PoetsWest Directory: Who's Who in Northwest Poetry

The PoetsWest Directory includes biographical profiles of well known Northwest poets and those not well enough known. While many of the poets have achieved recognition, PoetsWest also acknowledges the strengths and special gifts of other poets. Like so many of us living in the Pacific Northwest, many poets, especially those of an earlier generation, migrated here from other regions. Poets living and writing in the Northwest are often influenced by the expansive landscape, the water, and the weather (rain, usually). They recognize humanity's ambivalent relationship with the region and are witnesses to the effects of environmental destruction and unchecked urbanization. Their poetry often reveals a spiritual connection to the Native American and Asian cultures. The associations with the environment and other cultures, however, are more contemplative or subconscious, so there is not, as one might expect, a "regional" style of poetry. Each poet, including the Native American and Asian American, has his or her own style and distinctive voice. Links to individual web sites are highlighted. The list also includes those who have died.The listing will expand as we compile the information. Other writers and musicians performing at special events may be included.

Click on letter corresponding to last name: A B C D | E F G H I J K L | M N O P Q | R S T U V W X Y Z


David Abel
Poet and editor is the proprietor of Passages Bookshop in Portland’s Central Eastside. At the same location, he co-curates monthly exhibitions at The Gallery with Adam Davis and Kate Schaefer of Division Leap, and offers editorial services and teaches writing through the Text Garage. His recent books of poems include Float (Chax Press), Tether (Barebone books), and Carrier (c_L Books); he is also the author of artist’s books, most recently While You Were In (disposable books) and dual coup (press-press-pull). With Sam Lohmann, he publishes the Airfoil chapbook series, and from 2002–12 he published twenty-four issues of the free broadside series Envelope. Over the past decade he has devised more than thirty performance, film, theater, and intermedia projects, both solo and with a wide range of collaborators; he also organized the exhibitions Chax Press: Publishing Poetics for PNCA and Object Poems for 23 Sandy Gallery. He is a founding member of the Spare Room reading series and an inaugural Research Fellow of the Center for Art + Environment of the Nevada Museum of Art. He lives in Portland, Oregon.


Aaron A. Abeyta
Was born and raised in the San Luis valley of southern Colorado. Aaron received his MFA from Colorado State University. He now works as an associate professor of English at Adams State College. Abeyta is the author of three books, Colcha, As Orion Falls, & Rise, Do Not Be Afraid (novel). Aaron is a winner of 2002 American Book Award and the 2001 Colorado Book Award. In 1998 he won the Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. Other awards inclulde a first prize from the American Academy of Poets, for his poem "Colcha." His work has been published in An Introduction to Poetry, 9-11th ed., Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, & Drama, 8th ed., The Dry Creek Review, Sage Plains Review, Chokecherries, The High Country News, Colorado Central Magazine and various other journals.


Michael Achterman
A fourth-generation Oregonian, he attended Whitworth College for his undergraduate degree in English. He earned his MFA degree from Portland State University’s Creative Writing program. His work has appeared in Portland Review’s 20 Minutes in Portland and the Oregon Literary Review. He produced his first chapbook Dismantling in 2010. He lives in NE Portland with his wife and son and works for The Oregon Community Foundation.


Carl Adamshick
Won an Oregon Book Award for his first collection of poems, Curses and Wishes. His second book, Saint Friend, will be published with McSweeneys in 2014. He is a founder of Tavern Books, a Portland based nonprofit publisher of poetry.


Stephanie Adams-Santos
Was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. She is the author of The Sundering, selected by Linda Gregg for a New York Chapbook Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in Guernica Magazine, The Boston Review, Orion Magazine, and others. Her work has been nominated for the Best New Poet's Anthology, the Pushcart Prize, and her recently completed manuscript Swarm Queen's Crown was a semifinalist in the 2013 Crab Orchard Series Competition. She currently is working on a dystopian YA novel called Island of the Dogs, and a second poetry collection based on Stanislaw Lem's sci-fi classic about a sentient planet, called "Solaris." Stephanie teaches adult poetry workshops for PCC and curates the Spoken Word Series at the Walters Cultural Arts Center in Hillsboro.


Carl Adamshick
Author of two books of poetry, most recently Saint Friend, published with McSweeney's. He is a founder and editor at Tavern Books, a nonprofit publisher of poetry. Adamshick’s debut collection, Curses and Wishes (Louisiana State University Press, 2011), was selected by Marvin Bell for the 2010 Walt Whitman Award. In 2012, the collection won the Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry from Literary Arts.  Adamshick is also the recipient of an Oregon Literary Fellowship from Literary Arts and has been featured in Poetry in Motion. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, including the American Poetry Review, the Harvard Review, and American Poet. He lives and works in Portland OR.


Carlin Aden

 


Kelli Russell Agodon
This award-winning poet, writer, editor, and essayist was born and raised in Seattle. Is the winner of the 2009 White Pine Press Poetry Prize for her fourth book, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room, published by White Pine Press in the fall of 2010. It also won ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Prize in Poetry and was a Finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Is the author of three other books of poems, Hourglass Museum (White Pine Press, 2014), Small Knots (Cherry Grove Collections, 2004) and Geography, 2003 winner of the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award, and was the editor of the literary journal, Crab Creek Review for the last five years. She published The Daily Poet, a book of poetry writing exercises she coauthored with Martha Silano. Her poems have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Prairie Schooner, Notre Dame Review, IMAGE, as well as anthologies such as Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times, Poets Against the War, and the newly released anthology of feminist poetry, Letters to the World. Is co-editor of Fire On Her Tongue: an eBook Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry and co-founder of Two Sylvias Press.
She was nominated for two Pushcart Awards and is the recipient of two Artist Trust GAP awards, The James Hearst Poetry Prize, the Carlin Adin Award for formal verse, the William Stafford Prize, a writing residency at Soapstone Writers Retreat in Oregon, and a Puffin Foundation grant for her poetry broadside series: The Making of Peace. A graduate of the University of Washington and Pacific Lutheran University where she received her MFA, Kelli currently lives in a small seaside community in the Northwest with her family.


Justen Ahren
Lives on Martha's Vineyard, a small island off the coast of Massachusetts and holds an MFA in Writing from Emerson College in Boston. Founder and director of Martha’s Vineyard Writer’s Residency and the Summer Festival of Poetry at Featherstone Center for the Arts. His travels have greatly influenced his current collection of poetry, Gone. He has performed his work in Mexico, Boston, Seattle, Tacoma, and New York City.


Deborah Akers
Her poetry collection, partly fallen, was published by Airlie Press in 2015. She is the author of backward pilgrim (I-Beam Books 2013). Her poems have appeared in many journals, including The Beloit Poetry Review, Chicago Review, Yellow Silk, Hubbub, and Writers Journal. Deborah and her husband live in Portland Oregon. She makes her living as an educational editor and writer.


John Akins (1947- )
Born in Helena Montana and raised in Seattle and Tacoma. Was about to be drafted out of college in 1967 so enlisted in the Marines (USMC 1967-69) and served as a rifleman in Vietnam, in Tet 1968. He was part of an infantry battalion and later worked with small teams called Combined Action Platoons. He was wounded and medevaced once. Was recommended for three medals and also for lower rank (the latter came about). After the military he worked at various occupations (construction electrician, welder, journalism, public affairs for Washington legislature and state agencies, including the Washington Conservation Commission, and high school teacher). Played rugby and competed rodeo rough stock to satisfy adrenalin addiction after Vietnam. Married for the second time in Saigon in 2003. Has a college-age son and a young daughter. He has written about his Vietnam experience in a collection of war poems in On the Way to Khe Sanh (2004) and in a memoir Nam Au Go Go (Vineyard Press, 2005).


Sherman Alexie (1966- )
A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, Sherman Alexie is a prolific and award-winning poet, writer of short stories and other fiction, playwright, and film-maker. An engaging and thought-provoking speaker, he was educated at Gonzaga University and Washington State University. Sherman is a story-teller who reveals with dark humor the experiences of contemporary Native Americans, especially those living on reservations.
Sherman Alexie is the author of 22 books. Alexie’s novels and books of short stories for adults include War Dances (2009), which won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, Flight (2007), and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993). For this story collection he received a PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction, and was awarded a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. In March 2005, Grove Atlantic Press reissued the collection with the addition of two new stories. Alexie has won numerous literary awards and honors, including the Pushcart Prize, the Odyssey Award and inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2004 and The O. Henry Prize Stories 2005. He lives in Seattle. More information is available http://fallsapart.com.

A partial list of his poetry collections includes:
Face (Hanging Loose Press, 2009)
Dangerous Astronomy (Limberlost)
One Stick Song (Hanging Loose Press, 2000)
The Summer of Black Widows (Hanging Loose Press, 1996)
The Business of Fancydancing (2002) Also made into a screenplay.
First Indian on the Moon
Old Shirts & New Skins, 1993
Reservation Blues (Also a CD with musician Jim Boyd.)

His novels include:
Flight (Grove / Atlantic, 2007)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little, Brown, 2007). Awarded the 2007 National Book Award in Young People's Literature.
Indian Killer (Atlantic Monthly Press 1996)
His short story The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven became the award-winning film Smoke Signals in 1998.

 


Kevin Minh Allen
Was born Nguyen Đuc Minh on December 5, 1973 near Sài Gòn, Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and American father who remain unknown to him. He was adopted by a couple from Rochester, NY and grew up in Webster, NY with his two younger sisters. In 2000, he moved to Seattle, WA to pursue a life less ordinary. He enjoys travel and photography when he’s not writing. Kevin has had his poetry published in numerous print and online publications, such as Eye To The Telescope, Meniscus Magazine, AsianAmericanPoetry.com, and Chrysanthemum. His first book of poetry My Proud Sacrifice will be appearing soon.


Laura W. Allen
Formerly Laura F. Walton, she is a writer, visual artist, and instructor living in Seattle. As a writer she is primarily a poet; her work has been published in various regional and national journals such as Bathtub Gin, Glitterpony, Concho River Review, S/tick, Tinderbox, and others. She studied English literature at Stetson University in Florida, and then visual art at University of North Texas in Denton. She participated in the Writer's CAMP professional writer's program for adults at the Writer's Garret of Dallas; she later stayed on to teach basic creative writing and poetry classes for the program. She has also taught creative writing classes and workshops as an adjunct instructor for McLennan Community College in Waco.
Some of her other literary endeavors have included niche and nonfiction journalism, the editorship-in-chief of a bimonthly arts journal, and a few pieces of short fiction. Since moving to Seattle in 2013, she has worked almost exclusively on sculpture and poetry. She is currently working on her first full-length poetry manuscript which she hopes to have finished in late 2015. Her website and online portfolio can be found at www.laurawaltonallen.com.


Peter Ali
Is a talented and self-taught Native flutist creating his music not from notes, but from spirit within so each performance is unique and special. He plays a variety of native flutes and shares their stories as well as stories of his rich ethnic heritage. His father is from Morocco; his mother is of Yaqui, Spanish and Italian from Hermosillo Mexico. In the last 7 years he has taught workshops and worked with several Indian Education programs. In 2008 he had the opportunity to play for the Dalai Lama on Children’s Day during the Seeds of Compassion tour. In 2009 he was diagnosed with cancer, was able to overcome this and continue to share his music and stories for all ages and people. Listen to the sounds of eagle, running river, nature and spirit in the flute's song.


Jody Aliesan (1943-2012)
Born in Kansas City, Jody Aliesan moved from the center of the US through four of its corners before leaving for Canada in 2004. She traveled to California (Occidental College), Massachusetts (Brandeis University), was teaching in Alabama the year Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and worked as media representative with the Vietnam Moratorium Committee in Washington DC and Chicago before moving to the Northwest in 1970. Aliesan's 'Urban Homestead' environmental education project led to a bimonthly column in The Seattle Times. She was co-founder and first director of the PCC Farmland Trust. Deeply involved in the second wave of feminism in the Pacific Northwest, she continued to work against war and for social and environmental justice. Aliesan was a member of The Writers' Union of Canada and a contributing editor for The Raven Chronicles. Awards included a literary fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1978). She died in Vancouver, BC where she had received her citizenship.

Her books and chapbooks include:
True North/Nord Vrai, Blue Begonia Press, 2007
Loving in Time of War, Blue Begonia Press, Yakima WA, 1999
Desperate for a Clearing, Grey Spider Press, Sedro Woolley WA, 1998
States of Grace, Grey Spider Press, 1992
Grief Sweat, Broken Moon Press, 1991
Desire: Poems 1978-1982, Empty Bowl Press, Port Townsend WA, 1985
Doing Least Harm, Brooding Heron Press, 1985
as if it will matter, Seal Press, 1978
Soul Claiming, Mulch Press, 1975
To Set Free: Poems, Second Moon Press, 1972.

Recordings:
Selections from Grief Sweat, Broken Moon Press, 1993
You'll Be Hearing More From Me, Tana, 1972

Jody Aliesan's papers are collected (to 2003) by University of Washington Libraries: http://www.lib.washington.edu/Specialcoll/findaids/docs/papersrecords/AliesanJody2272.xml.


Kevin Minh Allen
Was born Nguyen Đúc Minh on December 5, 1973 near Sài Gòn, Vietnam to a Vietnamese mother and American father who remain unknown to him. He was adopted by a couple from Rochester, NY and grew up in Webster, NY with his two younger sisters. In 2000, he moved to Seattle, WA to pursue a life less ordinary. He enjoys travel and photography when he’s not writing. Kevin has had his poetry published in numerous print and online publications, such as Eye To The Telescope, Meniscus Magazine, AsianAmericanPoetry.com, and Chrysanthemum.  His first book of poetry My Proud Sacrifice will be appearing soon.


Stevan Allred
His work has appeared in numerous literary journals and websites, and he has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His debut novel, A Simplified Map of the Real World, a collection of fifteen linked stories, was published by Forest Avenue Press in 2013.


Charles Altieri
Spent more than a decade in Seattle at the UW, is currently Professor of English at University of CA - Berkeley. He is the author of numerous books on critical theory and literary modernism, and a leading authority on expressive theories of art. He has a book from Cornell University Press titled The Particulars of Rapture: An Aesthetics of the Affects. His books include: Painterly Abstraction in Modernist American Poetry (Cambridge); Canons and Consequences (Northwestern); Subjective Agency: A Theory of First-Person Expressivity and its Social Implications; Postmodernism Now: Essays on Contemporaneity in the Arts.


William L. Alton
Is a writer, teacher and storyteller. He was born November 5, 1969 and started writing in the Eighties while incarcerated in a psychiatric prison. Since then his work has appeared in Main Channel Voices, World Audience and Breadcrumb Scabs among others. In 2010, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has published five books: one collection of flash fiction, Girls, two collections of poetry titled Heroes of Silence and Heat Will Wash Through, a memoir titled My Name is Bill, and a novel coming out in 2015 titled Flesh and Bone. He earned both his BA and MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. You can find him at williamlalton.com.


Alurista (1947- )
Born in Mexico City and moved to San Diego at the age of thirteen. Has a Ph.D. in Spanish literature from the University of California, San Diego. His collections of poetry include Floricanto en Aztlan (1971), Spic in Glyph? (1981), Return: Poems Collected and New (1982), and Et Tu … Raza (1995). His work has inspired workers in the Chicano movement and continues to inspire others.


Jane Alynn
This poet, essayist and fine art photographer was born in Portland, Oregon but grew up in New York City. Alynn is the author of two books of poetry. Her first full-length collection, Necessity of Flight (Cherry Grove), was released in 2011. A chapbook, Threads & Dust, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2005. She received the 2004 William Stafford Award from the Washington Poets Association. Her poems have appeared in various journals including StringTown, The Pacific Review, Quercus Review, Manorborn, Snowy Egret, and Switched-on Gutenberg, as well as in anthologies, including WPA's Mute Note Earthward and Tattoos on Cedar. Alynn holds an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Antioch University Los Angeles, and currently lives in Anacortes with her photographer husband and two cats. She can be reached at http://www.janealynn.com/.


