Voices for Justice: Amber Flame, Jourdan Keith, Erika Lundahl, Jen Marlowe and Madeline Ostrander

Doors open at 6:00 PM, program starts at 6:30 PM

--

Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum and Donkeysaddle Projects host five revolutionary Seattle writers and performers as they wield words, songs, and film in pursuit of justice, joy, and liberation. A multi-genre experience with poetry, live music, a short documentary, storytelling, and literary readings—followed by drinks, noshes, and the chance to mix and mingle with some of Seattle’s literary activist community. With poet Amber Flame, former Seattle Civic Poet Jourdan Keith, songwriter Erika Lundahl, filmmaker Jen Marlowe, and environmental journalist and author Madeline Ostrander. 

Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, activist and educator, whose work has garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and more. In her writing, Flame explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and the interstitial joy in it all. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame’s work is published in diverse arenas, including Def Jam Poetry, Nailed Magazine, Winter Tangerine, and Split This Rock, with her first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press. Flame’s second book of poetry, apocrifa, launched in May from Red Hen Press. As program director of Hedgebrook, she builds events and programs that amplify the voices of women-identified writers, and continues to work as a writing instructor in community and for currently and formerly incarcerated women and youth. In her spare time, Flame is working on a third poetry collection; making music with her band, Last of the RedHot Mamas; making art; and raising her awesome kid. Amber Flame is a queer Black dandy mama who falls hard for a jumpsuit and some fresh kicks.

Jourdan Imani Keith is Seattle’s 2019–2022 Civic Poet. Selected as a 2023 Black Arts Legacies artist and featured in Forbes and on NPR, her Orion Magazine essays, “Desegregating Wilderness” and “At Risk” appear in the Best American Science and Nature Writing Anthology, as well as textbooks. The founder of Urban Wilderness Project she leads its R U An Endangered Species™ Women and Whales First: Poetry in a Climate of Change campaign. A recipient of the 2022 US Water Alliance Outstanding Artist prize and a 2018 Americans for the Arts award, her TEDx Talk, “Your Body of Water” became the theme for King County's 2016–2018 Poetry on Buses program.

Erika Lundahl is a musician, storyteller, and climate justice advocate living on stolen Duwamish land in Seattle. Her classically trained voice and distinctive “tapping” guitar style create an enveloping sound all her own. Her poetic, often autobiographical lyrics employ poignant imagery. Her 2018 live in-studio album Right Back at You, recorded at London Bridge Studios, features moving storytelling and talented performance. Her newest album, Daughter, You’re a Storyteller, released in October 2020, mid-pandemic, with a multimedia release on Patreon, and is now available wherever music is sold. Record Crates United called the album “a stellar collection of deeply personal ballads and tributes to the heart. With songs that are inspired by the unlocking of the stories within our genetics, and seeking to explore our pasts to better understand our present adult minds and bodies.”

Jen Marlowe is a documentary filmmaker, author, and founder of Donkeysaddle Projects. Her films include There Is A Field, Witness Bahrain, Remembering the Gaza War, Rebuilding Hope: Sudan’s Lost Boys Return Home and Darfur Diaries: Message From Home. Her books include I Am Troy Davis, The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian’s Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker and Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival. She is also a consulting producer at Just Vision. Jen identifies first and foremost as a social justice/human rights activist and considers her filming and writing to be tools of her activism. When not filming, writing, protesting, or engaged in other forms of resistance to state and structural violence, Jen can be found backpacking or summiting glaciated volcanoes. Jen lives on land of the Coast Salish peoples.

Madeline Ostrander is an environmental journalist and the author of At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth. A 2023 gold Nautilus Book Award winner for Ecology and Environment and named one of Kirkus Reviews’ 100 best nonfiction books of 2022, Unruly Planet tells the stories of four American communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis and reflects on what it means to find strength and resilience in this era of upheaval and transition. Ostrander is based in Seattle but will be residing in the Boston area during the 2023-2024 academic year as a Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The NewYorker.com, The Nation, Sierra Magazine, PBS’s NOVA Next, Slate, High Country News, Audubon, and numerous other outlets. She’s been a guest on a wide range of public radio programs—from Baltimore and Louisville to Salt Lake City and San Francisco—as well as PBS’s The Open Mind. Ostrander has also taught narrative journalism, science-writing, essay-writing, and nonfiction at Seattle’s Hugo House. She is the former senior editor of YES! Magazine and holds a master’s degree in environmental science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

About Donkeysaddle Projects: Donkeysaddle Projects works towards building a liberated world free from state violence in all its manifestations. We provide entry points into this movement work and nurture deep and sustained engagement by integrating political education, organizing and advocacy, and art/storytelling projects. More info at donkeysaddle.org