Join us on Saturday, August 16, 2025 at 7:00 PM for our August Watershed Reading. This special event—featuring writers in adoptive families—was curated by Team 2 of ALL's LAB4 Community Curators. Readers are Leah E. Cooper, LM Brimmer, and Elizabeth and Sylviah Seeliger.
August Watershed Reading
Leah E. Cooper is a writer, director, producer, facilitator, and consultant, based in Saint Paul, MN, whose passion is to activate creativity and collaboration to empower individual and collective vision. She is also the co-Artistic Director for Wonderlust Productions, a multicultural, multidisciplinary performance ensemble that illuminates community stories through collaborative arts experiences, including epic plays, interactive rituals, online video series, a podcast, and most recently, the graphic novel In My Heart: The Adoption Story Project. Originally from Los Angeles, CA, where she was adopted in 1968, she has also been a software engineer, beach bum, and eternal outsider seeking connection. She is currently writing a memoir about imagination and survival.
LM Brimmer is an interdisciplinary artist living on Dakota land in Minneapolis, MN. Co-editor of the anthology Queer Voices: Poetry, Prose and Pride, their poetry has appeared in Colorado Review, Voicemail Poems, Impossible Archetype, Gasher Journal, The B'K', Quarterly West and is forthcoming from Sonora Review. Their book Imagined Child is forthcoming by the Bay Area's Kelsey Street Press. A Randolph College MFA alumni, they are Artistic Director of Queer Voices of Minnesota – a reading series that since 1993 has celebrated and supported queer lives and the writers living them. They teach at Century College and the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities.
Elizabeth Seeliger and Sylviah Seelinger are the authors of Big Feelings, an interactive book for kids who have trouble identifying, labeling, and navigating their big feelings. Seeliger's daughter, Sylviah, was nearly 2 when she was adopted from a Chinese orphanage. She knew only one word in Cantonese and none in English. Seeliger's book was created to help Sylviah navigate her big feelings, trauma, and limited vocabulary.
PLAN YOUR VISIT
Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.
Our galleries are open Tuesday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday noon to 5pm, and other programs take place throughout the week. Please check the events calendar and education section for details.