John Amen
Author of three collections of poetry: Christening the Dancer (Uccelli Press 2003), More of Me Disappears (Cross-Cultural Communications 2005), and At the Threshold of Alchemy (Presa 2009). In addition, his work has appeared in numerous publications nationally and internationally. He has released two folk/folk rock CDs: All I’ll Never Need (Cool Midget 2004) and Ridiculous Empire (2008). He is also an artist, working primarily with acrylics on canvas. Further information is available on his website: www.johnamen.com. Amen travels widely giving readings, doing musical performances, and conducting workshops. He founded and continues to edit www.thepedestalmagazine.com.


Gary Anderson
Has been the spoken word moderator for the national Finnish American Festival in Astoria, Oregon. He has been writing for fifteen years and usually writes about growing up Finn, man's relationship with the natural environment and the ironies when looking back over 60+ years. Although he has been a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest, much of his poetry comes from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he lived for 10 years. Gary has been published in POETRY CORNERS through the Bainbridge Island Arts & Humanities Council. He attends John Willson's poetry workshop on Bainbridge Island. Gary is one of the organizers of the Poulsbohemian Readings. http://poulsbo.typepad.com/poetry/.


Ginger Andrews (1956- )
Was born in North Bend, Oregon. She has been published in The Hudson Review, Poetry, River Sedge, Fireweed, and The American Voice. In 1997, She is the 1997 winner of the Mary Schierman Award (Coos Bay Writers Conference) and the 1999 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize from Story Line Press.
Her publications include:
An Honest Answer
A Whole Life: Ginger Andrews


Pat Andrus
Born and raised on a farm in Michigan, moved to the Northwest in 1968. An MFA graduate (1989) of Goddard College in Vermont, her works have appeared in both local and national publications. Her collections include a letterpress work Daughter (Olivewood Pr., 1987) and an NEA-funded collection Old Woman of Irish Blood (Open Hand Publishing, 1997), in addition to a recording of her works with Northwest musician Mariana Van Blair and Texas poet Charles Dews in Beangan: The New Branch. An instructor of literature and writing at Bellevue Community College, Andrus also collaborates with visual artists and videographers.


Tiel Aisha Ansari
Sufi, martial artist and computer programmer living in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in several print and online venues including Islamica Magazine, Mezzo Cammin, The Lyric, Raintown Review, and the VoiceCatcher anthology from Portland Women Writers. Her poetry has been featured on Prairie Home Companion and MiPoRadio. She is the author of the poetry collection Knocking from Inside, published by Ecstatic Exchange. See knockingfrominside.blogspot.com.


Joseph Aprile
A Seattle resident, he was raised in the Bronx, New York, in a diverse environment that had a profound effect on his view of the world and humanity. He has published works of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. In addition, his work has appeared in literary magazines, anthologies and on the Internet. He has a diverse professional background encompassing education, the sciences and technology. Writing has always been an integral part of his creative life and telling stories the avenue through which he examines the dimensions of the human spirit. If there is an underlying theme in his work, it is to explore the many facets of the human experience. He also is an artist and photographer; his literary and art works can be viewed and purchased online, using the following links: http://lvau.com and http://artwanted.com/japrile.

Joseph Aprile’s sites on the internet:
http://lyricalspace.blogspot.com/
http://lvau.blogspot.com/
http://globalpeacenews.blogspot.com/

His published works include:
The Human Equation- A collection of short stories, 2008
The Illusive Quality of Existence - Poetry, 2007
Impaled on Time's Illustrious Arrow - Anthology of Poetry, 2006
The Surprising Latitude of Fate - Novel, 2006
At the Fringes of Experience - Anthology of Novellas, 2005
Awakening from a Distant Dream - Novel, 2004
America and the Mythology of Greatness - Non-Fiction, 2004.


Judith Arcana
Her poems, stories and essays have been published in anthologies and journals for more than thirty years, in print and online. Her chapbook, 4th Period English, reads like a play: poems in the voices of high school students talking about immigration, and What if your mother (Chicory Blue Press, 2005). Her prose books include Grace Paley’s Life Stories, A Literary Biography. Judith’s work has received awards and grants from Literary Arts, the Deming Memorial Fund, the Puffin Foundation, the Rockefeller Archive Center and the Union Graduate School, as well as residencies/fellowships from Ragdale, Soapstone, the Montana Artists Refuge, the Mesa Refuge and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. She holds a PhD in Literature, an MA in Women's Studies, an Urban Preceptorship in Preventive Medicine and a BA in English. A native of the Great Lakes region, Judith lives in Portland. Visit juditharcana.com.


Ariel
Local Salemite, (who defines herself as a Pacific Northwest Poet) has been writing since 1976. She has been published in several print publications including Gold Man Review, AIM, Chemeketa Courier, Statesman Journal, and the several anthologies – most notably The Widow’s Handbook, in the online publication, such as Unshod Quills, and has participated in Speaking Peace, Salem Peace Mural Project & Silverton Poetry Festival’ Visual-Verbal events.

She is a member of Oregon State Poetry Association, Poetry Writing Collective, Scribe Writers Collective, Silverton Poetry Association, Stayton Second Sunday Series, Unshod Quills Writers Collective, and Willamette Writers, and was a board member of Third Thursday Poets.


Brent Armendinger
Author of The Ghost in Us Was Multiplying (Noemi Press, 2015), as well as two chapbooks, Undetectable (New Michigan Press, 2009) and Archipelago (Noemi Press, 2009). His work has also appeared in many journals, including Aufgabe, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Fourteen Hills, LIT, Puerto del Sol, Volt, and Web Conjunctions. Brent grew up in Warsaw, NY, and studied at Bard College and the University of Michigan, where he received an Avery Hopwood Award in Poetry. In 2013, he was awarded a residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Brent is an Associate Professor of English and World Literature at Pitzer College. He lives in Los Angeles.


Jeannette Armstrong (1948- )
This Okanagan Indian poet, novelist, and artist was born on the Okanagan Reserve near Penticton in British Columbia. After receiving a B.F.A. from the University of Victoria in 1978, she worked at the En'owkin Center in Penticton, and in 1989 she co-founded and became the first director of the En'owkin International School of Writing, a school for Native American writers. Her poems and stories have appeared in numerous anthologies. She was the editor of the 1993 Orca publication, Looking at the Words of Our People: An Anthology of First Nation Literary Criticism. Her latest novel, Whispering in Shadows, was published in 2000 by Theytus Books. Theytus also published her novel about the American Indian Movement (AIM), Slash, in 1985 and its revised edition in 1988, as well as her collection of poetry, Breath Tracks, in 1991.


Asao Sarukawa Aroldi
She was born in Tokyo. After graduating with a B.A. in art history from the University of Leicester and a Ph.D. in Japanese art history from the University of East Anglia, she moved back to Tokyo and worked at a publishing company and then a translation company. She became active in the anti-nuclear movement in Japan following the Fukushima nuclear disaster. She currently lives near Locarno, Switzerland where she works as a freelance translator. She was co-editor of the bilingual anthology, Reverberations from Fukushima: 50 Japanese Poets Speak Out, published in 2014 by Inkwater Press.


Daemond Arrindell
Poet, performer, and teaching artist. Writer-In-Residence through Seattle Arts & Lectures' Writers in the Schools Program; and in 2012, he taught Seattle University’s first course in Slam Poetry. He has facilitated workshops in poetry venues, prisons, high schools and colleges across the country, including through Freehold Theatre's Engaged Theatre program, and he has been commissioned by both Seattle and Bellevue Arts Museums. Recently he was selected for “13 for ‘13” by the Seattle Times and KUOW, a joint project profiling 13 influential people in Seattle’s art scene.


Herman Asarnow
Poet, essayist, and translator and author of the poetry collection Glass-Bottom Boat (Higganum Hill Books, 2007). His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Beloit Poetry Journal, and other national journals. He has had essays in North Dakota Quarterly, Cincinnati Review, Poetry Northwest, and other venues. He has also published well-received translations of the poetry of Noni Benegas, one of Spain’s leading poets. In 2005, he was awarded a month’s residency at Ragdale. In May, 2009, he was awarded the Ogden Poetry Prize by Trinity College in Connecticut (his alma mater) for “excellence in the art and beauty of language.” He teaches at the University of Portland.


Roberto Ascalon
New York-born poet, writer, arts educator, and performance artist. He is an instructor at Nova High School in Seattle and teaches teenagers at Artscorp. Ascalon has participated in Bumberslam at the Bumbershoot Festival, the Seattle All City Slam Poetry Finals and two Seattle National Poetry Slams. In 2004, he self-published his book The Words Are Not Enough. His poems have appeared in the anthologies Poetry on Buses 2004: Facts and Fictions and From the Page to the Stage: National Slam Anthology. Ascalon graduated from Evergreen College in Olympia with a degree in Advanced Intercultural Communication. He makes his home in Seattle.


David Ash
Mukilteo author and publisher, has worked in offices in lots of environments: academic, media, church, and retail. He aims for the funny bone in his series of haiku books. For more information about the series, log on to www.BashoPress.com. Haiku for Catholics, Haiku for Baseball Lovers, Haiku for Poker Players, Haiku for Coffee Lovers, Haiku for Chocolate Lovers, Haiku for Dog Lovers, Haiku for Office Workers, and coming in October 2008, Haiku for Christmas.


Chris Ashby
Poet, essayist, and musician. He is also the editor and publisher of Couch Press http://couchpress.tumblr.com. He frequently collaborates with Nate Orton on his My DAY series, occasionally assisting in publishing the books and organizing events. His most recent books are the collaborative serial poem Who Killed My Chicken with James Yeary (Great Fainting Spells, 2013) and After Language: Volume 1 (Couch Press, 2013). Chris lives in Portland and makes a living as a fireman in the forests and grasslands of the western United States.


Tom Aslin
This Seattle poet holds an M.F.A. from the University of Montana where he studied with Richard Hugo, Madeline DeFrees, and William Kittredge. In 2006, Red Wing Press published a chapbook of his poems entitled Sweet Smoke. Clark City Press released Aslin’s full-length collection A Moon Over Wings in 2008.


David Atkinson
Was born and raised in rural Australia. Worked for the whole of his career as a lawyer in Sydney, where he still lives. Now focuses on the study and writing of poetry (both free verse and closed forms) and has been widely published in Australia, the USA and New Zealand. Favourite areas for poetic exploration include the rural life of the past, nature and the human condition.


Elizabeth Austen
Spent her teens and twenties working as an actor and director in cities as diverse as London, England and Holland, Michigan. Her poems have appeared in journals including the Bellingham Review, the Seattle Review, Switched-on Gutenberg, the South African journal Carapace, and the anthologies Poets Against the War and Pontoon: an Anthology of Washington State Poets. Her first full-length collection, Every Dress a Decision, was published in 2011 by Blue Begonia Press. That book was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She has two chapbooks, The Girl Who Goes Alone (Floating Bridge, 2010) and Where Currents Meet (Toadlily Press, 2010) and an audio CD, skin prayers (self-published, 2006). She is noted for her public performances of poetry, and has been featured at Poets House in New York City, Minneapolis’s The Loft, the Skagit River Poetry Festival, Spokane’s Get Lit!, Seattle’s Cheap Wine and Poetry and Bumbershoot, among others.She teaches regularly at Richard Hugo House and produces literary programming for KUOW, 94.9, public radio. Has an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University-Los Angeles, and was one of the regional poets featured at the 2004 Skagit River Poetry Festival. Elizabeth was a 2003 Jack Straw Writer and is an alumna of Hedgebrook, a retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island. She is the recipient of a grant from 4Culture, the Jack Straw Writers Program. She is WA State's current Poet Laureate serving from 2014-2016. Web address http://elizabethausten.wordpress.com/.


Turiya Autry
Published author, teacher, guest speaker and performer, has collaborated with and opened for renowned leaders such as Nikki Giovanni, Angela Davis and Hillary Clinton, delivering messages on personal identity, addressing violence, hip-hop culture and more.  As a teaching artist, she has provided assemblies, workshops and residencies to over 50 schools and has created and delivered over a dozen unique university courses. Her work incorporates the arts, pop culture and history along with the issues and struggles that arise in relation to identity, power and privilege.  Her recently released collection of poetry is Roots, Reality & Rhyme.



Jim Ayala
Originally from the San Francisco Bay area and graduated in 1974 from California College of Arts and Crafts with a major in Education and Fine Arts. Jim's poetry has been deeply influenced by the works of the Persian mystical poets Jellaludin Rumi and Hafiz. Jim has shared his poetry in the Puget Sound region as featured poets and at open mikes. Jim's poetry has been published in Belonging to Life, by Mary OMalley, Awaken Press, 2002.

Jim is currently writing a book about his experiences in the Army during the Vietnam era. The book, tentatively titled, Hey You! ... or How I Learned to Love the War is a series of humorous, ironic and tragic vignettes about his experiences as a highly resistant infantryman in the United States Army. In addition to poetry, Jim is busy with sculpture, drawing and photography projects. Jim's poetry and artwork can be viewed at www.ayalasculptures.com. Jim currently lives in Portland, Oregon.


Lana Hechtman Ayers
Lana grew up in Queens, NY, lived in New England over a decade before relocating to Kirkland, WA where she is a manuscript consultant, workshop facilitator and publishes the Concrete Wolf Poetry Chapbook Series http://ConcreteWolf.com. She holds degrees in Mathematics and Psychology and earned an MFA in Poetry from New England College. A Pushcart nominee, her poems appear in such journals as Poetica, Cider Press Review, The Bitter Oleander, Rhino, and Feminist Studies Quarterly. Author of five poetry collections: Dance From Inside My Bones, which won the Violet Reed Haas Award, Chicken Farmer, I Still Love You, which won D-N Press National Book Award, Love is a Weed, a chapbook published by Finishing Line Press, and her Red Riding Hood chapbook, What Big Teeth, published by Kissena Park Press in 2010. Lana’s most recent book,  A New Red (Pecan Grove Press), is a contemporary re-imagining of the Red Riding Hood fairy tale. To view some of Lana's work, visit her website, http://LanaAyers.com.

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Ian Bage
Was born in Sussex, England and spent his youth reading 20th century European literature, smoking French cigarettes and living in obscure bohemian poverty. Ian has also lived in Kyoto, Japan where parts of his novel Desire were written at the big table in Shirakaba, the bar most frequented by the avante garde Butoh community and members of DaiRakudaKan. Ian found more inspiration for Desire in Oaxaca, Mexico. The churches, Zocalo and markets find their way into his book’s pages. Ian holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of East Anglia, Norfolk, England, and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. Ian lives on Whidbey Island in Washington state.

Ian has also published two volumes of poetry. The Manifesto of Love is a wide-ranging look at the state of romantic love in the twenty-first century. Volume one, Unrequited Love, and Volume two, Looking for Love are both available through Amazon.com. The third volume of the manifesto, Love Found, will be published soon.

“I’ve always wanted to change the world, to make the world better. I see writing as the best way to do that; it’s the way I can share my thoughts, my feelings and my ideas. If I can help someone else see the world differently and enable them to be more loving then maybe I will have succeeded.”
You can find out more and connect with Ian at www.ianbage.com.


Toni Bajado
Filipina American and native Washingtonian from Bremerton. Daughter of Filipino immigrants: career Navyman father and teacher mother. She lived in Honolulu, Hawaii, Key West, Florida and Christchurch, New Zealand before moving to Seattle where she graduated from Seattle University with a degree in English and graduated cum laude (1996). She is a graduate of the Freehold Theatre Diversity Scholarship Program in Acting in Seattle and meets weekly with poetry work group. Her poetry has appeared in Calapooya Collage, Crosscurrents, Fragments, The Licton Springs Review, and When It Rains From the Ground Up. She was a featured reader at Washington Poets Association’s Burning Word Festival. She likes to share views of American life through acting, poetry and playwriting. A section of her first play, Fish, was presented at the Pagdiriwang Filipino Festival in 2007.


