Elizabeth Austen
Producer
About
Former Washington State Poet Laureate Elizabeth Austen has been interviewing poets and producing poetry segments for KUOW since 2001.
She began as an intern while in graduate school for an MFA in poetry at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Once she discovered the joy of blending her early background as an actor and director (Book–It Repertory Theatre, Seattle Shakespeare Festival) with her passion for poetry as a spoken art form, she was hooked. She's been producing poetry for radio audiences ever since.
Her collection, "Every Dress a Decision" (Blue Begonia Press, 2011), was a finalist for the 2012 Washington State Book Award in poetry, and is now in its fourth printing. She's committed to fostering a broader understanding and appreciation of the literary arts in general and poetry in particular. Visit her online at her personal site.
Stories
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Seattle Arab-American Poet Seeks To 'Remind Us Of The Human'
Washington state poet laureate Elizabeth Austen presents two poems by Seattle-based poet Lena Khalaf Tuffaha: "Fragment" and "Running Orders." Tuffaha...
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Local Poet On Trying To Hold On To Love's Beginning
Washington state poet laureate Elizabeth Austen presents a "darkly beautiful love poem" from Tacoma-based poet Rick Barot. In his poem "After Darwish,"...
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The Fields On Fire: Northwest Poets On Wildfires
Among the three firefighters who lost their lives last month fighting the wildfires in Okanogon was one with a connection to poetry. Tom Zbyszewski, 20,...
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Poet Quenton Baker On America's Black/White Split
Elizabeth Austen talks with Marcie Sillman about a new chapbook from Seattle poet and teacher Quenton Baker. Baker peels back layers of language to...
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A Nurse Offers An Elegy For Her Patient
For the past five years, Martha Kreiner, a registered nurse and a poet, has tended to the medical needs of people living on Seattle's streets through...
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Courtship On The American Frontier Imagined By Modern Poet
Over the past couple of decades, Jana Harris has written a series of poetry collections that blend exhaustive research with "documentary imagination,"...
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Poet Anastacia Tolbert: 'What To Tell My Sons After Trayvon Martin'
Elizabeth Austen presents a piece by poet Anastacia Tolbert, a writer, performance artist and workshop facilitator. She's also a black woman and the...
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Jane Hirshfield On Turning To Poetry In Grief
Elizabeth Austen speaks with Jane Hirshfield, a fellow poet and long-time practitioner of Zen Buddhism. Hirshfield is the author of eight books of...
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Poems Deliver Sunflowers For Fukushima, Foxglove For Oso
Marcie Sillman speaks with Washington Poet Laureate Elizabeth Austen, who shares two poems about disasters, manmade and natural.
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Poet Tod Marshall's 'Three Dreams From The Eastside Of The Mountains'
In "Three Dreams from the Eastside of the Mountains," a sprawling, rollickingly Whitmanesque love poem, Tod Marshall summons the wildly various...