We will be celebrating the release of Robert Lashley's debut novel " I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer" . It's a special first Saturday with a writing workshop led by Dr. Georgia Stewart McDade at 4:24 pm (to 6pm). Followed by our PIE (Poetry Is Everything) reading @ 6:15 pm with McDade and Lashley and then an Open Mic. Spread the news.... bring a friend.... do NOT miss this evening.
Please share the Facebook event page here. Thank you.
Bios:
Dr. Georgia Stewart McDade loves reading and writing. She grew up writing and producing plays for the youngsters in her neighborhood and collaborated with church youth to write plays for special occasions. As a charter member of the African-American Writers’ Alliance, she began reading her stories in public in 1991. She credits the group with making her write poetry. For a number of years, she has written poems inspired by artists at such sites as Gallery 110, Seattle Art Museum, Columbia City Gallery, and Onyx Fine Arts Collective. For several years Georgia wrote for Pacific Newspapers, especially the South District Journal. Today she reports for South Seattle Emerald and Leschi News and does interviews for community radio stations KBCS (91.3 FM) and KVRU (105.7) as she continues working on two biographies and poetry. She hopes soon to publish the journals she kept on her six-month, solo trip around the world. She has four volumes of poetry called "Outside the Cave" and her first collection of prose, is "Observation and Revelations: Stories, Sketches, and Essays".
Robert Lashley - Raised in the Hill Top neighborhood of Tacoma; Robert went to Western Washington in Bellingham and has mostly lived in Bellingham for the last two plus decades. He blossomed as a spoken word poet beginning in the early 2000s. Now he's written and published his first novel -- Set in his hometown of Tacoma, "I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer" examines racism, activism, and gentrification while presenting a rich parable on questions of grace, and a dynamic portrait of Pacific Northwest Black communities. " I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer" is a compassionate work using satire and the form of the protest novel with an ode to the working-class culture of a Black beauty shop.
Alvin L.A. Horn, NAACP Image Award Nominee and Essence Magazine best-selling author, wrote: “Robert Lashley pens a bottomless soul. Once you open this book, Robert grabs your attention and chains greatness between each line, each chapter in an unfettered rawness that allows us to see beyond our imagination.”
Robert has earned praise for his poetry collections: Green River Valley (Blue Cactus Press, 2021), Up South (Small Doggies Press, 2017), and The Homeboy Songs (Small Doggies Press, 2014). In 2019, The Homeboy Songs was named by Entropy Magazine as one of the 25 most essential books to come out of the Seattle area.
Robert has been nominated for a Stranger Genius Award, was a Jack Straw Fellow and an Artist Trust Fellow in 2016. His writing has been published in print anthologies from Rose Alley Press and others and in The Seattle Review of Books, NAILED, Poetry Northwest, McSweeney’s, and The Cascadia Review.