Dick Bakken (1941- )
Founder-director of the revived Bisbee Poetry Festival--as well as of the Portland Poetry Festival, and other national poetry festivals. His poetry has appeared in Ironwood, Yellow Silk, Poetry Flash, Puerto Del Sol, Americas Review and Editor's Choice II. His books include, Feet with the Jesus (Lynx House Press), Here I am, (St. Andrew Press) and a chapbook, Dick Bakken: Twelve Greatest Hits (Pudding House) due out fall 2004.
Bakken was born in Custer County, Montana and grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He began performing his poetry in 1972 and has collaborated with dancers in performance and spoken word poetry events. From 1975 to 1980 he crisscrossed the country giving readings and performances until, during a tour of the Southwest, he settled in Bisbee, Arizona where he still lives. Bakken is the director of Heart of Carlos Spoken Arts, Jump the Border! and the Bisbee Poetry Festival. He is also poetry editor at The Bisbee News. His poetry has been published in over 200 periodicals and anthologies, as well as books, audio cassettes, and video cassettes. He has been a featured poet at universities, art centers and poetry festivals from coast to coast. He has won numerous awards and grants, including a 1992 Arizona Commission on the Arts Artist Project Grant.


Anna Balint
Author of Horse Thief, a collection of short fiction from Curbstone Press, 2004. Earlier publications include Out of the Box from Poetry Around Press in 1991 and spread them crimsonsleeves like wings, poems and stories also from Poetry Around Press in 1993. Her poems and stories have been published in numerous journals and magazines. She is currently working on a novel, The Invention of Mária Horváth, rooted in the Roma experience of the Holocaust. She is also the non-fiction editor for Raven Chronicles, and an alumna of Hedgebrook and the Jack Straw Writer’s Program. Her extensive teaching in the field of creative writing includes Antioch University, Seattle; Richard Hugo House, Seattle; Muckleshoot Tribal College, Muckleshoot Reservation; and the School of Recovery, Recovery Café, Seattle. In 2001 she received the Starbucks Foundation Leading Voices Award for outstanding creative writing work with urban youth in the Puget Sound Region.


Mary Barnard (1910-2001)
The distinguished poet, essayist and translator of Sappho died August 25, 2001. She was born in Vancouver, WA, grew up in Buxton, Oregon but spent her last years back in Vancouver. She was an alumna of Reed College where she studied Greek. She spent the thirties and forties in New York City, where she got to know several major twentieth century poets: Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, and aspiring writers Delmore Schwartz and Muriel Rukeyser. She also worked for years with historian Carl Van Doren. In the 1930s at Ezra Pound's instigation, she began to translate Sappho. She did a stint at the Yaddo artist colony and was curator of the University of Buffalo's Poetry Center. Her translation of Sappho has been in print for more than forty years and is reputed to have sold more than 100,000 copies.

Her publications include:
Nantucket Genesis: The Tale of My Tribe, Breitenbush, 1988 (genealogy)
Time and the White Tigress, Breitenbush, 1986 (poetry) - Western States Book Award
Assault on Mount Helicon, Univ. of California Press, 1984 (memoir)
Three Fables, Breitenbush, 1984
Collected Poems, Breitenbush Books, 1979
The Mythmakers, Ohio University Press, 1966 (essays)
Sappho: A New Translation, Univ. of California, 1958 (reissued 1999)
"Cool Country" (poems) included in Five Young American Poets, New Directions, 1940.


Peggy Barnett
Born in Queens, New York City. Went to Public School 89, Queens, NYC. Public High School of Music and Art, Manhattan, NYC. The Cooper Union Foundation of Science and Art, NYC, 1961-1965, graduating with a BFA degree. She opened her own photography studio in Manhattan in 1968. Was a cover photographer for New York Magazine for many years, and after a few years as a travel photographer, she became a corporate still-life photographer, working for graphic designers on annual reports for the Fortune 500. Sold stock images through Corbis. Also wrote poetry and did her own fine art photography, both portraits and landscapes. Is currently working on a Proustian set of poems called “Madeleines from Maltby, Has web site www.prbarnett.com.
After living in NYC for 60 years, moved to Washington State to be with her sister. Lives in Maltby, Snohomish County, with her husband of 45 years, Ron.


Tony Barnstone
Is the Albert Upton Professor of English Language and Literature at Whittier College. Has a Master’s in English and Creative Writing and Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. His book of poems, Tongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki, published by BKMK Press in 2009, won the John Ciardi Prize in Poetry, and is available on CD Tokyo Burning with lyrics and music. His other books of poetry include The Golem of Los Angeles (Red Hen Press, 2008), which won the Benjamin Saltman Award in Poetry, Sad Jazz: Sonnets (Sheep Meadow Press, 2005) and Impure: Poems by Tony Barnstone (University Press of Florida, 1998), in addition to a chapbook of poems titled Naked Magic (Main Street Rag). He is also a distinguished translator of Chinese poetry and literary prose and an editor of literary textbooks. His books in these areas include Chinese Erotic Poetry (Everyman, 2007); The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry (Anchor, 2005); Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese Poetry (Wesleyan, 1993); Laughing Lost in the Mountains: Poems of Wang Wei (University Press of New England, 1991); The Art of Writing: Teachings of the Chinese Masters (Shambhala, 1996); and the textbooks Literatures of Asia, Africa and Latin America, Literatures of Asia, and Literatures of the Middle East (all from Prentice Hall Publishers). Among his awards are the Grand Prize of the Strokestown International Poetry Festival and a Pushcart Prize in Poetry, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council. Born in Middletown, Connecticut, and raised in Bloomington, Indiana, Barnstone has lived in Greece, Spain, Kenya and China. His website is http://www.barnstone.com/.


Rick Barot
Has published three books of poetry with Sarabande Books: The Darker Fall (2002), Want (2008) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize; and Chord (forthcoming 2015). He was a Wallace E. Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and Stanford University.His poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, TheParis Review, and The New Republic. Rick is the poetry editor of New England Review. He lives in Tacoma and teaches at Pacific Lutheran University. He is also the director of The Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing at PLU.


Pat Bartolo
Pat is a poet and essayist who was born in Iowa and raised in both Michigan and in Chicago. She considers herself a Midwesterner who has moved to the coast — both of them. She has a B.A. in English from Fontbonne College in St. Louis and an M.A. in Humanities from SUNY, Stony Brook. She taught English in Chicago, Long Island, and Germany. Before moving to Arizona, she worked in the software industry in Seattle for ten years: both in sales and in technical recruiting.

Her poems have been published in PoetsWest, Fan, a Magazine of Baseball Literature, Voices International, Pudding House Press Publications, The Woodinville Weekly and The Mudville Diaries, an anthology of baseball literature. She has two chapbooks of poetry: Because You Said I Shouldn't and Apples and Other Temptations. She has read her poems at the PoetsWest Reading series at the Frye Museum in Seattle, at the Wit's End café, at Barnes & Noble and at many other public forums. Her essays have been seen in local papers and The Bridal Connection a trade paper. She served as the President of the Seattle Branch of the National League of American Pen Women from 1996-1999 and was their newsletter editor from 1994-1996. She is a former board member of the Washington Poets Association. Her work reflects her Irish Catholic background (maiden name, Ryan), modern family life and marriage. It is full of humor and shows her interest in and love of people of all cultures.


Alexandra Oliver Basekic
Alexandra Oliver BasekicWas born in Vancouver, Canada in 1970. Since emerging onto the Vancouver poetry scene in 1992 and being named the following year as one of the Top Ten Young Artists of the year by The Vancouver Sun, she has gone on to perform her work at places as diverse as Lollapalooza, The 1996 National Poetry Slam and the 2004 CBC National Poetry Face-Off. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and publications worldwide, including Orbis Rhyme International, Nexus, In Hells Belly and The Vancouver Sun, as well as About.Com's Poems After The Attack anthology, a collection discussing and reflecting upon the aftermath of 9/11. She has taught poetry and led workshops in high schools, colleges and prisons and was one of the Directors of the Edgewise Electrolit Centre, an organization created to promote poetry and new poets through the use of new media. She lives in Seattle with her husband and son.


Miriam Bassuk
Is a poet and teacher of journal writing in the Seattle area.  She has been published in The Journal of Sacred Feminine Wisdom, PoetsWest, Writers’ Wings, The Person-Centered Journal, and more recently in At Our Core by Papier Mache Press, PoetsWest, and Northwest Ink.


Janée J. Baugher
Originally from Renton, Baugher has performed at Seattle’s Bumbershoot and Arts Edge Arts Festivals, Spokane’s Get Lit! Festival and she is a former Jack Straw Writer and Humanities Washington Inquiring Minds Speaker. Since receiving an MFA degree from Eastern Washington University, Baugher has taught creative writing at Highline Community College, UW-Experimental College, Richard Hugo House, and elsewhere. Baugher was awarded a 2012 nonfiction fellowship at the Island Institute of Sitka in Alaska.  1999, and currently adjuncts at University of Phoenix. A former poetry editor of Willow Springs and Switched-on Gutenberg, Baugher regularly collaborates with visual artists, composers and choreographers. Her recent collaborations were produced at University of Cincinnati–Conservatory of Music, Interlochen Center for the Arts (Interlochen, MI), and Dance Now! Ensemble (Miami Beach, FL). She is the author of two books of poetry, The Body’s Physics (Tebot Bach, 2013) and Coördinates of Yes (Ahadada Books, 2010). Her prose has appeared in Boulevard, Nano Fiction, The Monarch Review, among other journals, and forthcoming in The Writer’s Chronicle.  Visit http://JaneeJBaugher.wordpress.com.


Bart E. Baxter (5/28/1950 - )
Bart Baxter, award-winning poet and master of poetic form, and recent Seattle Poet Populist, was born in Sherman, Texas. After graduating (B.A. with honors) from the University of Texas, he did postgraduate studies at Boise State University and the University of Washington.

Bart's many writing awards include:
1999 King County Arts Commission Grant
1999 First Place, Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Competition
1998 First Place, Seattle Poetry Grand Slam
1997 William Stafford Award
1996 Carlin Aden Award for Poetry
1995 Charles Proctor Award
1994 Hart Crane Award for Poetry, Kent State University
1994 First Place, MTV Poetry Grand Slam
1994 Seattle Arts Commission Grant

Bart Baxter's recent work has appeared in the Formalist, The Ohio Poetry Review, and Poetry. His most recent author appearances have included the Washington State House of Representatives; Washington State Senate; Distinguished Poets Series; Northwest Bookfest Panel on Neo-Formalism; Nuyorican Poets Café, New York; Greenmill Tavern, Chicago; 1998 National Poetry Slam; and the Whidbey Island Writers Conference. He was selected as poet populist at Seattle's 2001 Poe

Bart Baxter's poetry collections include:
A Man, Ostensibly, Egress Studio Press, Bellingham, 2004
The Man with St. Vitus' Dance, Floating Bridge Press, Seattle, 2000 (includes CD with QuickTime video of Bart performing title poem)
Sonnets from the Mare Imbrium, Floating Bridge Press, Seattle, 1999
Peace for the Arsonist, Bacchae Press, Bristolville, Ohio, 1995
Driving Wrong, Poetry Around Press, Seattle, 1992.


Bruce Beasley
Bruce Beasley was born in Georgia in 1958 and moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1992. He holds a B.A. in English from Oberlin College, an M.F.A. from Columbia University and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He is currently a professor of English at Western Washington University in Bellingham. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Artist Trust of Washington, and three Pushcart Prizes. His work appears in The Pushcart Book of Poetry: The Best Poems from the First 30 Years of the Pushcart Prizes. His poetry has also been published in Poetry, Antioch Review, New England Review, Yale Review, Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, Field, Southern Review, and New American Writing.

His poetry collections include:
The Corpse Flower: New and Selected Poems, University of Washington Press, 2007
Lord Brain, winner of the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series competition, 2005
Signs & Abominations, Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2000
Summer Mystagogia, winner of the 1996 Colorado Prize (selected by Charles Wright)
The Creation, winner of the 1993 Ohio State University Press / The Journal Award in poetry
Spirituals, Wesleyan University Press, 1988.


Joshua Beckman
Was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the author of six books, including Take It (Wave Books, 2009), Shake and two collaborations with Matthew Rohrer: Nice Hat. Thanks. and Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. He is an editor at Wave Books and has translated numerous works of poetry and prose, including Poker by Tomaz Salamun, which was a finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Award, and Five Meters of Poems by Carlos Oquendo de Amat. He is also the recipient of numerous other awards, including a NYFA fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Seattle and New York.


David Beebe
Born July 07, 1967 in Seattle, Wa. Sprouted one hour away, due Northeast, in the fertile Tualco Valley. I didnt really ever go too far away from the Valley, as I didn’t need to. As Life in Tualco Valley seems to have always intrigued me. As I pay attention to the Valley, I do notice the slight changes every day. Throughout the 4 Seasons, within the Valleys full Spectrum, Rainbow array. When I watch, and when I pay attention, I develop many reason to have many thoughts about Life, throughout my Life's Seasons. So I think about Life, and about Natures and Plants and Animals, and Humans. And how it unfolds, within my mind, and my thoughts, and my insights. And so I write Story Poems of my Life's experiences, and of my observations. And so I go forth, to reveal my conclusions, of my slightly insane perceptions.
Sometimes, I just need to go for a bicycle ride, on my Schwinn Cruiser, around the Loop Road, Rainclouds or Sunshine. And sometimes, when Life's circumstances prevent me, I do it anyway, with Windy thoughts peddling circles in my mind. Thank You for reading my Poems .

Poetic Stories by D.M. Beebe - available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble websiteshttp://mattbeebepoems.blogspot.com/


Linda Beeman
Is an award-winning non-fiction writer and poet living on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. She is the author of Wallace, Idaho – a chapbook of poems celebrating the history of her gritty silver-mining hometown. Her poems have also been published in Windfall: A Journal of Poetry and Place, Colorado Mesa University’s Pinyon and online at Adanna and the University of Chicago’s Euphony.
Her exploratory travel articles appeared in The Los Angeles Times and The Foreign Service Journal. She researches and writes extensively about antique textiles from South and Southeast Asia and believes curiosity extends the cat’s life.


Marvin Bell (1937- )
Born in New York City, Marvin Bell grew up on rural Long Island. Well known in the Pacific Northwest for an astonishing body of work. Also taught at the University of Washington and was the Flannery O'Connor professor of letters at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. After retiring from the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop, he joined the faculty of Pacific University in Oregon. In 2000 he was named Iowa's first Poet Laureate and served two terms in that post. A past winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1977), Bell has twice been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship (1983, 1986) and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1978, 1984). His many awards also include the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature (1994), the Bess Hokin Award (1969), and the Academy of American Poets Lamont Award (1969).

His collected works include:
Vertigo: The Living Dead Man Poems, Copper Canyon Press, 2011
Nightworks: Poems 1962-2000, Copper Canyon Press, 2000
Wednesday: Selected Poems 1966-1997, Salmon Publishing, County Clare, Ireland, 1998
Poetry for a Midsummer's Night, Seventy Fourth Street Productions, Seattle, 1998
Ardor, The Book of the Dead Man, Vol. 2, Copper Canyon Press, Port Townsend WA, 1997
The Book of the Dead Man, Vol.1, Copper Canyon Press, 1994
A Marvin Bell Reader: Selected Prose and Poetry, Middlebury College Press, 1994
Iris of Creation, Copper Canyon Press, 1990
New and Selected Poems, Atheneum, 1987
Drawn by Stones, by Earth, by Things That Have Been in the Fire, Atheneum, 1984
Old Snow Just Melting: Essays and Interviews, University of Michigan Press, 1983
Segues: A Correspondence in Poetry (co-authored with William Stafford), David R.Godine, Publisher, 1983
These Green-Going-to-Yellow (poems), Atheneum, 1981
Stars Which See, Stars Which Do Not See, Atheneum, 1977 (National Book Award Finalist)
Residue of Song, Atheneum, 1974
The Escape into You, Atheneum, 1971
A Probable Volume of Dreams, Atheneum, 1969
Things We Dreamt We Died For, Stone Wall Press, 1966.


Sheila Bender
Poet, essayist and author founded WritingItReal.com in 2002 and has been helping writers make their writing dreams come true through instructional articles, online workshops and telephone consults for the last 14 years. Before she was proficient with the Internet, Sheila published with Writer’s Digest Books, Warner Books, McGraw Hill, and Imago Press, among several other presses. Now, she is venturing into self-publishing new instructional books and re-issuing some of her earlier books. She finds writing inspiration in examining her relationships with others and watching the waters of Discovery Bay, where she lives in Western Washington and continues to write memoir and poetry. After losing her 25-year-old son in a snowboarding accident, she survived the pain by writing poetry. Her memoir, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief is a narrative about how poetry was the spiritual practice that helped her learn to live fully again. 


