Sierra Nelson

Sierra Nelson is a Seattle-based poet, artist, and alumna of the University of Washington (M.F.A. in Poetry, 2002) and Vassar College (B.A. in English, 1997). She is author of the award-winning I Take Back the Sponge Cake: A Lyrical Choose-Your-Own-Adventure made with visual artist Loren Erdrich (Rose Metal Press, 2012), chapbook “In Case of Loss” (Embark, Toadlily Press, 2012), and collaborative books Who Are We? with 7-inch record, T.Y.P.O, and 13 Love Poems & One Ugly One, among others. As co-founder of acclaimed literary performance art groups The Typing Explosion and the Vis-a-Vis Society, she has collaboratively written, performed, and created installations nationally and internationally for fifteen years, including at the Venice Biennale, Frye Art Museum, and the Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour. Sierra has co-lead U.W.’s Creative Writing in Rome Program with Rebecca Hoogs and Johnny Horton, teaches creative writing at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and is a Senior Writer-in-Residence at Seattle Children's Hospital through Seattle Arts & Lectures' Writers in the Schools Program. She is also a MacDowell Colony Fellow, founder and president of Seattle’s Cephalopod Appreciation Society, and co-editor of the journal Mare Nostrum.