by Gabrielle Bates | Contributing Writer

This essay is part of a series in which Poetry Northwest partners with Seattle Arts & Lectures to present reflections on visiting writers from the SAL Poetry Series. At 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 21, Mary Ruefle will read at Seattle Central Community College—Broadway Performance Hall.

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Gabrielle Bates is a writer and visual artist from Birmingham, Alabama, currently living in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium and cohosts the podcast The Poet Salon. Her poems and poetry comics have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, New England Review, and The Offing, among other venues. You can find her at www.gabriellebat.es or on Twitter (@GabrielleBates).