Poet Erin Malone launches her latest collection, Site of Disappearance, with fellow local poets Kary Wayson and Laura Da'. The book is true crime memoir-in-verse that examines childhood trauma and the transience of memory using a mix of facts and fairytales.
In her second full-length poetry collection Site of Disappearance, Erin Malone’s spare and resonant lyrics confront the silence that followed her 11-year-old brother’s death. Decades later, as her own son approaches this age, she finds herself returning to her childhood landscape, remembering for the first time in years the abductions and murders of two boys that shook her small town that same season.
Through archival research and with tenderness and precision, she steps carefully through the wreckage left by tragedy, in which brother/ boy/ son blur and revolve, and “time stands still because it has a body.” Site of Disappearance is an intimate reckoning with personal and collective grief guided by an acute awareness of language’s power to reveal and transform.
Born in New Mexico and raised in Nebraska and Colorado, Erin Malone is the author of two full-length collections: Site of Disappearance, finalist for the National Poetry Series, and Hover, as well as a chapbook, What Sound Does It Make. Recent honors include the Coniston Prize and the Robert Creeley Memorial Prize, and residency support from Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Anderson Center, Ucross and Jentel Foundations. The recipient of grants and fellowships from Artist Trust, 4Culture, Jack Straw, and the Colorado Council on the Arts, Erin formerly taught in Writers in the Schools, served as Editor of Poetry Northwest, and now works as a bookseller. She lives on Bainbridge Island in Washington State with her husband, novelist Shawn Wong.
Laura Da’ is a poet and teacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da’ studied creative writing at the University of Washington and The Institute of American Indian Arts. Da’ is Eastern Shawnee. She is the current Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and Poet Planner for King County, Washington. Her first book, Tributaries, won the 2016 American Book Award. Her latest book, Instruments of the True Measure, won the Washington State Book Award.
Kary Wayson's most recent book is The Slip, winner of the Burnside Review Poetry Prize. She lives and works as a freelance editor in Port Orchard, WA.