The Seattle Public Library Announces the 2025 ‘Seattle Reads’ Selection
release date: February 3, 2025
Seattle Reads, The Seattle Public Library’s citywide book group, has chosen “You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World” as its 2025 selection. Edited by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, “You Are Here” is a poetry anthology that celebrates our deep connection with the natural world and the collective power of poetry.
For the book, Limón invited 50 American poets to observe and reflect on their local landscape. Featured poets include former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo; Pulitzer Prize winners Jericho Brown, Carl Phillips, and Diane Suess; PEN/Voelcker Award winners Victoria Chang and Rigoberto González; and Seattle-area poets Laura Da’ and Cedar Sigo.
“Whether or not you think of yourself as a ‘poetry person,’ all Seattle readers will find something to love in this accessible collection that invites us to consider our relationship with nature,” said Stesha Brandon, the Library’s Literature & Humanities program manager.
In addition to encouraging Seattle readers to come together to read the same book, Seattle Reads, which started in 1998, brings the city together through community programs that further explore and celebrate each year’s title selection.
Seattle Reads programs will run from the end of March run through the end of May. Ada Limón will visit Seattle on May 16 and 17 to discuss the book at several community events. The Seattle Public Library Foundation will host a kickoff event, featuring community partners engaged in this year’s programming, on Wednesday, March 26 at 6 pm at the Central Library. Check back for a full list of programs, dates and times, as well as a discussion guide at www.spl.org/SeattleReads.
As a second part of the project, titled “You Are Here: Poetry in the Parks,” poems were installed on picnic tables at seven national parks around the country, including Mount Rainier National Park. On June 24, 2024, Limón traveled to the park to dedicate the poem “Uppermost,” by A.R. Ammons, which was installed outside Jackson Memorial Visitor Center in the Paradise area of Mount Rainier National Park.
FIND A COPY OF ‘YOU ARE HERE’
Print, e-book and e-audiobook copies of “You Are Here” are available in the Library’s catalog. The Library has unlimited copies of the e-audiobook version of “You Are Here” through the Always Available collection, and is ordering more copies of the print and e-book formats. The Library will also have limited copies of uncatalogued copies of “You Are Here” available for informal borrowing in the coming weeks (meaning you can borrow them without checking them out and return them when you’re done).
Seattle Reads “You Are Here” is presented in partnership with Creative Aging at the Frye, Hugo House, KUOW Book Club, La Sala, Memory Hub, Milkweed Editions, Open Books: A Poem Emporium, Poetry Northwest, Pongo Poetry Project, 4Culture Poetry in Public, Seattle Arts & Lectures Youth Poetry Fellowship. It is made possible by The Seattle Public Library Foundation and The Wallace Foundation with additional media support from The Seattle Times.
“You Are Here” is published by Milkweed Editions in association with the Library of Congress. Milkweed Editions is an independent, Minneapolis-based press that also published Robin Wall Kimmerer’s international bestseller “Braiding Sweetgrass.”
“I hope this anthology serves as a reminder that there is more time to plant trees, to write poems, to not just be in wonder at this planet, but to offer something back to it, to offer something back together,” wrote Limón in the introduction to “You Are Here.”
ABOUT ADA LIMON
Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including “The Carrying,” which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her book “Bright Dead Things” was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Her most recent book of poetry, “The Hurting Kind,” was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. She is also the author of two children’s books: “In Praise of Mystery,” with illustrations by Peter Sís; and “And, Too, The Fox,” which will be released in 2025. In October of 2023, Limón was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, and she was named a TIME magazine woman of the year in 2024. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and wrote a poem that was engraved on NASA's Europa Clipper Spacecraft, which was launched to the second moon of Jupiter in October 2024. As the 24th Poet Laureate of The United States, her signature project is called “You Are Here” and focuses on how poetry can help connect us to the natural world. Limón will serve as Poet Laureate until the spring of 2025.
ABOUT SEATTLE READS
Founded in 1998, Seattle Reads is a citywide book group in which people are encouraged to read and discuss the same book. Originally called “If All of Seattle Read the Same Book,” Seattle Reads was the first “One Book, One City” program. It proved so popular that that concept has inspired similar programs across the United States and internationally.
Seattle Reads is designed to deepen engagement in literature through reading and discussion. Everyone is invited to participate by reading the featured book, joining a book discussion or attending programs with the featured writer.
PREVIOUS SEATTLE READS SELECTIONS
- 2024: “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler
- 2023: “The Swimmers” by Julie Otsuka
- 2022: “The House of Broken Angels” by Luis Alberto Urrea
- 2021: "The Vanishing Half" by Brit Bennett
- 2020: "There There" by Tommy Orange
- 2019: "The Best We Could Do" by Thi Bui
- 2018: "Homegoing" by Yaa Gyasi
- 2017: "The Turner House" by Angela Flournoy
- 2016: "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves" by Karen Joy Fowler
- 2015: "The Painter" by Peter Heller
- 2014: "For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey" by Richard Blanco
- 2013: "Stories for Boys" by Gregory Martin
- 2012: "The Submission" by Amy Waldman
- 2011: "Little Bee" by Chris Cleave
- 2010: "Secret Son" by Laila Lalami
- 2009: "My Jim" by Nancy Rawles
- 2008: "The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears" by Dinaw Mengestu
- 2007: "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri
- 2006: "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi
- 2005: "When the Emperor Was Divine" by Julie Otsuka
- 2004: Seattle Reads Isabel Allende: The 2004 series featured seven titles from Allende's body of work.
- 2003: "A Gesture Life" by Chang-rae Lee
- 2002: "Wild Life" by Molly Gloss
- 2001: "Fooling With Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft" by Bill Moyers
- 1999: "A Lesson Before Dying" by Ernest Gaines
- 1998: "The Sweet Hereafter" by Russell Banks
Find book synopses for all Seattle Reads titles on this Seattle Reads webpage.
MORE INFORMATION
The Library believes that the power of knowledge improves people's lives. We promote literacy and a love of reading as we bring people, information and ideas together to enrich lives and build community.
Contact the Library’s Ask Us service by phone at 206-386-4636 or by email or chat at www.spl.org/Ask. Staff are ready to answer questions and direct you to helpful resources and information.