If you love literature, we bet you look forward to the third Wednesday of the month, when WordsWest Literary Series takes over C & P Coffee (5612 California SW; WSB sponsor) for the night. Next edition is March 20th – still more than a week away but we want to give you extra heads-up, as WordsWest has announced this will be its final season of regular monthly presentations. Here are the details on who you’ll see and hear this month:

WordsWest Literary Series Presents “Questions of Time Travel, Time Zones, Time’s Up”
with poet Catherine Barnett and fiction writer Renee Simms (L-R in top photo)
Favorite Poem by Open Books: A Poem Emporium

We let it rule our lives, we say it passes too slow and then too quickly. What is time and how does it affect us? Poet Catherine Barnett and fiction writer Renee Simms will share 90 minutes with us and read from their new books — both looking at time in a multitude of ways.

WordsWest Literary Series is grateful for funding from Poets & Writers, Inc. that allows us to pay our writers for their time and talent.

Catherine Barnett is the author of three poetry collections, Into Perfect Spheres Such Holes Are Pierced (2004),The Game of Boxes (2012), winner of the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, and Human Hours, just published by Graywolf Press. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Whiting Award, she is a member of the core faculty of New York University’s Creative Writing Program, a Distinguished Lecturer at Hunter College, and an independent editor. She lives in New York City.

Renee Simms‘ writing appears in Callaloo, Oxford American, Ecotone, Literary Hub, Southwest Review, North American Review, The Rumpus, Salon and elsewhere. She’s received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf, Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center, Kimbilio, PEN Center, and Cave Canem. She’s been a featured artist at Elliott Bay Book Company, Tempe Center for the Arts, Midnight Special Bookstore, and on the Portland book podcast, Between the Covers. She lives with one-and-a half children (her eldest is away at college) and a black and white kitty named Barack. Renee’s debut story collection is Meet Behind Mars. She is currently working on a collection of essays and a novel.

WordsWest is curated by West Seattle writers Katy E. Ellis, Susan Rich, and Harold Taw.

The series launched in 2014. Susan says that various life changes have led to the co-curators deciding that Year 5 will be the last, but, “we are probably going to return for special events.”