Beth Bentley
Beth Bentley Beth Bentley was educated at the University of Minnesota (B.A.) and received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and English from the University of Michigan. She has been living in Seattle since 1952 and has taught in the Northwest and elsewhere for over thirty years. She taught "Writing Contemporary Poetry" at the University of Washington from 1980 to 1992; she also founded and directed the Northwest Poets' Reading Series at the Seattle Public Library, where it ran from 1960 to 1974. The Reading Series became the Castalia series at the U of Washington. (Also see Nelson Bentley.) Her poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Atlantic, Paris Review, Poetry, The Nation, Saturday Review, and The Sewanee Review.

Beth Bentley's poetry collections include:
Little Fires, Cune Press, 1998
The Purely Visible, SeaPen Press, 1980
Philosophical Investigations, SeaPen Press, 1977
Country of Resemblances, Ohio University Press, 1976
Field of Snow, Gemini Press, Seattle, 1973
Phone Calls From the Dead, Ohio University Press, 1972

Her awards and honors include:
Montalvo Award, 1987
Washington State Governor's Award for each of her previous books: Phone Calls From the Dead and Country of Resemblances
Northwest Bookseller's Award for Phone Calls From the Dead
National Endowment of the Arts fellowship, 1976/77.

Beth Bentley selected and edited The Selected Poems of Hazel Hall, published by Ahsahta Press. She has translated a number of contemporary French poets, which were published both in the U.S. and in Canada. She was a fellow of the NEA in 1978; that same year she and Nelson Bentley were invited to read at the Library of Congress.


Nelson Bentley (1918-1990)
Born in Elm, Michigan and educated (B.A. and M.A.) at the University of Michigan, Nelson Bentley was a much-loved poet and professor of English at the University of Washington. His presence on the literary scene is legendary and spanned a period of more than forty years, during which he conducted workshops, hosted readings at literary venues around the city and on radio and public television, juried poetry contests, edited poetry for journals and newspapers, and was a co-founder of Poetry Northwest and The Seattle Review. The Castalia Reading Series for graduate students, which started at the U of Washington in the mid-seventies, continues today.

Nelson Bentley's poetry collections include:
The Flying Oyster: The Collected Comic Apocalypses, Bellowing Ark Press, 1997
Collected Shorter Poems, Bellowing Ark Press, 1988
Iron Man of the Hoh, Copper Canyon Press, 1978
Grayland Apocalypse, Bonefire Press, Seattle, 1972
Sea Lion Caves and Other Poems, from "New Poetry Series," Alan Swallow, Denver, 1960.


Sean Bentley (1954- )
Sean, the son of Nelson and Beth Bentley, was born in Seattle. He was graduated from the University of Washington in 1980 with a B.A. cum laude in Cinema/English. He was coeditor of Fine Madness magazine (www.finemadness.org/) from 1984 to 2006, and is president 1998-2000 of Friends of Nelson Bentley (www.friendsofnelson.org). Visit the web site for a list of Sean Bentley's publications, sample poetry and fiction, etc. He lives in Seattle and works as a technical writer for Microsoft.

"My parents read, wrote, and taught poetry. The house I grew up in brimmed with poetry books. My first words reportedly were, "Of Man's first disobedience..." I loved to identify the photos of the authors on the Oscar Williams anthologies, and knew Yeats and Auden by sight as some kids know sports stars. By 15, I was spending five nights a week at the University of Washington attending my father's workshops or student readings. For ten years, this was my social life, education, career, and, essentially, family. By 18, my self-consciousness and sense of nepotism kicked in and I assumed a series of anagrammatic pen-names, finally settling on Lenny E. Beast. In the 1980s, I turned my writing almost exclusively to lyrics and music for a terminally unknown power-pop band, Walk Don't Walk, which finally disbanded after nine years, at which time I turned back to nonmusical forms.

I find the work of Albert Goldbarth particularly inspirational for colorful language, in addition to Dylan Thomas's, for rhythm. A friend once told me he couldn't write a poem that didn't concern the "big things." (I visualized something on the order of an abominable snowman.) I was taught to avoid writing "political poems," since polemic tends to overcome the poetry. But politics, a four-letter word these days, is difficult to transcend, and much of my work deals with it. However, I try to leaven tirade with particulars, the desolation with grace."

Sean Bentley's poetry collections include:
Grace & Desolation: New Poems, Cune Press, Seattle, 1996
Instances: Poems, Confluence Press, Lewis & Clark College, Lewiston, Idaho, 1979
Into the Bright Oasis, Jawbone Press, Seattle, 1976.


Dennis J. Bernstein
Lives in San Francisco and has been a long-time front line reporter in human rights and international affairs. He is currently the host and producer of “Flashpoints,” a daily news program syndicated on Pacifica Radio. He is the recipient of many awards for his investigative reporting, including the Jessie Meriton White Service Award, the Art of Peace Award, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination reporting award, Media Alliance/Media Bash Investigative Reporting Award, and his reports have been recognized many times by Project Censored. In 2009, Pulse Media named him one of the “20 Top Global Media Figures.”

Bernstein’s articles and essays have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines both in the U.S. and abroad. He is the author of Henry Hyde’s Moral Universe, the co-author of two decks of political trading cards, Friendly Dictators and the S&L Scandal Trading Cards. His artist book/plays, French Fries and GRRRHHHH!, co-authored with Warren Lehrer, are in the collections of MOMA in New York, the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris and other museums around the world.

After earning a master’s degree in Education, Bernstein taught Special Ed for ten years in schools and maximum security prisons. He has taught teens in the South Bronx and Brooklyn and is the founder of the South Bronx Media Collective and Young Writers Radio Collective.

Bernstein started in radio as a poetry producer, and founded the Muriel Rukeyser Reading Series in Brooklyn and broadcast over WBAI in New York City, named after his teacher, poet and biographer, Muriel Rukeyser. He also produced the first complete live, 35-hour broadcast of James Joyce’s Ulysses in the U.S. at New York’s Bloomsday Bookstore and over Pacifica Radio.

His first collection of poems appeared in a chapbook, Particles of Light, with woodcuts by Stan Kaplan. His most recent collection of poetry, Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom, was just published in 2012 by NYQ Books, an imprint of The New York Quarterly Foundation. His poetry has also been widely published in the Texas Observer, New York Quarterly, The Progressive, ZYZZYVA, Bat City Review, The Poetry Super Highway Poet of the Week, Your Daily Poem, Red River Review, The Bird’s Eye Review, J Journal, Helicon Nine, The Dickens, Dark Horse, Chimera, Science for the People, Ars Medica, and The Bijou Review. Check out his web site http://dennisjbernstein.com/.


James Bertolino
James Bertolino was born in Wisconsin and received his B.S. in English from the University of Wisconsin (1970) and his M.F.A. in poetry from Cornell University (1973). Teaching writing and literature is how he's made his living, which has taken him to Cornell, University of Cincinnati, Washington Community Colleges, Chapman University, Western Washington University, the Centrum Foundation, Washington State Department of Ecology, and the North Cascades Institute. From 1983 to 1998 he lived on Guemes Island, Washington, and for the 1998-99 school year was a visiting professor teaching literature and creative writing at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. He retired following a position as Writer-in-Residence at Oregon’s Willamette University in 2006. In 2005 he was the Lead Poet for the Washington Poets Association "Poetry Roadshow," and for 2005-2006 was Writer-in-Residence at Willamette University. He is now retired and living with his wife Anita K. Boyle on five acres outside Bellingham, WA. His email address: jim@jamesbertolino.com, website: jamesbertolino.com.

Bertolino twice won the international Quarterly Review of Literature Book Publication Award for his fourth and fifth full-length collections of poetry: First Credo (1986) and Snail River (1995). Fellowships and residencies have come from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, the Book-of-the-Month Club, the Djerassi Foundation and the Espy Foundation. In 2007 he received the Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Prize for Washington State poets. He served as one of the judges for the 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 American Book Awards.

James Bertolino's collections of poetry include:
Ravenous Bliss: New and Selected Love Poems, MoonPath Press in Kingston, WA, 2014. 
Every Wound Has A Rhythm, World Enough Writers, 2012
Finding Water, Holding Stone, Cherry Grove Collections, 2009
Pocket Animals: 60 Poems, Egress Studio Press, 2002
James Bertolino: Greatest Hits, 1965-2000 (chapbook), published as part of "Greatest Hits" series by Pudding House Publications, Johnstown, Ohio, 2000
26 Poems from Snail River, Egress Studio Press, 2000
Snail River, QRL Award Series, Princeton University, 1995
First Credo, QRL Award Series, 1986
Precinct Kali & the Gertrude Spicer Story, New Rivers Press, 1982. (Available free online at http://capa.conncoll.edu/bertolino.pkgss.html.)
New & Selected Poems, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1978
Making Space for Our Living, Copper Canyon Press, 1975 (Available free online at http://capa.conncoll.edu/bertolino.making.html)

Anthologies:
New Poetry Out of Wisconsin, August Derleth, 1969, Stanton & Lee
Poems One Line & Longer, William Cole, 1973, Grossman Publishers
Intro 5, Walton Beacham & George Garrett, 1974, University Press of Virginia
Heartland II: Poets of the Midwest, Lucien Stryk, 1975, Northern Illinois University Press
Poetry Out of Wisconsin V, Mardi Fries & Jeri McCormick, 1980, Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets
The Spirit That Moves Us Reader, Morty Sklar, 1982, The Spirit That Moves Us Press
Warnings: An Anthology on the Nuclear Peril, 1984, Northwest Review Books
Nuke-Rebuke, Morty Sklar, 1984, The Spirit That Moves Us Press
Italo-American Poets, Ferdinando Alfonsi, 1985, Antonio Carello Editore
In Our Hearts & Minds, Michael Daley, 1986, Empty Bowl Press
Eleven Skagit Poets, Sam Green, 1987, Brooding Heron Press
The Dolphin’s Arc: Poems on Endangered Creatures of the Sea, Elisavietta Ritchie, 1989, SCOP Publications
A Gathering of Poets, Maggie Anderson & Alex Gildzen, 1992, Kent State University Press
The Carnegie Mellon Anthology of Poets, Gerald Costanzo & Jim Daniels, 1993, Carnegie Mellon University Press
Quarterly Review of Literature: 50th Anniversary Anthology, Theodore & Renee Weiss, 1993, Quarterly Review of Literature
Parnassus of World Poets: 1994, Dr. Ramasamy Devaraj
Odd Angles of Heaven, David Craig & Janet McCann, 1994, Harold Shaw Publishers
Earth Tone: Creative Perspectives on Ecological Issues, Belinda Subraman, 1994, Vergin Press
Crab Creek Review: Anniversary Anthology, Linda Clifton & Carol Orlock, 1994, Crab Creek Review Association
Life Prayers: The Human Journey, Elizabeth Roberts & Elias Amidon, 1996, HarperSanFranciso
Parnassus of World Poets: 1997, Dr. Ramasamy Devaraj
The Talking of Hands, C.W. Truesdale & Mark Vinz, 1998, New Rivers Press
Bless The Day, June Cotner, 1998, Kodansha International
Prayers to Protest: Poems that Center & Bless Us, Jennifer Bosveld, 1998, Pudding House Publications
Spud Songs: An Anthology of Potato Poems, Georgia Vando & Robert Stewart, 1999, Helicon Nine Editions
Poetry Comes Up Where It Can, Brian Swann, 2000, University of Utah Press
Urban Nature, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, 2000, Milkweed Editions
Padilla Bay Poets Anthology: 1998-2001, Bree Murphy, 2002, Padilla Bay Foundation
March Hares: Best Poems from Fine Madness, 2002, Fine Madness
This Should Be Enough: Poems from the 2nd Skagit River Poetry Festival, 2002
I Have My Own Song For It: Modern Poems of Ohio, Elton Glaser & William Greenway, 2002, University of Akron Press
The Sound Close In: Poems from the 3rd Skagit River Poetry Festival, 2004
Weathered Pages: The Poetry Pole, Jim Bodeen, et al, 2005, Blue Begonia Press
Saints of Hysteria, Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton & David Trinidad, 2007, Soft Skull Press
New Hungers for Old: One-Hundred Years of Italian-American Poetry, Dennis Barone, 2009, Star Cloud Press
Into The Open: Poets of the 6th Skagit River Poetry Festival, 2010 New: Poets of the American West, Lowell Jeager, 2010, Many Voices Press, Flathead Community College
Drawn to the Light: Poets of the 7th Skagit River Poetry Festival, 2012

Bertolino has been widely published for almost fifty years, and his work has appeared in numerous periodicals, including Ploughshares, Poetry, Paris Review, Epoch, Partisan Review, Northwest Review, Seattle Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Kansas Quarterly and many others. Recent anthologies include Poets Against the War (The Nation Books), and Under A Silver Sky: Pacific Northwest Poetry (Evergreen State College). He has also served as poetry editor for Abraxas, Quixote Press, Stone Marrow Press, Ithaca House, Epoch, Rapport, Eureka Review, Cincinnati Poetry Review, the Cincinnati Area Poetry Project, Cornfield Review, and In Context. His many book reviews and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies. Yale University's Harold Bloom has twice reprinted Bertolino's essay on Maya Angelou.


Steph Anne Best
Studied writing at a large midwestern university, indulging in poetry/performance pieces, music, screenplays, and-various types of journalism. She is currently singing and writing with the musical/spoken word duo 0Dark30. See www.0dark30.net.

 


Linda Bierds (1945- )
This award-winning (several Pushcart Prizes and the Pen West Poetry Prize) poet and MacArthur Foundation fellow was born in Delaware, lived in Anchorage as a child, and educated at the University of Washington (B.A. and M.A.). She is the director of the writing program and member of the faculty in the English Department at the University of Washington in Seattle. A frequent contributor to anthologies and journals, Linda Bierds's poetry collections include:
Roget’s Illusion, Marian Wood Book/Putnam, 2014
Flight: New And Selected Poems, 2008
First Hand, Putman, 2005
The Seconds, Putnam, 2001
The Profile Makers, 1997
The Ghost Trio, Henry Holt, 1994
Companions for the Slow Rowing, Henry Holt, New York, 1991
Heart and Perimeter, Henry Holt, 1991
The Stillness, the Dancing, Henry Holt, 1988
Flights of the Harvest-Mare, Ahsahta Press, 1985
Snaring the Flightless Birds, Allegany Mountain Press, 1982.


David Biespiel (1964- )
American poet who was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, raised in Texas, and educated at Boston University, University of Maryland, and Stanford University. He is the founding executive director of the Attic Writers' Workshop in Portland, Oregon, an independent literary studio that has provided creative writing workshops to over 300 writers annually since 1999.

He is editor of the award-winning anthology, Long Journey: Contemporary Northwest Poets (2006), as well as co-editor of Artists' Communities: A Directory of Residencies in the United States Offering Time and Space for Creativity (1996). His poems and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, The New Republic, Parnassus, Poetry, and Slate.

After reviewing poetry for over ten years in a variety of journals and newspapers, including in The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The New York Times, he has been, since January 2003, the poetry columnist for The Oregonian. Was editor (2005-2009) of Poetry Northwest, which since its founding in the mid-20th century has been one of the country's most prestigious publications dedicated exclusively to poetry and that has, under his editorship, revived a dialogue between the art of poetry and civic life. Since 2008 he's been a contributor to The Arena, the daily debate with policy makers and opinion shapers on The Politico.

Past recipient of a Stegner Fellowship, a Lannan Fellowship, and a Fellowship in Literature from the National Endowment for the Arts , he has taught creative writing and literature throughout the United States, including at George Washington University, University of Maryland, Stanford University, Portland State University, and Lynchburg College as the Richard H. Thornton Writer in Residence. He currently divides his teaching among the M.F.A. Program at Pacific Lutheran University, Oregon State University, and Wake Forest University, where he is poet in residence in the fall.

His books include:
The Book of Men and Women (2009).
Editor: Long Journey: Contemporary Northwest Poets (Oregon State University Press, 2006)
Wild Civility (University of Washington Press, 2003)
Pilgrims & Beggars (2002)
Shattering Air (BOA Editions, New Poets of America Series, 1996).


