"Rivers in My Veins" by Kara Briggs

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When

Mar 02, 2025 from 05:00 PM to 06:00 PM

Where

Village Books readings gallery, Bellingham

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A Nature of Writing speaker series event, in partnership with Village Books

With calm elegance and precise language, Rivers in My Veins is a work of lyric courage celebrating the connection we all share to the earth. Kara Briggs' poems sing her people, Sauk-Suiattle and Yakama, onto the pages. "Land we live on land," she writes, calling us to embrace our kinship with the earth. As a career journalist, Briggs uses documentary poetry to expose the false settler-colonial narratives while innovating rhythms from the social dances of her tribes in poems that take the reader to the dance circle. She received the 2024 James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poetry for "Acknowledgement Two," a poem in this collection about her uncle who fought for fishing rights. Her fierce love of lands, waters, and stories of her peoples are carried in familiar poetic forms-sonnet, pantoum, and haiku-as vehicles to carry the readers on a journey through our shared world of literary - and deeply alive - landscapes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kara Briggs is a resident of the Tulalip Reservation and a Sauk-Suiattle Citizen, Yakama direct descendant. Her debut book of poetry, Rivers in My Veins, demonstrates Briggs' skill with form poetry, including haiku and haibun from the Japanese, various types of sonnets, pantoum, and sestina. She was a career journalist with two decades experience, and has worked in higher ed, public affairs and non-profit management. Her passion has always been writing, and her literary career is afoot.

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. Since 1980, we have been "building community one book at a time." Village Books is a place to meet your friends, talk books, or just while away an hour or two among our shelves. Years of experience with local customers and knowledge of local interests helps us carefully select the books you love. Thanks to you, Village Books is able to continue keeping local readers in mind. If you're in the neighborhood come on in to explore!