"Dancing to the Ticking of the Doomsday Clock" with Rena Priest

Event Details

When
Oct 10, 2026 from 06:00 PM to 07:00 PM
Where
Village Books, Fairhaven
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A Nature of Writing Speaker Series event, hosted in partnership with Village Books

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Dancing to the Ticking of the Doomsday Clock is a poetry collection for our precarious times that plays love, hope, and optimism against the harsh realities of the climate crisis, extinction, and histories of oppression. With dark humor and deftly executed tangents, readers embark on a poignant journey, oscillating between moments of joy and sorrow, wit and wisdom, hope and solemn reflection. This collection is for both poets and non-poets, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, offering profound insights and emotional resonance.

Where does the soul reside? Where does love begin? What has grown out of what has gone away? Are we miracles? These are just a few inquiries presented in Rena Priest's introspective and illuminative collection Dancing to the Ticking of the Doomsday Clock. These poems are brimming with both celebration and lament, wit and wisdom, the everyday and the profound, offering Lummi world views, songs, dances, and stories as prayer maps connecting us to this world and places beyond. – Tiffany Midge, author of Dreamcatcher in the Wry and Horns

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rena Priest is a citizen of the Lhaq’temish [Lummi] Nation. Priest served as Washington State’s sixth Poet Laureate (2021-2023) and was the first Indigenous person to hold the position. She is an Academy of American Poets Fellow, an Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow, a Maxine Cushing Gray Distinguished Writer, and winner of a Washington State Book Award for poetry. Her new essay collection,Positively Uncivilized, was published (October 2025) as the inaugural winner of the Keepers of the Fire Award from Raven Chronicles Press. It has also been recognized with a Silver Nautilus Award and was selected as one of two titles to represent the State of Washington at the National Book Festival in 2026.Dancing to the Ticking of the Doomsday Clockis her third collection of poetry. She splits time between Bellingham, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia.

ABOUT OUR BOOKSELLER PARTNER
Village Books and Paper Dreams is a community-based, independent bookstore and gift shop located in the Historic Fairhaven Village on the southside of Bellingham, Washington. Since 1980, we have been "building community one book at a time." Village Books and Paper Dreams is a place to meet your friends, talk books, or just while away an hour or two among our shelves or at The Next Chapter Cafe deliciously perched on the mezzanine of Village Books, overlooking the Village Green. If you're in the neighborhood come on in to explore!