It's important to remember that Seattle literary history didn't begin with Richard Hugo, or the journals of the founders of Seattle. For hundreds of years, the stories here were indigenous stories of the land and the people and the weather of the Northwest. These stories are the foundation on which everything else is built — all the stories we tell on this land today.

But Native stories aren't just stories of the past. They're still unfolding. And in fact our Native writers are leading the way with some of the most vibrant, curious, introspective, and powerful poetry and prose and fiction being produced in the Northwest today.

This Thursday at 7 pm, Hugo House is hosting the Northwest Native Writers Circle for a showcase of Northwest Native womxn writers. Expect readings and onstage interviews and conversations about what it means to be a Native writer today.

Readers include Laura Da’, Rena Priest, Storme Webber, Arianne True, Sara Marie Ortiz, and Sondra Simone Segundo. They represent the Eastern Shawnee, Acoma Pueblo, Lummi, Haida, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Alutiiq peoples, among others. They are spoken word performers, poets, travel writers, editors, and musicians. They don't have one monolithic narrative to share; they each have their own stories. When put together like this, side-by-side and interwoven, they are unstoppable.

Hugo House, 1634 11th Avenue, 322-7030, http://hugohouse.org, 7 pm, free.