The Aunties

Olympia 2023

Meet The Aunties
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STORME WEBBER PAMPLISET

Writer/Curator/Performer/Interdisciplinary Artist

Storme Webber is a Two Spirit Sugpiaq/Black/Choctaw poet and interdisciplinary artist. Her work is cross genre, incorporating text, performance, audio and altar installation, archival photographs and collaboration in order to engage with ideas of history, lineage, gender, race and sexuality. Her practice explores liminal identities, survivance and decolonization, and does so in a blues/jazz-based experimental manner, often incorporating acapella vocals. Her performance is described by the artist Laiwan as poetics / jazz.

She has received numerous honors and residencies; including from Hedgebrook, Ragdale and Banff Arts Centre, and recently was honored with the James W Ray Award. Her first solo museum exhibition, “Casino: A Palimpsest”, was presented at Frye Art Museum in Seattle. Minh Nyguyen, in Art in America, wrote: “Rather than erect divisions between personal art and historical archives, ‘Casino’ considered the intangible properties by which art and poetry are connected to family, ancestry, language, and public memory, revealing intergenerational, underground histories of resilience.”

She studied at Lakeside School, and holds a BA from the New School and an MFA from Goddard University.

She is also a curator and has devoted years to foregrounding other marginalized voices, since 2007, via her project Voices Rising:LGBTQ of Color Arts & Culture.

Her most recent book/CD is “Blues Divine". Currently at work on the next iteration of the exhibition, “Casino: A Palimpsest.

RENA PRIEST

Poet

Rena Priest is a member of the Lummi Nation. She served as the 6th Washington State Poet Laureate (2021-2023), and is a Maxine Cushing Gray Distinguished Writing Fellow. She is also the recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Indigenous Nations Poets, and Nia Tero. Her literary debut, Patriarchy Blues, was published in 2017, and received the American Book Award. Her most recent book, Northwest Know-How: Beaches, is a love letter to 29 of her favorite beaches in Washington and Oregon. You can find her nonfiction in High Country News, Nautilus Magazine, YES! Magazine, Seattle Met, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Learn more at renapriest.com.

TIFFANY MIDGE

Writer

Tiffany Midge (Standing Rock Sioux Nation) was raised by wolves in the Pacific Northwest. Her book of essays “Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s” was a finalist for a Washington State Book Award and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Brooklyn Rail, First American Art Magazine, World Literature Today, McSweeney’s, and more. Formerly a humor columnist for Indian Country Today, she’s currently a columnist for High Country News. Her honors include The Wilder Prize; Submittable2020 Eliza So Fellowship; a 2019 Pushcart Prize; the Kenyon Review Earthworks Indigenous Poetry Prize; a Western Heritage Award; and a 2019 Simons Public Humanities fellowship. Midge aspires to be the Distinguished Writer in Residence for

Seattle’s Space Needle and considers her contribution to humanity to be her sparkly personality.

Learn more about the author at: https://tiffanymidge.wixsite.com/website

Find "Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese's" HERE