Gloria Bird (1951- )
A member of the Spokane tribe, Gloria Bird lives in Spokane. After attending Portland Community College, she received her B.A. in English (1990) from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and her M.A. in English (1992) from the University of Arizona. She has been a teacher of literature and creative writing, has conducted workshops, and is associate editor for the Wicazo Sa Review (Minneapolis). She has been published in many anthologies, including First Fish, First People: Salmon Tales of the North Pacific, University of Washington Press, and Dancing on the Rim of the World: An Anthology of Contemporary Northwest Native American Writing, Sun Tracks, Vol. 19, University of Arizona Press, 1991. Her awards include the Witter-Bynner Foundation grant (1993), Diane Decorah Award (1992), and Oregon Writer's Grant (1988). She and Harjo were awarded the Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America for Reinventing the Enemy's Language. Long active in the arts, Gloria is a board member of the Wakiknabe Inter-Tribal Theater in Albuquerque, New Mexico and she has been associated with the Institute of American Indian Arts. In 2001 Gloria Bird was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Washington Commission for the Humanities.

A partial list of her publications includes:
The River of History (poetry), Trask House Books, 1997
Reinventing the Enemy's Language (edited with Joy Harjo), Trask House Books, 1997
Full Moon on the Reservation (poetry), Greenfield Review Press, 1994.


Earle Birney (1904-1995)
The long writing career of this award-winning Canadian poet spanned the decades from the 1940s to 1991. He was born in Calgary and educated at the University of British Columbia (1922-1926). He received his master's from the University of Toronto (1927) and studied for a short time at Berkeley before leaving for the University of London (1934-1936). He returned to the University of Toronto for his Ph.D. A political activist and Marxist in the 1930s, he served in the Canadian Army in World War II. After the war he taught at the University of British Columbia until moving to the University of Toronto in 1965. A world traveler and legendary teacher, he wrote novels, plays, travel pieces, as well as his numerous collections of poetry.

The following titles are only a partial list of his published works:
Last Makings, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1991
Copernican Fix, ECW Press, Toronto, 1985
Ghost in the Wheels: Selected Poems, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1977
The Rugging and the Moving Times: Poems New and Uncollected, Black Moss, Coatsworth, Ontario, 1976
Alphabeings & Other Seayours, Pikadilly Press, 1976
The Collected Poems of Earle Birney, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1975
The Bear on the Dehli Road, Chatto & Windus, London, 1973
What's So Big About Green, McClelland & Stewart, 1973
Rag and Bone Shop, McClelland & Stewart, 1971
The Poems of Earle Birney, McClelland & Stewart, 1969
Memory No Servant, New Books, Trumansburg, NY, 1968
Selected Poems 1940-1966, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1966
Ice, Cod, Bell, or Stone, McClelland & Stewart, 1962
Trial of a City, Ryerson, 1952
The Strait of Anian, Selected Poems, Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1948
Now Is Time, Ryerson Press, 1945
David and Other Poems, Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1942 (Received the Governor General's Award). 


Pushkar Bisht
Was born on the 26th of June,1985, in the town of Pithoragarh, the Queen of the Mountains. He now lives in New Delhi (India) , with his parents. Pushkar studies Philosophy, English Literature & Science.

Nature is one of Pushkar's most influential teachers. Through his observations of the natural world, Pushkar has learned to treasure every moment and to find happiness in even the smallest things in life. He is an extremely simple man who believes silence is the pathway leading to God. Pushkar embraces the small joys that come to him because they show him how to truly rejoice in the big joys that come unexpectedly. 

Pushkar Bisht’s poetry is drawn from his observations of the world around him. He takes inspiration from the simple, and often routine, events of everyday life, and from the relationships he forms with family, friends and casual acquaintances. He is touched by the plight of people who are less fortunate than he, and this is clearly reflected in his work. 


bill bissett(1939- )
Performance poet who recites and chants his own work. His poetry is political and his style anti-conventional. He is also an editor, painter and musician, and a leading figure in Canadian culture. bissett conducts writers' workshops at the University of Toronto; in the mid-eighties was Writer-in-Residence at the University of Western Ontario, and a participant in the Writer-in-Libraries program at Woodstock Public Library.

He was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After moving to Vancouver in 1958, he started blewointment press publishing work by bpNichol, Steve McCaffery, Andrew Suknaski, Lionel Kearns and d.a. levy. bissett's work ranges across various media, including drawings, use of page space and even hypertext with in th whirlwind. His awards include the milton acorn peopuls poets award (1990) and dorothy livesay bc book award poetree (1993). bissett is based in Toronto.

His publications, too numerous to list here, but they include:
skars on th seehors (Talonbooks, 1999) (Also recorded)
loving without being vulnerabul (Talonbooks, 1997)
th influenza uv logik (Talonbooks, 1995)
h last photo uv th human soul (Talonbooks, 1993)
inkorrect thots (Talonbooks, 1992)
what we have, hard 2 beleev (Talonbooks, 1990)
And his work is included in these anthologies: Canadian Poetry, Volume Two (General Publishing/ECW Press, 1982), The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English (Oxford University Press, 1982) and Descant 98 LOVE (Descant, 1998).

bissett has done several recordings:
skars on th seehors (van trout sound, 1999)
sonic horses (with dermot foley and lenore coutts) london life. (london works, 1992)
dreemin uv th nite (luddites, 1992)
luddites (with Peter Denny, Gerry Collins and Murray Favro), 1987.


Sherwin Bitsui
Sherwin is Diné from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation. He is the author of Flood Song (Copper Canyon Press) and Shapeshift (University of Arizona Press) His honors include a Lannan Literary Fellowship and a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Literary Fellowship. He is the current Hugo Visiting Writer at the University of Montana and lives primarily in New Mexico.


Jade Leone Blackwater
A Puget Sound poet who prefers garden mud and forest duff over polite society. Currently she plies the arts of freelance copywriting, sustainable gardening, and simple living from a small home near the Hood Canal. Jade’s recent poetry appears in The Monongahela Review, at her blog http://www.brainripples.com/blog/ and on the ether. She is a co-manager for the Festival of the Trees blog carnival, a monthly celebration of all things arboreal. When Jade isn’t writing, she can usually be found getting dirty in the garden or hiking the local forests. Learn more about her projects at: http://www.brainripples.com/.


Robin Blaser (1925-2009 )
Born in Denver, Colorado, he grew up in Idaho. He received his B.A.(1952) and his M.A.(1954) and M.L.S.(1955) from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a major figure (with Robert Creeley, Jack Spicer, and Robert Duncan) in the San Francisco Renaissance in the 1950s and early 1960s. Robin Blaser moved to British Columbia in 1966 to join the English Department of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby. He became a Canadian citizen in the early 1970s. He retired in 1995.

A partial list of his publications includes:
The Fire (essays), U of CA Press, 2006 The Holy Forest: Collected Poems (Revised and Expanded), U of CA Press, 2006
Pell Mell, Coach House, 1988
The Faerie Queen & the Park, Fissure Books, Vancouver, 1987
Syntax, Talonbooks, Vancouver, 1983
Image Nation 15: The Lacquerhouse, W. Hoffer, 1981
Harp Trees, Sun Stone House & Cobblestone, Vancouver, 1977
Image Nations 13 & 14, Cobblestone, Vancouver, B.C., 1975
Image Nations 1-12, Ferry Press, London, 1974
Cups, Four Seasons Foundation, San Francisco, 1968
Les Chimeres, Open Space, San Francisco, 1965
The Moth Poem, Open Space, San Francisco, 1964
Apparitors, Auerhahn, San Francisco, 1963.


Laurie Blauner
Was born and raised in New York City. Received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. Her poems have appeared in The Nation, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest, Field, Crab Creek Review and other magazines. She has received an NEA and several Seattle Commission grants. She lives in Seattle and her web site is www.laurieblauner.com.

Her poetry collections include:
Wrong, Cherry Grove Editions, 2008
All This Could Be Yours, Cherry Grove Editions, 2006
Somebody, Black Heron Press, 2003
Facing the Facts, Orchises Press, 2002
Children of Gravity, Owl Creek Press, 1992. Winner of 1995 King County Publication Award
Self Portrait with an Unwilling Landscape, Owl Creek Press, 1989
Other Lives, Owl Creek Press, 1984.

She has also authored a work of fiction:
Infinite Kindness, Black Heron Press, 2007.


Raphael Block
Raphael BlockBorn on a kibbutz in Israel to pioneering parents. "I spent my boyhood playing on the hills of Haifa. Just before turning nine, my family moved back to England. Learning English shaped my ear for sounds and the British climate and temperament fashioned my life over the next 25 years, until I met and married an American living in London, reviving the long submerged, fiery Israeli.
We moved to Northern California with our daughter in 1993. My partner died from cancer in 2002, and for the following seven years it’s been my privilege to raise our daughter. I have worked with children of all ages for almost 30 years. I live on an old apple orchard outside of Sebastopol, and consider myself richly blessed." His first book of poetry, Songs from a Small Universe, was published in 2009 by Beatitude Press. His second collection, Spangling Darkness, is seeking a publisher. Check his website www.raphaelblock.com.


Blue Flute
Writing as "Blue Flute," Frank Watson was born in California and now lives in New York. He likes to search for the connections between different cultures through the ways their poets express universal human emotions and experiences. Fascinated by language, travel, art, and history, he enjoys translating foreign poetry, currently including Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, Italian, and Latin.

Watson’s books include Fragments, an anthology of both classic and contemporary poems, and One Hundred Leaves, a new translation of the classic Japanese poetry anthology, Hyakunin Isshu. He is currently working on translations of the long-time popular Chinese poetry anthology, 300 Tang Dynasty Poems, and the Spanish poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer’sculturally significant work, Rhymes.

Watson also writes original poetry, exploring both traditional forms and modern free verse, with a particular interest in micropoetry, haiku, and other visually-oriented forms. Visit his blog at www.followtheblueflute.com, which is usually updated with a new poem or translation every day.


Jim Bodeen
This poet, photographer, and publisher of poetry lives in Yakima, Washington, where he and his wife, Karen, ran award-winning Blue Begonia Press for many years. After publishing letterpress broadsides for ten years, they began publishing their trade edition books in 1991. In 2010 he and Karen passed Blue Begonia Press over to the next generation of publishers and editors, led by Dan and Amy Peters.

Jim also taught Latino Literature at Davis High School in Yakima. His poems have been published in Paterson Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, Seattle Review, Poet Lore, PoetsWest, Borderlands, and Gulf Coast. His poetry collection, Whole Houses Shaking, has been translated into Spanish as Casas Enteras Temblando by the Instituto Cultural de Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico. With My Hands Full//Con Mis Manos Llenas, an anthology of young Latino writers, edited by Jim, can be ordered from Blue Begonia Press. All of Jim's books can be ordered from Blue Begonia Press in Yakima, Elliott Bay Bookstore and University Bookstore in Seattle, or from Sunshine and Wisteria in Yakima, Washington. Jim's poetry blog is http://Storypathcuentocamino.blogspot.com.

Jim Bodeen's poetry collections include:
This House, Tsunami Press Inc., 2000
Impulse to Love, Blue Begonia Press, 1998
Whole Houses Shaking, Empty Bowl Press, 1993
With My Hands Full/Con Mis Manos Llenas, edited by Jim Bodeen.


Karen Bonaudi (1946 - )
Karen BonaudiKaren Bonaudi grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., went to Rutgers, lived in LA, Australia and Georgia and has resided in Washington since 1979. She currently lives and works in Moses Lake. She is a former long-time Washington Poets Association board member and winner of its Faith Beamer Cooke Award. She has worked with Russian journalists developing curriculum for conflict resolution training, published articles in education and other publications, performed with the All Bets Are Off ensemble and conducted many workshops and readings. Her poetry has been published in Bellingham Review, Nascent, Salal Review, Milepost 177, Mute Note Earthward, Pontoon, Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry, and others. Her chapbook, Editing a Vapor Trail, was published by Pudding House Press, 2010. She lives and works as a private marketing contractor in Renton where she edits www.sirensrock.com and publishes others’ books. She can be reached at kbonaudi@earthlink.net.


Shannon Borg
Writer, editor, poet and wine educator. She has an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Washington, and a PhD. in poetry and English literature from the University of Houston. She lives on Orcas Island, where she is the Wine Steward for Doe Bay Café at Doe Bay Resort and Retreat. She started writing about wine for Seattle magazine in 2007. Her latest book, The Green Vine: A Guide to West Coast Sustainable, Organic, and Biodynamic Wines, was released in 2013 from Mountaineers Books. Borg has also published a book of poems, Corset, (WordTech Comm., 2006), and the cookbook Chefs on the Farm: Inspired Lessons and Recipes from the Quillisascut Farm School of the Domestic Arts (Mountaineers, 2008), which chronicles the lives of two farmers and goat cheese artisans, Rick and Lora Lea Mistery, who have a farm in eastern Washington; plus three eBooks: Beginners Guide to Wine: Moscato, Grenache and Tempranillo (Demand Publishing, 2011). Her poems have also been published in various journals including, Poetry Northwest, the Paris Review, Antioch Review, Willow Springs, Cream City Review, Terra Nova, The London Review of Books, Pontoon, mobilecity and other journals. More info at http://www.orcasartsmith.org/salon-series.html.


Suzanne Bottelli
She was born and raised in New Jersey but has lived in Seattle for over twenty years. She teaches Writing and Humanities and helps to coordinate an Environment program at The Northwest School in Seattle, WA. The recipient of grants from Artist Trust and the Seattle Arts Commission, Bottelli has been a Jack Straw Writer and her work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, The Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Fine Madness, West Branch, and Poet Lore, among others. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has been a finalist or semifinalist for Persea Books, Black Lawrence Press, Saturnalia Books, Word Works, and EWP's Blue Linx Prize. Her chapbook, The Feltville Formation (Finishing Line Press), was published in 2015.


George Bowering (1935- )
This "post-modern" "experimental" poet, novelist, essayist, historian, and hard-core baseball fan is one of Canada's most prolific writers and its current Poet Laureate. George Bowering describes himself as "the chronicler" who, like William Carlos Williams, records or gives witness to the ordinary and in language that is natural. Bowering was born December 1, 1935 in Penticton, British Columbia where the semi-desert Okanagan valley, "so full of rattlesnakes, cactus, and sagebrush, is just like the landscape in Western movies."

Beginning in 1954 George Bowering served three years as an aerial photographer in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He then earned a B.A. in history (1960) and M.A. in English (1963) from the University of British Columbia. Important influences in his writing were the poets from the previous generation: Charles Olson, Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley (with whom he studied in Vancouver), Robert Duncan, and, of course, W. C. Williams. As a young man, Bowering yearned to be a baseball writer, and he did write for the local papers, getting paid by the inch. For a time he was a "closet" sportswriter under the name Erich Blackhead.

Around 1961 he and fellow poets, Frank Davey, David Dawson, and Fred Wah, founded the Tish Movement, in which Vancouver, its geography and history formed the core of their writing. They published the poetry in Tish, their literary magazine. After graduate school, Bowering moved to Calgary where he started Imago (1964-1974), a magazine devoted to long poems. Bowering taught at universities in Calgary and Montreal before returning to Vancouver in 1971 and a teaching post at Simon Fraser University.

Bowering has written numerous books of poetry as well as novels, plays, essays, and irreverent books on Canadian history. History figures in much of what he writes, as in his recent Bowering's B.C.: A Swashbuckling History (1996). His sardonic look at the world of politics was evident back in the sixties when, in The Man in Yellow Boots (1964), he took note of several events that year. The Cardinals clobbered the Yankees for the World Series, and the Chinese dropped their first A-bomb. Considering that the U.S. did not recognize China, Bowering wondered how the Americans explained the loud noise coming from Asia. In 1967 he wrote George, Vancouver: A Discovery Poem, based on three Georges (George Vancouver, King George III, and Bowering). He parodied Canadian politicians in fictionalized works like A Short Sad Book (1977) and Burning Water (1980). In Seventy-one Poems for People (1985), the political topics of the sixties and seventies received his barbs: the Vietnam War, violence, and "the other America."

