Community Arts Partner

Participant Details

Community Arts Partner Name

Sierra Nelson

Partner Type

Individual

Profile Photo

Individual Bio or
Organizational Statement

Sierra Nelson is a Seattle-based poet, performing artist, multidisciplinary collaborator and teaching artist working in Washington for over nineteen years. Earning her B.A. in English from Vassar College (1997) and M.F.A. in Poetry from University of Washington (2002), she has taught through Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools (WITS) program at numerous elementary,  middle, and high schools including Catharine Blaine K-8, McClure Middle School, McDonald International Elementary, Port Townsend High School, and for over a decade as a teaching writer-in-residence working with patients at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She has taught innovative creative writing youth intensives as well through Centrum’s Middle School Explorations and in Port Townsend and Hugo House’s Scribes Program in Seattle, and teaches adult classes through Hugo House, University of Washington’s Creative Writing in Rome Program, U.W.’s Friday Harbor Marine Labs on San Juan Island, and at the Hugo House. She has also been a guest teaching artist at Seattle’s juvenile detention, Seattle and King County Public Libraries, International District Community Center, Ballard High School, the Seattle Aquarium, and elsewhere. As a practicing writer and performer, Sierra's books include award-winning I Take Back the Sponge Cake (Rose Metal Press), The Lachrymose Report (PoetryNW Editions), In Case of Loss (Toadlily), and Who Are We? (with 7-inch record), and her poems have appeared in publications such as Crazyhorse, Tin House, Pleaides, Poetry Northwest, and Alive at the Center, and in installations including at SIM Gallery (Reykjavik, Iceland) and the Seattle Aquarium. As co-founder of acclaimed literary performance groups The Typing Explosion and Vis-a-Vis Society, she has collaboratively written, performed, and created installations nationally and internationally, including during the Venice Biennale and at the Frye Art Museum. She is also a MacDowell Colony Fellow, founder of Seattle’s Cephalopod Appreciation Society, and winner of the Carolyn Kizer Prize and a 2014 CityArtist Grant from the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.