What is truly “new” in the New Year? How much of our optimism or pessimism for what’s to come has to do with what’s happening now, and how much has to do with unresolved collisions? On January 16, 2019, writers E. J. Koh and Juan Carlos Reyes wrestle with “Past and Future Selves”: the intangible apparitions that haunt our everyday lives.

E. J. Koh is the author of A Lesser Love, winner of the Pleiades Editors Prize, and her memoir The Magical Language of Others is forthcoming from Tin House Books. Her work has appeared in Academy of American Poets, Boston Review, Columbia Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Prairie Schooner. She received fellowships from The American Literary Translators Association, Kundiman, The MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and elsewhere. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

Juan Carlos Reyes has published the novella A Summer’s Lynching (Quarterly West) and the fiction chapbook Elements of a Bystander (Arcadia Press). His stories, poems and essays have appeared in Ascentos Review, KGB Lit, and Hawai’i Review, among others. He is a 2018 Jack Straw Writers Fellow and is currently an Assistant Professor of creative writing at Seattle University. He is also the chief editor at Big Fiction magazine. He is the recipient of the Artist Trust 2018 LaSalle Storyteller Award in Fiction.

The Favorite Poem Project, a vital part of WordsWest’s monthly literary events, invites a community member to share a favorite poem and information about his or her organization. On January 16th, we welcome a favorite poem from Fawn Coussens, MSPT, owner and physical therapist at Kinetic Physical Therapy, located one block south of the West Seattle Junction.

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WordsWest is curated by West Seattle writers Katy E. Ellis, Susan Rich, and Harold Taw. Grant funding from Poets & Writers, Inc. allows WordsWest to pay featured writers for their time and talent.