He explores the act of creating in his first "real" book of poetry, Points on the Grid (1964), and continues the self-explorations in Baseball: A Poem in the Magic Number 9 (1967), in which baseball is a metaphor for life, and in Genève (1971), based on a deck of Tarot cards. The shifting viewpoint of Genève is continued in Kerrisdale Elegies (1984), loosely based on Rilke's Duino Elegies. In its ten sections Bowering meditates on mortality and poetry, and on the poet in the process of writing.

Bowering twice received the Governor General's Award—for poetry in 1969 for Rocky Mountain Foot and for the novel Burning Water in 1980. In 2002 he was named Canada's Poet Laureate. Bowering lives in Vancouver and teaches Canadian and American Literature at Simon Fraser University.

The following list of his poetry collections includes the titles discussed above:
Tolking Heads, Alberta Series #2, 2007
Vermeer's Light: Poems 1996-2006, Talonbooks, Vancouver, 2006
Blonds on Bikes, Talonbooks, Vancouver, 1997
George Bowering Selected Poems 1961-1992, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1993
Urban Snow, Talonbooks, Vancouver, 1992
Sticks & Stones, Talonbooks, Vancouver, 1989. (First published in 1963.)
Imaginary Hand, NeWest Publishers Ltd., Edmonton, Alberta, 1988
Seventy-One Poems for People, RDC Press, Red Deer, Alberta, 1985
Kerrisdale Elegies, Coach House, Toronto, 1976
Smoking Mirror, Longspoon, Edmondton, 1982
West Window: Selected Poetry of George Bowering, General, Toronto, 1982. This collection includes booklength poems published in the 70s: Curious (1973), At War with the U.S. (1974), Allophanes (1976), Uncle Louis (1980), and Between the Sheets (1982).
Particular Accidents: Selected Poems, Talonbooks, Vancouver, 1981 (Poems from the 60s and 70s.)
At War with the U.S., Talonbooks, Vancouver, 1974
George, Vancouver: A Discovery Poem, Weed/Flower Press, Toronto, 1970
The Gangs of Kosmos, Anansi Press, Toronto, 1969 (Awarded the Governor General's Literary Award)
Rocky Mountain Foot, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1969
Baseball, Coach House Press, Toronto, 1967
Points on the Grid, Contact Press, Toronto, 1964.

A sampling of his other publications includes:
Burning Water (fiction), republished by New Star Books, 2007
Bowering's B.C., Viking, Toronto, 1996
Craft Slices, Oberon, Ottawa, 1985 (Ruminations on writers, places, and literature)
The Mask in Place, Turnstone Press, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1982 (Essays on fiction)
Burning Water, General, Toronto, 1980 ("Fictional biography")
A Short Sad Book, Talonbooks, Vancouver, 1977 (Fiction)


Marilyn Bowering
Was born in Winnipeg and grew up in Victoria, BC. She has lived in the US, Greece, Scotland, Spain, and Canada, and now makes her home on Vancouver Island. An award-winning novelist, poet and playwright whose first novel, To All Appearances A Lady, was a New York Times Notable Book of 1990. Her second novel, Visible Worlds (1997), was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, nominated for the Dublin IMPAC Prize, and awarded the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Her third novel, Cat's Pilgrimage, is a psychological map in the form of an album of human and animal stories. What it Takes to Be Human (Penguin, 2006; UK edition, 2007) is also a map of survival in a world where human qualities are increasingly under threat. Her poetry includes Human Bodies: Collected Poems 1987-1999. Her recent book of poems, Green, was published by Exile Editions. Winner of the 2007 M award for "Favourite Prose Writer." In 2008 Marilyn Bowering was the Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Creative Writing at New York University. Her website address: www.marilynbowering.com.


Ian Boyden
An artist and writer currently working in the Blue Mountains southeast of Walla Walla, Washington. Boyden’s practice, in both his paintings and books, displays a fundamental drive to link the literary, material, and visual imagination. He makes his own paints and inks from unusual materials such as meteorites, shark teeth, and freshwater pearls. He often works in collaboration with other writers, artists, and scientists. He collaborated with Sam Hamill on two artist books: Habitations and Edible Earth. His work has been exhibited widely and is found in many public collections including Reed College, the Portland Art Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Suzhou Museum. See his website http://ianboyden.com/.


Anita K. Boyle
Is an artist, poet, and publisher of Washington State poets. Graduated in 1998 from Western Washington University with a B.A. in Art (graphic design, illustration) and English (creative writing). She is a director of the Whatcom Poetry Series: The Poet As Art, and the publisher/editor of Egress Studio Press. She was a winner of the 2004 Red Sky Poetry Theatre statewide competition, and is included in the anthology Red Sky Morning. Boyle received a Willard R. Espy Literary Foundation residency in Oysterville, WA during October 2003.

Her poems have appeared in Crab Creek Review, StringTown, The Raven Chronicles, Jeopardy, Spoon River Poetry Review, Indiana Review, Stories with Grace, Jeopardy, Margin, Crab Creek Review, and Arbutus.com. Her What the Alder Told Me was the first book published by MoonPath Press of Kingston in 2011. Her chapbook, Bamboo Equals Loon, was published in 2001 and The Drenched: A Creation Myth for the Pacific Northwest, was published by Egress Studio Press, 2014. Anita K. Boyle was a winner of the 2004 Red Sky Poetry Theatre statewide competition, and is included in the anthology Red Sky Morning.

She also writes collaborative poetry with James Bertolino. Their poems have been published in these literary magazines: Indiana Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, StringTown and Margin, as well as the collaborative poetry anthology, Saints of Hysteria (Soft Skull Press, 2006), and in two chapbooks, Pub Proceedings and Bar Exams. She enjoys making assemblages, books, and paper as a way to visually “speak" about the landscape and our environment.More info at egressstudio.com or egressstudiopress.com.


Jonathan Bracker
Was born in New York City in 1936 and grew up in Louisiana and Texas. He has lived in San Francisco since 1973. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Writer's Digest, Poetry Northwest, and other magazines, and in several small press poetry anthologies. His latest collection, Paris Sketches, appeared in 2005 from Thorp Springs Press. Earlier collections are Constellations of Clover (Prickly Pear Press), Duplicate Keys (Thorp Springs Press), and Some Poems about Women (Bootleg Press).


Allen Braden
Allen Braden earned a B.A. at Central Washington University and M.A. and M.F.A. degrees from McNeese State University in Louisiana. The son of a farmer and grandson of a professional pugilist, he has worked on a cattle ranch, in a bar, at the front desk of a hotel and for Motorola as well as for various public schools, community colleges and universities. He lives in Puyallup, Washington, and has published in PoetsWest, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest and the second edition of Spreading the Word: Editors on Poetry. His newest poetry collection is Elegy in the Passive Voice. A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood was published in 2009 by University of Georgia Press. He has received grants from the Washington State Arts Commission and the Artist Trust, a Grolier Poetry Prize and a Sam Ragan Prize. Believing the term "inspiration" is an elitist expression, he simply discovers ideas for lyrical narrative poetry in the natural world, art, folklore, family, memory or gender identity. He currently teaches at Tacoma Community College and is an editor for www.literarysalt.com.


Kate Braid
The publications of this Canadian poet and writer include:
Red Bait! Struggles of a Mine Mill Local, Kingbird Press, 1998
Inward to the Bone, Polestar, 1998
To This Cider Fountain, Polestar, 1995
Small Songs, Hawthorne Society, 1994
Covering Rough Ground, Polestar, 1991
Her poetry has also appeared in numerous literary magazines, journals and anthologies.


Karen Braucher
Originally from New England, she received her M.F.A. in creative writing from Vermont College. She was an Oregon Book Award Finalist for her first full-length book of poetry, Sending Messages Over Inconceivable Distances, selected by Maxine Kumin. One of her poems is in the 2003 POETRY IN MOTION program in which poems are posted on Portland's buses and trains. She has won the Bacchae Press Chapbook Prize, the Grolier Poetry Prize, two Oregon Literary Fellowships as a writer and one as a publisher, and the Worcester Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in Fireweed, Manzanita Quarterly, Nimrod, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Oregon Review, The Oregonian, Pool, Puerto del Sol, The Worcester Review and other journals and anthologies. She is also the founding editor and publisher of The Portlandia Group, a small poetry press.


Richard Brautigan
Was born in Tacoma in 1935. He moved to San Francisco in 1956 where he rose to international prominence in capturing the spirit of the counterculture during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He is best remembered for his novel Trout Fishing in America (1967), his poetry collection The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster (1968), and his collection of stories Revenge of the Lawn (1971). In his 1971 novel The Abortion: An Historical Romance (1966), Brautigan envisioned a fictitious Carnegie library where anyone could deposit a copy of their self-authored book.


Tom Bremer
Has an M.A. in Creative Writing from Colorado State University. He was a co-founder of the Portland Poetry Festival and is a board member of the Oregon Writers Workshop. His books A Bird That Changes Trees (1987) and Just Once(2001) were both finalists for the Oregon Book Award. He lives in Portland, Oregon and teaches in high school.


Frederick Bridger
Editor of MO: Writings from the River, an annual literary journal published by MSU Great Falls. His poetry and prose have appeared in Contemporaries, Catskills Magazine, Big Sky Journal, Wanderings, The Masthead, and the anthologies That Thing That You Do and Poems Across the Big Sky.  He teaches literature and creative writing at Montana State University-Great Falls.
Tom Halvorson, at KGPR radio, produces a local show I host, Readings from the River, where writers whose work I publish in our annual literary journal MO: Writings from the River appear to read their work. His website http://www.bridgerswildernessgate.com.


Christopher Bridges
Christopher Bridges The son of two fine artists from Chicago's Art Institute. A sculptor and a painter, and raised in Arizona. Chris follows: They filled me with a deep love and  hope for humanity and the experiences that unite us, and an understanding of what divides us. My mother read poetry to my brother, sister, and me from birth, and taught us to critique it before kindergarten.My Dad taught us through his life as a coin stamping die master engraver that anything can be fixed, and errors are just a way of art. Writing has been a more recent revelation to me. While I always wrote well and got nearly all A's in English and writing, I only now have felt the need to share written words with anyone beyond daily work. I've lived enough life to have my share of stories. Now writing is like a floodgate that's been opened. A release for imprisoned emotions and opinions that I didn't know were there, until they were.  I started writing poetry in small bits about ten years ago out of a need for some expression, finding only early hours of the morning as a solace for it. I needed to express feelings in the shortest form possible. Having spent my whole career in the computer industry, as a software engineer and director, I've lived in two worlds. In one, I'm a technologist. In the other, a reflector of daydreams in words where I observe and record everything like a watcher at a party. But neither is lofty. Neither is also truly separate, or divided by any gulf of intellect or truth. As I've grown older I realize that there is no gating of creativity between one medium or another. So now I pursue that in everything, and try to live more in the truth of my makeup. Whatever I came into this world with, that's what I'm going out with. My hope is that as I put more words down that they have an impact on someone in a positive way. Help someone to endure our human experience a day more. Feel understood, or even, boldly, enlightened. If I can do that, I'll feel truly accomplished. So I continue to write, and to seek more ways to share it. And I try to listen to things around and in me without judgement and simply record. If it doesn't work well, I'll keep doing it anyway.

Poetry: wordswim.tumblr.com
Art: christopher-bridges.fineartamerica.com
Work:www.linkedin.com/in/cebridges

Robert Bringhurst (1946- )
Known for his classic text on typography, The Elements of Typographic Style (second edition, published in 1992), Bringhurst, however, is primarily a lyric poet whose scholarly interests have led to an impressive writing and teaching career in linguistics, art history, classical studies, and particularly Native American studies, especially of the British Columbia coast. Born in Los Angeles, he lived in various western states, both in the U.S. and Canada. He did undergraduate studies at MIT and the University of Utah before receiving his B.A. from Indiana University (1973). He then received his M.F.A. in 1975 from the University of British Columbia.

Bringhurst is well known for his collaboration with West Coast artist, Bill Reid, in Native American studies (The Black Canoe: Bill Reid and the Spirit of Haida Gwaii, second edition, Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver, 1992; University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1991 and The Raven Steals the Light, Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver, 1984; University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1984 & 1996). His work in translation includes Navajo and Haida: Story as Sharp as a Knife, Volume 1 Masterworks of the Classical Haida and Nine Visits to the Mythworld from Haida, originally transcribed by an American anthropologist on the Northwest Coast in 1900. He has also translated works from Greek, French, Italian, and Arabic.

His poetry collections include:
The Calling: Selected Poems, 1970-1995 (McClelland and Stewart, 1995)
Pieces of Map, Pieces of Music, Copper Canyon Press, 1987 (first published in 1986 by McClelland & Stewart, Toronto)
The Beauty of the Weapons: Selected Poems 1972-1982, Copper Canyon Press, 1985 (first published in 1982 by McClelland & Stewart, Toronto).

His recent essay collections include:
Boats is Saintlier than Captains: Thirteen Ways of Looking at Morality, Language and Design New York: Edition Rhino, 1997
The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind and Ecology (Counterpoint Press)
Everywhere Being is Dancing: Twenty Pieces of Thinking (Counterpoint Press)
The Solid Form of Language (Gaspereau Press)
Other works include the essay The Solid Form of Language.

His awards include:
Griffin Poetry Prize, 2001
Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, 1987-88
Canadian Council Senior Arts Award, 1984-85
CBC Poetry Prize, 1985
Macmillan Prize for Poetry, 1975.


Randall Brock (1943- )
Randall Brock This Northwest poet and writer was born in Colfax, Washington, raised in Pullman, and now lives in Spokane. He received his B.A. from Eastern Washington University (1970) and his M.F.A in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon (1973). He did graduate work in history at Eastern Washington University (1982-1983). His poems have been published widely in journals and anthologies.

He participated in the Potter Discussion Group at Washington State University, the Artists Lecture Series at Washington State University (1974), and was a Centrum scholar in 1977. He has participated in numerous readings, has had hundreds of poems published, and has recorded four cassette tapes of his poetry.

"my method of writing is automatic--automatic writing--a device used by the surrealists---my poetry is experimental & surreal---I'll combine fragments of poetic energy--and form poems--making a collage of words which is coherent in a surreal framework--short bursts of energy---that is what I'm doing---I'm trying to add shape to the past---my poems are about sex--family--my mother & so on---my poems are an art form in words---images take on a surreal hue---I'm trying to recreate the past--some sense to the events in my life---

small case i --- influenced by Larry Eigner
yr for your --- influenced by Gary Snyder
various poets have had an influence--Bob Dylan--also my two teachers--Ralph Salisbury at the University of Oregon--& Howard McCord at Washington State University."

His poetry collections include:
Fog of Paranoia, Snark Publishing, 2003
Pieces from the Valley, Grandview Press, 1998
Concrete Poetry, Grandview Press, 1996
Love and Other Secrets of the Sea, Grandview Press, 1995
Images in Stone, Grandview Press, 1995
A Message from the Other Side, Grandview Press, 1995
Variations, USA, 1994
Weave, Found Street Press, 1994
Inside I Am, Iguana Press, 1991
Seven Zen Meditations, Peaceful Valley Press, 1990
Lost Voices, Hub Editions, Bedfordshire, England, 1988
Inside and Out, Curvd HZ, 1988
Cold Fire Poems, Proper Tales Press, Toronto, 1988
Stranger to the Stars, Calliopes Corner, 1986
Solid Blue, Gesture Press, Toronto, 1985
The Goat Poems, Coma Goats Press, 1984
Shadows of Seclusion, Proper Tales Press, Toronto, 1982
I Am Poems, Curvd HZ, 1982
Poems and Photographs, Vortex, 1979
Mouse Poems, Contributor Press, 1971.


Anselm Brocki
Anselm BrockiHas had over 1,440 poems accepted by over 790 publications. A former senior editor for Houghton Mifflin and editorial coordinator for the Los Angeles City Schools, he is currently running his own editing business.



Matthew Brouwer
Author of two full length poetry collections, Men Who Walk With Canes and The Gospel According to Matthew, as well as a nationally touring performance artist. His latest book is a collection of poems recounting his three-year journey with chronic pain from a mild backpacking injury that progressively stripped him of the ability to walk. Brouwer teaches poetry workshops through the Whatcom Folk School in Bellingham, Washington, as well as in Whatcom County Schools and facilitates a writing circle open to people suffering from chronic pain.


