From Kingsbookstore.com . . .

Distinguished Writer Series and Open Mic.

This monthly event features a Distinguished Writer and an Open Mic for poets. This month features Allen Braden. Open Mic sign-up is at 6:30 pm. Admission is free. The event occurs monthly the second Friday of every month at King's Books. Sponsored by the Tacoma Arts Commission and the Puget Sound Poetry Connection.

Allen Braden is a local poet who has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, an Artist Trust fellowship, an Artist Trust grant, the Emerging Writers Prize from Witness magazine, the Grolier Poetry Prize and other honors. His work is published in The New Republic, Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Southern Review, Georgia Review and anthologized in Best New Poets 2005, and Spreading the Word: Editors on Poetry and Family Matters: Poems of Our Families. He is the former poet-in-residence for the Poetry Center and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and now teaches at Tacoma Community College.