Judas Goat Pre-Release Party

Doors: 7pm

COVID PROTOCOLS: All our staff are fully vaccinated, and we ask that our patrons be vaccinated as well. Our staff will be masked, and we encourage our audience to wear masks as much as possible.

Advance tickets can only be purchased online-we do not sell advance tickets at the venue. Refunds are not available within 48 hours of the event. Tickets do not guarantee seating during shows at the Royal Room. We are now accepting reservations for diners! Please email reservations@theroyalroomseattle.com for a table. The Royal Room is All Ages until 10pm.

Join us in celebrating the highly anticipated publication of Judas Goat (Tin House), the debut poetry collection by Seattle's own Gabrielle Bates! Beverages, snacks, and book-slinging will begin at 7:00 pm, to be followed by performances at 7:30pm, showcasing an abundant range of Seattle-area poets and culminating with a reading by the author. Open Books: A Poem Emporium—Seattle's beloved poetry bookstore—will be there with early copies of Judas Goat (guaranteed for those who preorder), special-edition broadsides, and more. Co-sponsored by the Seattle Public Library, Tin House, and Open Books: A Poem Emporium, this event is open to the public and all—poets, poetry lovers, and the poetry-curious—are welcome!

Advanced Praise for Judas Goat:

"Gorgeous questions loom and ricochet throughout Judas Goat, a book that has utterly wrecked my heart and left me in awe as I gasp at lines that wake me up to the wild world. Bates writes, ‘If I describe something, anything, long enough, / language will lead me back to wanting it.’ This type of yearning creates dazzling entry points inside poems probing and reaching for God, the South, marriage, friendship, mothers, and mentor poets we see as mothers, grieving, and so much longing, longing, longing bursting throughout this remarkable debut." —Tiana Clark, author of I Can't Talk About the Trees Without Blood

"In disbelief, you’ll want to pinch yourself while reading . . . no need. Believe me, Judas Goat is just that good." —Nicole Sealey, author of Ordinary Beast

"Gabrielle Bates announces herself as a poet of compassion, precision, and heartbreak... through all the layers of large and little violences emerges a speaker who believes in love, a voice that yearns for the mysterious otherwhere... I was stunned by this magnificent debut–here is the voice of a poet I will be reading again and again." —Aria Aber, author of Hard Damage 

Gabrielle Bates is the author of Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023). A Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship finalist and recipient of support from Artist Trust, her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Ploughshares, Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she currently lives in Seattle, where she helps out at Open Books: A Poem Emporium and—with Luther Hughes and Dujie Tahat—co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon. On Twitter (@GabrielleBates) and IG (@gabrielle_bates_). www.gabriellebat.es