Eric Browning-Larsen
Eric Browning-Larsen Originally from Minnesota, Browning-Larsen moved to Seattle more than fifteen years ago to pursue his corporate career as a senior executive in several companies. He has a BA in English, an MA in Industrial Relations and a JD in Law. He dropped out of the corporate world over seven years ago, he started a management consulting practice focused on S.E. Asia, started up and sold several beauty salon franchises, and traveled extensively throughout Asia and Europe. His other interests include writing and international travel. His first book, Lucky at Love, is a collection of short stories and essays based on experiences in Asia. He is currently working on My Mother's Son, a collection of poems about growing up in a small town.


Richard Brugger
Richard “Dick” Brugger was Executive Director of Auburn Youth Resources for almost thirty years before retiring in 1997. In 1983 he was named the Auburn Area Citizen of the Year and in 2012 he was named the City of Auburn's first Poet Laureate.  Auburn Mayor Pete Lewis proclaimed February 13, 2009 Dick Brugger Day and Auburn Youth Resources renamed their main campus building “The Brugger Building.” For twenty-one years before coming to Auburn, Richard was a Franciscan Friar and Roman Catholic priest. His poetry has appeared in Do Something & Other Poems (his own publication of poems), the Plateau Area Writer's Association Quarterly, in the Doylestown Intelligencer (Pennsylvania) and Poets West Literary Journal. His prose has appeared in Heart of the Matter and in Plateau Area Writer’s Association Anthologies, and he was a second place winner performance poet category at the Washington Poets Association annual meeting in Spring 2003 in Tacoma. In August, 2009, Richard was third place winner for Auburn Good Ol’ Days Poetry Contest.


Harley Brumbaugh
Born 1934 in Renton, Washington Harley moved to the Snoqualmie Valley in in 1943. He considers himself to be one of the “children of the mill” being reared in “Riverside” a community of company homes maintained for employees of Weyerhaeuser Timber Company of Snoqualmie Falls. Growing up in the beauty and stability of close, friendly neighborhood he led a “Tom Sawyer” existence with the rest of the “riverside rats” a friendly group of coming-of –age neighborhood boys. Driven by love of music, Harley began trumpet lessons as a sixth grader. By the eighth grade he began playing professionally in Seattle and performing on Seattle radio. In high school he formed his own dance band which played for school and community functions. He was appointed as first chair solo cornetist for the All-Northwest High School Music Educator’s Festival Honor Band of 1953. Attending Central Washington College he gained regional popularity through “live” radio broadcasts from the Playland Ballroom in Yakima, where his horn and voice were featured weekly. Upon college graduation Harley played lead trumpet for the Ronnie Bartley Orchestra touring throughout the Unites States and Mexico. Harley was then drafted into the Army where he was appointed First chair principal trumpet and featured soloists in the 52nd Army Band of Fort Ord, California.

Highly involved in simultaneous careers as an educator, professional performer, conductor, composer, entertainer ,music contractor, choral director, music clinician-adjudicator as well as Minister of Music throughout his career left little time for spiritual rejuvenation. . . that is except returning to the fields, woodlands and mountain creeks, rivers, and lakes of my youth in the Snoqualmie Valley. Only there could he still find the solitary depth sufficient to keep the creative juices flowing and sustainable emotional balance. Only there was he able to call upon the bliss of his youth lending ear to the lovely sounds of God crafted solitude! The poems here recorded were plucked from the trailing vines of his youth.

As Music Director of what is now known as Bellevue College, Harley was founder and conductor of the internationally acclaimed “Celebration Singers!” This group made four extensive tours of Mexico, appearing on television shows broadcast around the world. They were the first American Choir invited to sing at The University of Mexico. They were also first American Group selected to represent the U.S.A. in the prestigious Australian International World Youth Music Festival. There, by special they were invited to appear on the number one and number two most popular television shows in Australia. That same year the Australian Broadcasting Company made a special documentary of the positive impact upon the youth of Australia as well as its influence upon music education across the entire country.

Some of the many honors and prestigious awards bestowed upon Harley Brumbaugh across the years include: Who’s Who Among Musicians in the World; National Outstanding Educator - (1975);Outstanding Contributor to the Arts (1985) City of Bellevue; Life Time Achievement Award (Bellevue Lions Award); The Evergreen Safety Councils’ Musical Expression Award; Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges (1957); Who’s Who in America; Who’s Who in the World; “Hall of Fame of Music Educators of Washington State; Awarded “Exemplary Status” by the Community College Humanities Association of the State of Washington.


Polly Buckingham
Her collection The Expense of a View won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction (due out Nov 2016). Her chapbook A Year of Silence won the Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award for Fiction (2014), and she was the recipient of a 2014 Washington State Artists Trust fellowship. Her work appears in The Gettysburg ReviewThe Threepenny Review, Hanging Loose, Witness, North American Review, The Moth, New Orleans Review, Poetry Daily and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Award in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Polly Buckingham is founding editor of StringTown Press. She teaches creative writing at Eastern Washington University and is associate director of Willow Springs Books, Eastern’s student run literary press.


Andrea Hollander Budy
Is the editor of When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women and the author of four full-length poetry collections: Landscape with Female Figure: New & Selected Poems, 1982 – 2012 (to be released in 2013), Woman in the Painting, The Other Life, and House Without a Dreamer, which won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Her honors include the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize for memoir, the Runes Poetry Award, the Ellipsis Poetry Prize, two poetry fellowships the National Endowment for the Arts, and two from the Arkansas Arts Council. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, college textbooks, and literary journals such as Poetry, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, FIELD, and Creative Nonfiction. Budy has been featured at writers’ conferences and festivals throughout the US, as well as in England and France. A resident of Portland, she has worked for the past twenty-one years as the Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College, where she was awarded the Lamar Williamson Prize for Excellence in Teaching.


April Bullard
Resides with her husband aboard their houseboat on the Columbia River near Vancouver, Washington. She admits to 55 years of age, over 35 years of marriage, and being the mother of three, grandmother of four, and a navy veteran with a fondness for chocolate. She creates work inspired by living cradled on the Columbia River as an author, illustrator, photographer, and musician. Bullard is the author and illustrator of the books The Sock Thief and Goody Hepzibah's Harvest Tales, and one short story in each volume of the five-book series Demonic Visions: 50 Horror Tales. Her poetry has appeared in Ghost Town Poetry Volume Two, and other assorted poems and short stories have been published in small press anthologies and magazines. Bullard has also done illustration work for self-published authors and small presses. For more information, please visit: www.aprilbullard.com.


Jennifer Bullis
Grew up in Reno, Nevada, and attended college and graduate school in California where she earned a PhD in English at UC Davis. She taught writing and literature at Whatcom Community College for fourteen years before sneaking away to write, hike, and chase after their son. Her poems appear in journals and anthologies including Iron Horse Literary Review, Natural Bridge, Conversations Across Borders, The Comstock Review, Floating Bridge Review/Pontoon, Cascadia Review, Clover, and Umbrella . She won The Pitch contest at Poetry Northwest and received Honorable Mention in the Tupelo Press Poetry Project. She served on the Board of the Whatcom Poetry Series and blogs about “Poetry at the Intersection of Mythology and Hiking” at http://jenniferbullis.wordpress.com. She lives in Bellingham with her family. Her latest collection Impossible Lessons is available from MoonPath Press.


Gloria J. Burgess (1953- )
Gloria Burgess, an award-winning poet, actor, and director, was born in Oxford, Mississippi. She was educated at the University of Michigan and the University of Southern California. At the University of Michigan, Gloria worked with poet Robert Hayden, who helped her give voice to her experience as an African American woman in a way that is, at once, personal, authentic, and universal. Her poetry has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered and in numerous workshops. She is a Poetry Fellow with Cave Canem, a group of African American poets sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. She lives in Edmonds, Washington and is currently an Affiliate Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. She also teaches workshops in poetry and creative writing, and is a consultant to Fortune 500, medium and small organizations on leadership, cross-cultural diversity and creativity. For more information, check her web site www.jazz-inc.com/.

"Having been born in the rural South, I've been blessed to live on the margins and in the mainstream. I know firsthand about prejudice, social injustice, and inhumanity; I also know about love, forgiveness, and grace." Gloria's poetry reflects the spectrum of her experience, including her passion for family and service to others. She believes that poetry has the greatest potential to profoundly affect our spirit and to bring about change in our world, for it uses the potency of language and music and voice. In 2001, she released Pass It On, a book for children of all ages about the importance of helping others, based on her father's relationship with the writer, William Faulkner.

Gloria's poetry appears in numerous anthologies, including The Ring Ear and Gathering Ground. Her latest book is Dare to Wear Your Soul on the Outside, which builds on the themes in some of her previous work, including her best-seller Legacy Living. Both books weave a tapestry of inspirational stories, poetry, and images to inspire readers to transform their lives and be of service to others.

Her collections of poetry include:
The Open Door, Red Oak Press, 2001
Journey of the Rose, collected and new (1973- 1998)
A Yellow Wood.


John Burgess (1958- )
Burgess grew up in upstate New York, went to Montana State University, worked on a survey crew in Montana; has lived in Seattle since 1985. Has Journalism degree from the SUNY and BA in English Lit from Montana State University (1982). He has worked as a reporter and copy editor for weekly newspapers in Montana and Washington and taught English at a private school in Matsuyama, Japan for three years in the late '80s. He currently lives and works in Seattle. His poems have appeared in the 1999 King County Poetry and Art on Buses project, PoetsWest, Portland's Gumball Poetry Project, Pontoon, Snow Monkey, 4th Street from Inlet Press, Olympia, and Raven Chronicles. He was a board member of the Washington Poets Association. His influences include punk music, haiku, and Montana bars. His books of poetry are Punk Poems ( 2005), A History of Guns in the Family (2008), Graffitto (2011), and Refugium, pamphlet ( 2012), and by Land (2015) all from Ravenna Press. He has also produced a CD Ballads under New Regime with music by Jed Myers. Read more at www.punkpoet.net.


Suzanne Burns
Her first short story collection, Misfits and Other Heroes, debuted from Dzanc Books in 2009. Her last poetry collection, The Paris Poems, came out in December 2010 from BlazeVOX Books. She is currently writing more poems about Portland.


Augusten Burroughs
His memoir, Running With Scissors, was on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three consecutive years. His subsequent title, Dry, is about his battles with addiction. Burroughs, who has no formal education beyond grade school, moved to San Francisco at 19 and forged a highly successful career in advertising. He began writing at age 34 and his first published book, a novel titled Sellevision, was released in 2000. Burroughs has also written a collection of autobiographical essays titled Magical Thinking. His writing has appeared in numerous publications. Burroughs is known as an effective and unscripted speaker.

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Dan Butterworth
He is the author of two collections; his most recent book is The Clouds of Lucca. Dan teaches English at Gonzaga University.


Kathleen Byrd
lives in Olympia, Washington and teaches writing and humanities courses at South Puget Sound Community College. Her poems have been published in Godiva Speaks, a chapbook of women poets in Olympia; Unspoken Northwest, Crosscurrents; and Pontoon. She is currently on sabbatical, researching mindfulness and learning. She likes a slow life, favoring bicycles and typewriters for getting around.


Gladys Cardiff
Her poetry collections include To Frighten a Storm: Poems.


Henry Carlile
Was born in San Francisco, California. He holds a B.A. and M.A. University of Washington where he studied with Theodore Roethke, David Wagoner, Henry Reed & Elizabeth Bishop. He has worked as a millworker, cannery worker, salmon troller deckhand, army bandsman, shipfitter, clerk, production control coordinator; Professor of English, Portland State University (emphasis in poetry writing & contemporary poetry and short fiction) 1967-2003; visiting lecturer, Iowa Writers Workshop, 1978-80.

His publications include the following books:
Oregon, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2013
Rain, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1994
Running Lights, Dragon Gate Press, 1981
The Rough-Hewn Table, University of Missouri Press, 1971.

His poems, fiction and essays have appeared in numerous periodicals including: The American Poetry Review, Antaeus, Antioch Review, The Burnside Review, Crazyhorse, Cutbank, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Hubbub, The Iowa Review, Ironwood, Kentucky Poetry Review, The Laurel Review, The Malahat Review, The Missouri Review, The Nation, The New Yorker, Northwest Review, The Ohio Review, Oregon Literary Review, Parnassus, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, The South Dakota Review, The Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, Western Humanities Review, Willow Springs, and others. His poetry can also be found on the Poetry Foundation website http://www.poetryfoundation.org/search/?q=carlile.

His poems and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies, including:
New Poets of the American West, Lowell Jaeger, ed., Many Voices Press, 2010
Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds, Billy Collins, ed., Columbia University Press, 2010
A Richer Harvest: The Literature of Work in the Pacific Northwest, Craig Wolner & W. Tracy Dillon, eds, Oregon State University Press, 1999
The Devins Award Anthology, Gerald Costanzo, ed., University of Missouri Press, 1998
The Prescott Street Reader: Poetry and Prose, Vi Gale, ed., Prescott Street Press, 1995
Remembering Ray: A Composite Biography of Raymond Carver, William Stull & Maureen P. Carroll, eds., Capra Press, 1993
From Here We Speak: An Anthology of Oregon Poetry, Ingrid Wendt & Primus St. John, eds., Oregon State University Press, 1993
Pushcart Prize, XVII: Best of the Small Presses, 1992-93 ed., Bill Henderson, ed., The Pushcart Press, 1992
The Best of Crazyhorse, David Jauss, ed., University of Arkansas Press, 1990
American Sports Poems, May Swenson & R. R. Knudson, eds., OrchardBooks, 1988
Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry, 1986-88
Pushcart Prize XI: Best of the Small Presses, 1986-87 Ed., Bill Henderson, ed., The Pushcart Press, 1986
Strong Measures: Recent American Poems in Traditional Forms, David Jauss & Philip Dacey, eds., Harper and Row, 1985
Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry for 1979, Monitor Book Company
Contemporary Poets Teaching, Alberta Turner, ed., Longman's, Inc., 1980
A Geography of Poets, Edward Field, ed., Bantam Books, 1979.

His many grants and awards:
Oregon Arts Commission Literary Fellowship, 1994
Pushcart Prize, 1992
Crazyhorse 1988 Poetry Award
PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, 1986
Pushcart Prize and Helen Foundation Award, 1986
Ingram Merrill Poetry Fellowship, 1985
PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, 1983
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, 1976
Devins Award, 1971 (for The Rough-Hewn Table)
National Endowment for the Arts Discovery Grant, 1970.



Emily Carr
Directs the Low-Residency MFA at OSU-Cascades. She has been a finalist in seven national poetry competitions, most recently the National Poetry Series. Her second book of poetry, 13 Ways of Happily: Books 1 & 2, was the winner of the 2009 New Measures Poetry Prize. Another book of poetry, directions for flying, was the winner of the 2009 Furniture Press poetry prize. Her third book is forthcoming, Up The Shinbone Superlatives (horseless press, May 2014). More info at www.ifshedrawsadoor.com.



Raymond Carver (1938-1988)
Carver was born May 25, 1938 in Clatskanie, Oregon, a logging town of 700 residents on the Columbia River. Married at nineteen and father of two before he turned twenty-one, he experienced during his "first life" many of the vicissitudes he depicts in his writings; spirit-breaking ennui and underemployment, domestic "dis-ease" culminating in divorce and life-threatening alcoholism. A comparatively tranquil and productive "second life" commenced in 1977, when Carver stopped drinking, began his decade-long association with the poet and writer, Tess Gallagher, and steadily gained international recognition as the foremost short-story writer of his generation. Carver and Gallagher married shortly before his death, at age fifty, from lung cancer on August 2, 1988. Carver is the author of five books of stories and six books of poems: Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (McGraw-Hill, 1976, nominated for the National Book Award); Furious Seasons and Other Stories (Capra Press, 1977); What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Knopf, 1981); Cathedral (Knopf, 1983, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize); and Where I'm Calling From (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1988). He is also the author of Fires: Essays, Poems, Stories (Vintage Press, 1986), and numerous chapbooks and limited editions.

