Crawling with Creative Colloquy's Jackie Casella

While there are a good number of literary events in places like Seattle, Creative Colloquy has been doing its darndest to bring that presence to Tacoma. In the nearly six years since Creative Colloquy first started having their monthly reading events – not to mention hosting submitted stories on their website and producing a yearly print volume of stories – writers have started coming out of the woodwork to share stories that they might otherwise have kept to themselves.

The most concentrated dose of Creative Colloquy's literary smorgasbord comes in the form of their yearly Creative Colloquy Crawl, which enters its fifth year on October 1st. Over the course of three hours, 15 events at various locations showcase all the different ways in which stories can be told. With five events set to start every hour, all within an easily walkable distance, you get to choose what experience you want to have – catch some stories about baseball here, before seeing some short plays there, and then closing out with a storytelling showdown? That's just one of the many Choose Your Own Adventure options at this year's Creative Colloquy Crawl.

We caught up with Creative Colloquy founder and director Jackie Casella to chat about what makes the Creative Colloquy Crawl such a fun and unique experience in Tacoma.

“The events on the crawl look different, because we often recruit co-curators to continue our outreach and network,” says Casella. “And when someone's curating, my only rule is that the event has to involve storytelling, but it can look like whatever you want it to. So, we've had things like someone painting while another person was telling a story. King's Books is doing a thing this year where they're doing a game show, where there'll be songs based off of stories, and audience members try to figure out what stories they're based off of. So, it's not necessarily a thing where you show up and think, 'Oh great, some people are gonna read at me.' There's something for everyone.”

For this year, the Creative Colloquy Crawl has outdone themselves for the sheer amount of variety of stories being told – and the manner in which they're told. There's too much to get into in great detail, but here are some events we'd hate to miss: local non-profit The Tacoma Women of Color Collective will be hosting a roundtable reading of societally vital original and borrowed stories at Anthem Coffee; at Stink, Drunken Telegraph will host a wild frenzy of three-minute stories on the topic of moving to an unfamiliar place; Milo Mowery will be staging a reading of four of his short plays at the Mix; current Tacoma poet laureate Abby E. Murray will be joined by former Tacoma poet laureate Kellie Richardson and Olympia poet laureate Sady Sparks to perform poems on the subject of resistance at Doyle's; and the storytelling showdown at King's Books sees three writers going toe-to-toe to write stories on the spot, based on prompts, and with just five minutes to have a completed product.

Casella, between running Creative Colloquy, raising a family, and finding various avenues of work as a freelance writer, doesn't have much in the way of spare time. Still, while we had her, how could we not ask for book recommendations?

“I don't read as much as I'd like to, because I have small children and they don't let me,” Casella laughs. “So, I catch very small windows where I get to read a chapter before going to bed. The kids and I are reading a little Judy Blume right now. But I actually did just read On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. And I also read There There by Tommy Orange, which is the Tacoma Reads selection. The big thing with There There is that you just don't see a lot of coverage for indigenous writers, unless you're Sherman Alexie, so it's compelling to read an indigenous writer writing about the Native community.”

Any aspiring writers out there, who might be interested in getting their work published with Creative Colloquy, your time is now: the window to submit to their yearly print edition is still open, but will close on September 30th. Do you have a piece of short fiction, a poem, or an essay that's been living in your desk drawer for a little too long? Do you think it ought to get some fresh air and meet a new audience? Now's the time to get it turned in to Creative Colloquy. They're always looking for new talent, regardless of age, background, or experience.

If you're just a fan of the written word, of stories and their many modes of expression, the Creative Colloquy Crawl is an exuberant and vital event – and a celebration of an art form that doesn't always get the spotlight it deserves in Tacoma.

A full schedule of the fifth annual crawl can be found at creativecolloquy.com.