Author Talk: Layli Long Soldier and Lena Khalaf Tuffaha discuss “We"

About the Book:

In “We,” Layli Long Soldier examines what it means to be in community, to be in relation with family, nation, history, and language. We is the first-person plural, the pronoun of inclusion in English. It is also Wé, the Lakota word meaning “blood”—what is shared and what is shed.

In this ingenious and insightful arrangement of poems, lyric essays, and her own visual artworks presented in full color, Long Soldier creates unique spaces of collaboration, mentorship, and shared knowledge. The 184 X’s signed to a broken treaty, the fringes of a winged dress braided in honor of children lost to Indian boarding schools, and intricate Lakota star quilts become shapes and patterns that convey collective kinship, memory, and grievance. “From this day forward,” Long Soldier writes, “I declare a war of language.”

“We” is a visionary new collection by a writer and artist whose unfolding works are among the most groundbreaking of our time.

About the Speakers:

Layli Long Soldier is a poet, artist, and citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. She is the author of “Whereas,” winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is the author of three award-winning books of poetry, "Water & Salt" (Red Hen, 2017), "Kaan and Her Sisters" (Trio House, 2023), and "Something About Living" (University of Akron, 2024). "Something About Living" won the 2024 National Book Award, an Arab American Book Award, a Washington State Book Award, and an American Library Association’s Notable Book. Tuffaha is also an essayist and translator. Her work has been published in journals including Michigan Quarterly Review, Mizna, the Nation, Prairie Schooner, and Poets.org. In 2022, she was the curator of the poetry translation series Poetry from Palestine at the Baffler magazine. She won the John Fredrick Nims Memorial Prize for Translation from the Poetry Foundation for her translations of the late Zakaria Mohammed’s poems in that series. She is currently translating a manuscript of his selected works.

Thanks to our partner Elliott Bay Book Company.

Thanks to our sponsors  The Seattle Public Library Foundation  and  The Gary and Connie Kunis Foundation.

Thanks to media sponsor  The Seattle Times.

Free and reduced access supported by  4Culture.

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Doors open at 6:30 p.m.