Claudia Castro Luna was born in El Salvador. She received a BA in Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine, an MA in Urban Planning from University of California, Los Angeles, and an MFA in poetry from Mills College. She is the author of Killing Marias (Two Sylvias Press, 2017) and the chapbook This City (Floating Bridge Press, 2016). She currently teaches at Seattle University. Castro Luna, who will receive $100,000, plans to convene a series of poetry writing workshops and readings along the entire length of the Columbia River, from the point it enters the northeastern corner of Washington to its encounter with the Pacific Ocean, highlighting the importance of this natural resource.

We are speeding quickly toward the deadline to apply for the role of Redmond's Poet Laureate (on April 29th) and the role of Seattle Civic Poet (on April 24th, which is, uh, today.)

Here's a Chrome and Firefox browser extension that book-lovers might find handy. If you're looking up a book at an online bookseller, this extension shows you that title's availability at the local library of your choice — in physical, e-book, and audio book varieties.

I didn't even know that thesauri needed a defense, but here we are.

If you're wondering how not to have Amazon sell your information to contractors, my advice would be "don't own an Alexa-powered listening device in your home," but apparently that's too difficult?

Bloomberg reported a few weeks ago that Amazon not only records what you say to Alexa but also shares those recordings with contractors. This includes not just the instructions you gave Alexa but also whatever Alexa may have picked up by accident...Amazon shares all that info with contractors, and also gives them a user's first name and Amazon account number, as well as the device's serial number.