A Night of Poetry & Purpose

with Rena Priest & local poets

Join us for an evening of poetry and purpose as part of Island Verse Literary Collective's Guest Author Series. Local poets will share the stage with one of the Pacific Northwest's most celebrated voices. Refreshments will be served.

Rena Priest is a citizen of the Lhaq'temish (Lummi) Nation. In a historic appointment, she was named Washington State's sixth Poet Laureate (2021–2023), becoming the first Indigenous person to hold the position. In this role, she championed poetry that celebrated the ecological gifts of her ancestral homelands and the beauty of the natural world.

She is an Academy of American Poets Fellow, a Maxine Cushing Gray Distinguished Writer, and a winner of a Washington State Book Award for poetry. Her new essay collection, Positively Uncivilized, was published as the winner of the 2025 Keepers of the Fire Award from Raven…