The olive is among the oldest known cultivated trees in the world, grown before the written language was invented. In California, there are many isolated trees or fragments of old groves, such as the trees that still stand on the Woodbury campus. Traditionally, after harvest, oil was pressed in screw or hydraulic presses. The paste was subjected to increasingly high pressures with subsequent degradation in the flavor of the oil. Thus, the “first press” of oil was considered the most flavorful and desirable. ~ the Olive Oil Source, 2018
The FIRST PRESS READING SERIES ran as part of the extended programming of MORIA Literary Magazine on campus at Woodbury University for seven years, from 2017 to 2024. In the fall of 2024, it was offered as an online reading. We were thrilled to welcome Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian-American poet, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, winner of the 2024 National Book Award, to our digital stage. The recording of the event is available below at the provided YouTube link.
Event Details:
Date: Monday, November 25th
Time: 4:00 PM (PST)
Link to Recording: https://youtube.com/live/0AN068nAyiw?feature=share
About Lena Khalaf Tuffaha:Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist, and translator. She is author of three books of poetry: Something about Living (UAkron, 2024), the winner of the 2024 National Book Award and winner of the 2022 Akron Prize for Poetry, Kaan & Her Sisters (Trio House Press), finalist for the 2024 Firecracker Award and honorable mention for the 2024 Arab American Book Award, Water & Salt (Red Hen Press), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award and honorable mention for 2018 Arab American Award. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Arab in Newsland, winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Prize, and Letters from the Interior (Diode, 2019), finalist for the 2020 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize.
Her writing has been published in journals including Los Angeles Review of Books, Michigan Quarterly Revie, the Nation, Poets.org, Protean, and Prairie Schooner and in anthologies including The Long Devotion (Georgia Press), We Call to the Eye and the Night (Persea Press), and Gaza Unsilenced (Just World Books). She was the translator and curator of the 2022 series “Poems from Palestine” at the Baffler magazine. In 2024 she curated a year-long subscription of Palestinian poetry books with Open Books, Seattle’s poetry-only bookstore.
Lena spent ten years working with journalists and editors as a volunteer for Seattle's Arab American community organizations. She helped to tell the stories of people living between two homelands, people who speak in translation and navigate the realities of long wars. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington and an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University's Rainier Writing Workshop.
Lena was born in Seattle, Washington but she was raised in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. She has lived the experiences of first-generation American, immigrant, and expatriate. Her heritage is Palestinian, Jordanian, and Syrian and she is fluent in Arabic and English. She has lived in and traveled across the Arab world, and many of her poems are inspired by the experience of crossing cultural, geographic and political borders, borders between languages, between the present and the living past.
Lena is passionate about a Free Palestine, the perfect cup of coffee, poetry, language, and gardening. She lives with her family in Redmond, Washington.
ARCHIVE :: PAST FEATURES IN THE FIRST PRESS READING SERIES, 2017-2024
Susan Rich and Brynn Saito, April 2024
Margaret Elysia Garcia and Tricia Lopez, November 2023
multiple poets at Giovanni’s Room, DTLA, April 2023
Toni Ann Johnson, February 2023 (WORDSHOP)
Chloe Martinez, November 2022
Chekwube Danladi, September 2022
Eliza Smith, May 2022
traci kato-kiriyama, March 2022
José Hernandez Diaz, November 2021
Scott Broker, September 2021
Darnell L. Moore, April 2021
Nikia Chaney and Shareen K. Murayama, February 2021
Genevieve Kaplan, November 2020
F. Douglas Brown and Geffrey Davis, September 2020
Lynne Thompson, April 2020
Richard Garcia, February 2020 (WORDSHOP)
Lory Bedikian, November 2019 (WORDSHOP)
Douglas Manuel, September 2019 (WORDSHOP)
Heidi Seaborn and Reuben Ellis, April 2019
Suzanne Lummis, February 2019 (WORDSHOP)
Désirée Zamorano, November 2018
Brendan Constantine, October 2018 (WORDSHOP)
Naoko Fujimoto and Angela Narciso Torres, April 2018 (WORDSHOP)
Chiwan Choi, April 2018
Linda Dove, February 2018
Neil Aitken and Mike Sonksen, November 2017