. She studied with Ricky for more than a decade and considers him a mentor in the purest sense: He is able to greet each poet on the threshold of the poem and welcome them in. After Ricky, Lana was fortunate enough to study with an equally gifted mentor, Patricia Fargnoli, whose faith in her gave her the courage to pursue an MFA. Lana also credits poet Kate Gleason’s workshops with opening her inner voice. Lana holds a BA in mathematics from City University of New York, an MA in counseling psychology from Antioch New England Graduate School, and an MFA in poetry from New England College. She hopes someday to return to school to study astrophysics. Lana’s poetry appears in national journals, including Bitter Oleander, Cider Press Review, Feminist Studies Quarterly, Lynx Eye, Natural Bridge, Poetica, Rhino, Slant, and Stringtown. She is a Hedgebrook alumna, a Pushcart nominee, and has been awarded honors from the Discovery/The Nation competition and the Rita Dove Poetry Prize. Her first full-length book, Dance from Inside My Bones, won the 2006 Violet Reed Haas Award, was published in 2007 by Snake Nation Press, and is nominated for the National Book Award. Her second full-length collection, Chicken Farmer I Still Love You, winner of D-N Publishing’s national manuscript contest, was also published in 2007. Lana enjoys the rain, black-and-white cats, and anything Miles Davis.