His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. (Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral, Where I'm Calling From, Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, Ultramarine and Fires are currently available from Vintage Books.) Call If You Need Me, which will include five newly discovered short stories, was published by Knopf in January of 2001.

In 1983 the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters awarded Carver one of its first Mildred and Harold Strauss "Living Awards," a fellowship bringing him five years of income and release from teaching duties; in May 1988 he was inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. This was to be the most prestigious award he would receive. Other important awards included two NEA grants, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize, a Creative Arts Award Citation from Brandeis University, and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Hartford. His story "Call If You Need Me" was selected for an O'Henry Award. "Kindling" appeared in Best American Short Stories of 2000.

Despite Raymond Carver's foreshortened career, his contributions to American literature are substantial. Carver reinvested realism for postmoderns, set in motion the short-story renaissance of the 1980s, and gave voice to a formerly submerged population. By precept and example he served as mentor to an emerging generation of "post-modern" realists whose fiction is, like his, at once representational and self-interrogating. Following his literary hero, Anton Chekhov, Carver set himself a modest but enduring goal: "a bringing of the news from one world to another." Learn more at www.whitman.edu/english/carver/ray1.html.

Raymond Carver's collections of poetry include:
All of Us, Vintage paperback, March 2000, and Knopf, September, 1998
A New Path to the Waterfall, published posthumously by Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989
Ultramarine, Random House, 1986
Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, Random House, 1985.

(Updated January 2001, courtesy of Tess Gallagher)


Dennis Caswell
Dennis Caswell is the author of the poetry collection Phlogiston (FLOW-ji-stahn) (Floating Bridge Press, 2012).  His work has appeared in Crab Creek Review, Bluestem, Rattle, and assorted other journals and anthologies, and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  He lives outside Woodinville, Washington and works as a software engineer in the aviation industry. Please visit his website at http://denniscaswell.com (oh, go on, you know you want to).


Frank Cebulski
A San Francisco Bay Area poet and arts writer, where he has lived since 1964. He has published five books of poetry: Corm (Oyez: Berkeley, 1974), Mediterranean Sonnets (North Atlantic Books: Berkeley, 1988), Concrete Visual Shaped (Light Gravity Press: Berkeley, 2006), Only Emotion Endures (AuthorHouse: Bloomington, Indiana, 2009), and, most recently, The Fifth World (AuthorHouse: Bloomington, 2010). He is founder and owner of Light●Gravity Press, where he published various broadsides of his concrete, visual and shaped poems, and also a privately printed collection for friends of the poet. He has translated poems from French and Latin, including an important book of poems by the well known French poet and photographer, Denis Roche, Éros énergumène (Eros Raving), Editions du Seuil. He studied physics and English at the  University of Colorado, and British and American literature at the universities of Cincinnati, California at Berkeley, and Kings College, London. He was Bancroft Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and Fulbright Lecturer to France at the University of Metz. He was Contributing Editor to Artweek for thirty years and has written art criticism for Art in America and Sculpture. He is currently an arts and entertainment writer for Examiner.com. He was the first Director of Technical and Professional Writing at San Francisco State University. He lives in Albany, California. To learn more about him and his poetry, visit his website at www.cebulski.net.


Brandon Cesmat (1960- )
While still an undergraduate at San Diego State University, Brandon Cesmat began writing as a freelancer with the San Diego Reader. He earned a BA in Liberal studies at San Diego State Uninversity (1989) and an MFA in Creative Writing from SDSU in 1992. He has worked as a freelance writer and adjunct professor and continues to publish poetry and fiction. Cesmat's short story "Playing Peon" won a San Diego Book Award. His writing has appeared in California Quarterly, inside english, ONTHEBUS, Teachers & Writers, Weber Studies and many other periodicals.
As a broadcast journalist, he did TV and radio interviews with poets as N. Scott Momaday, Billy Collins, Steve Kowit, Quincy Troupe and Genny Lim. As a staff writer for Go!, Cesmat twice won the San Diego Press Club's award for critical writing about film. As a technical consultant, Cesmat has worked on screenplays for High Valley, Inc. and Hummingbird Productions. Cesmat serves as Area Coordinator for California Poets in the Schools for San Diego County and does poetry workshops in schools, libraries and community centers.
He has won multiple awards for his work in writing and teaching. His publications include:
Light in All Directions (Poetric Matrix, 2009) Received the San Diego Book Award
Enemy Song, short story collection (Oak Grove Press, 2003)
River Murmur, poetry (Poetric Matrix, 2003)
Ice Drum, (Caernarvon Press, 2001) San Diego Book Award for poetry chapbook
The Pass, chapbook of poems (Oak Grove Press, 2001)
Party Crasher, chapbook of stories (Oak Grove Press, 2000)
Nightsinging, chapbook of poems (Caernarvon Press, 1994).


Neeli Cherkovski
Lives and writes in San Francisco. Longtime contributor to the West Coast literary scene as poet, critic and literary biographer. In the late 1960s Cherkovski co-edited the poetry anthology Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns with Charles Bukowski. His poetry books include Animal, Elegy for Bob Kaufman, Leaning Against Time, which earned an PEN Award for Excellence in Literature, Fronteras Rotas, published in a bi-lingual edition, and the newly released From the Canyon Outward. Another collection, The Manila Poems, is forthcoming. Author of two biographies, Bukowski: A Life and Ferlinghetti: A Biography, and is the author of a book of critical memoirs, Whitman’s Wild Children. For many years, Cherkvoski served as writer-in-residence at the now closed New College of California where he also taught literature and philosophy. He continues to teach poetics at various locales throughout the SF Bay Area and is completing a new memoir.


John Morin Chinworth
John was born in Tucson and was raised both there and in Willcox, Arizona. He received his M.F.A. from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and his M.A. in Teaching from Seattle University. He has lived in Washington since 2001, and currently assists resource room students at a high school in Issaquah. John is also a certified astrological consultant, and lives in Seattle’s Central District. In 2013, John co-published the collection Whiskey Ginger with Naropa classmate Natascha Bruckner. This vibrant collection features pairs of poems with the same title but different versions written by each author. Two of his poems appear in Blood & Tears: Poems for Matthew Shepard, edited by yet another Naropan, Scott Gibson. John’s chapbooks include: Crucified, Rooster, Stuporpower, Johnnicatessen, Wrongevity, Insecurious, and Reindeer Sonnets.


Don Mee Choi
She has a B.F.A., M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts; and a Ph.D. from The Union Institute & University; adjunct faculty, liberal studies. Don Mee has taught Asian & Pacific Islander American History at Seattle Central Community College. Her writing and translations have been published in various literary journals such as Arts & Letters, Prairie Schooner, Seneca Review, and Bamboo Ridge. She has been selected as a fellow (2004-05) by the American Literary Translators Association. She is a member of an international women’s network that focuses on issues related to militarism. She has presented at the Peace & Justice Studies Association’s annual conference.


Yearn Hong Choi
Yearn Hong Choi A prolific and distinguished writer who has won awards in Korea and the United States, he has published six books of poetry and one collection of short stories, and his essays and short stories appeared in prestigious journals such as Short Story International and World Literature Today. He has read his poems in the US Library of Congress in 1994 and 2003. In 1994, being the first poet from Korea to be invited to read at the Library of Congress, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Gwendolyn Brooks introduced Choi by reading a poem she wrote about him! He served as executive director of the Korean PEN Center and edited Korean Literature Today. He founded the Korean Poets and Writers Group and the Korean-American Poets' Group in Washington, DC.
A Ph.D in political science and public administration, he has written extensively on current issues in Korea and Korean-US relations, worked for the federal government, and taught at the University of Wisconsin, Old Dominion University, the University of the District of Columbia, and the University of Seoul, retiring recently.
With Haeng-Ja Kim he published the first anthology of Korean-American literature, Surfacing Sadness: A Centennial Celebration of Korean-American Literature, 1903-2003.

He also edited three landmark anthologies of Korean-American poetry: Mother and Dove, Fragrance of Poetry: Korean-American Literature, and An Empty House: Korean American Poetry. His poems have appeared in the PoetryUSA, PEN International, PoetsWest, dIS*orient, Mildred, Wyoming, Washington Post, World & I among others, and were translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil. He edited Mother and Dove, Korean-American Poetry Anthology (Institute for Korean-American Culture, 1997), Surfacing Sadness: A Centennial of Korean-American Literature (Homa & Sekey Books, 2003) with Haengja Kim, Fragrance of Poetry: Korean-American Literature (Homa & Sekey, 2005), and An Empty House (Homa & Sekey, 2008). He published his poems in the Hyundae Munhak, the most prestigious literary magazine in Korea during his college days at Yonsei University. He reviews Korean literature for World Literature Today.

He has published two poetry books in English, Autumn Vocabularies (Writers' Workshop, 1990) and Moon of New York (PublishAmerica, 2008) and four poetry books in the Korean language. His memoir, Song of Myself: A Korean-American Life, was published by Poetic Matrix Press in 2010.


Margaret Chula
Lived in Japan for twelve years where she taught English and creative writing at universities in Kyoto. Her seven books include Just This (Mountains and Rivers Press, 2010-2013, Grinding My Ink (Haiku Society of America Book Award; also as a CD), This Moment, Shadow Lines (with Rich Youmans), Always Filling, Always Full, and The Smell of Rust. Her collection, What Remains: Japanese Americans in Internment Camps, was a seven-year collaboration with quilt artist Cathy Erickson, and includes poems in the voices of Japanese Americans interned during World War II. She has published poems in Prairie Schooner, Kyoto Journal, Poet Lore, America’s Review, and Runes, as well as in haiku journals around the world.
Maggie served as Poet Laureate for Friends of Chamber Music, composing poems while listening to concerts. She is currently President of the Tanka Society of America. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she teaches and gives workshops at universities, poetry societies and Zen centers. Grants from Oregon Literary Arts and the Regional Arts & Culture Council have supported collaborations with artists, musicians, photographers and dancers. See her website www.margaretchula.com.


Jim Churchill-Dicks
Holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and his work has appeared in Fire Magazine, The Other Journal, Vain Magazine, Press One Quarterly and others. His chapbook titled Beyond Telling was a semifinalist for the 2010 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Prize. His book-length collection of poetry titled Jacob Wrestling was a semifinalist for the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize in 2005. In addition to being an English Teacher at Crook County High School in Prineville, Oregon, he is the founder and editor of torches n' pitchforks; an online teen literary journal established in 2008 and most recently underwritten by The Nature of Words.


George Makana Clark
His work has appeared in O. Henry Prize Stories, The Granta Book of the African Short Story, Tin House, Ecotone, Zoetrope: All Story, Glimmer Train, Transition,the Georgia Review,theMassachusetts Review, Southern Review, Witness, theChelsea Review, the Cream City Review, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. Clark was awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship and named a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing. He teaches fiction writing and African literature at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.


Joanne M. Clarkson (1950-)
Was born and raised in Seattle, WA. She has lived in Idaho and Illinois and currently makes her home with her husband in Olympia, WA. Clarkson’s fourth collection of poems, Believing the Body, is looking for a publisher. She is the author of three previous collections (published under Joanne M. Riley): Pacing the Moon (Chantry Press), Crossing Without Daughters (March Street Press) and Earth Tones (Spring Rain Press). Clarkson has Master’s Degrees in English and in Library and Information Science. She has taught at the college level and worked as a professional librarian for many years. After caring for her mother through a long illness, she re-careered as a Registered Nurse and still works in her specialties of Hospice and Community Nursing. Clarkson’s poems appear regularly in small press publications. She is on the Board of the Olympia Poetry Network. She continues to present writing workshops and classes. She was the recipient of a “Poets in Person” grant to teach poetry in rural settings. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart prizes, most recently in 2011.

She was the Grand Prize winner in the 2013 Dancing Poetry contest sponsored by Artists Embassy International. Her poem, “Seamstress Masters Her Craft,” was performed September 14, 2013 at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Diego as part of the annual Arts Festival. Besides a cash award, she received a DVD of the performance and a certificate. Her poem was chosen from among 637 entries from 37 states and 4 countries. The dance troupe of Natica Angilly enacted the piece with elaborate costuming and lights.

Her chapbook, Believing the Body, is in print. It contains 24 poems and was edited and beautifully designed by Iris Gribble-Neal of Gribble Press in Spokane. Many of the poems are about her beloved patients and their caregivers. Several were inspired by hermentor, Jess. Some are quite personal. More details on her website: http://joanneclarkson.com/.


T. Clear


Robin Cody
Born at St. Helens and grew up in Estacada, Oregon. A graduate of Yale, he taught at the American School of Paris for a decade and was Dean of Admissions at Reed College in Portland before taking up freelance writing in 1984. While writing, he has been a baseball umpire, a basketball referee, and special ed school bus driver. Cody is the author of Ricochet River, a novel, and Voyage of a Summer Sun. With Voyage, Cody won the 1995 Oregon Book Award for literary nonfiction. His most recent book, Another Way the River Has, is a collection of short true stories.


Lyn Coffin
Lyn Coffin Widely published and award-winning poet, fiction writer, playwright, nonfiction writer, editor, teacher, and translator. Author of twenty-four books: four of poetry, one of poetry/fiction/drama, and nine of translation. Moved to Seattle area from Michigan in January 2004. Launched Hugo House's Writers and Work series spring 2004. Has written four novels, and producing a commissioned play based on the fiction of Billy Lombardo, a hot young Chicago writer. Published in Best American Short Stories 1979 and was a finalist in the Louisville Short Play competition. Recipient of an NEH grant and an International Poetry Review prize, second place winner for Porad Haiku Award, Baxter finalist, and one of three winners of the 2004 Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Award. Long time editor of The Michigan Quarterly Review. Was a WITS teacher with SAL. Her tenth book is just being published in Mongolia: her poems and that of a Mongolian poet in English and Mongolian. She has taught middle school, high school, college, university, foreign adults, adult education.

Lyn Coffin's publications include:
White Picture (Night Publishing, 2011) Translations of Czech poet, Jiří Orten
Crystals of the Unforeseen (Plain View Press, 1999) Poetry, fiction and drama
Human Trappings (Abattoir Editions) Poetry
The Poetry of Wickedness (Ithaca House) Poetry
Elegies by Jiří Orten (translation from Czech)
The Plague Column by Jaroslav Seifert (translation from Czech) Used by Nobel Committee in granting Seifert his prize.
More than One Life by Miloslava Holubova (translation from Czech)
Selected Poems of Akhmatova (translation from Russian).

Her awards include:
Recipient of an NEH grant and an International Poetry Review prize
Second place winner for Porad Haiku Award, and Bart Baxter finalist
Grants from Michigan Council of the Arts
Natl Endowment for the Humanities
First prize in Translation from Academy of American Poets (for the Orten Elegies)
The government of Georgia (the country, not the state) just awarded a monetary award of $2000 for her translations of the Georgian poet Dato Barbakadze, due out this month, with an introduction by Sam Hamill.


Rochelle S. Cohen
Born in Brooklyn, NY. She is presently Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was the recipient of the 2008 Distinguished Faculty Award. She is a neuroscientist with publications in synaptic structure and biochemistry and hormonal effects on brain and behavior. She is Guest Associate Editor of a Special Issue of Frontiers in Psychiatry: Frontiers in Synaptic Plasticity: Dendritic Spines, Circuitry and Behavior. Rochelle is presently studying the Portuguese language. Her love of marine biology is reflected in her present endeavor of writing a book of poetry about marine life and science.  She was married to the writer and artist Rex Sexton.
Recent publications in neuroscience include: Cohen, R. S. (2012) “The postsynaptic density.” In: Neuroscience in the 21st Century (Pfaff, D. W., ed.) Springer; Cohen, R. S. (2012) “Cell biology of the synapse.” In: Neuroscience in the 21st Century (Pfaff, D. W., ed.) Springer. Recent publications in poetry include:
The Avocet and Lone Stars.


Sage Cohen
An award-winning poet and essayist. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University and an MA in creative writing from New York University where she was awarded a New York Times Foundation fellowship. Moved to Portland, Oregon in 2003. She is author of the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World, published in 2007, and the nonfiction books Writing the Life Poetic and The Productive Writer, both from Writer's Digest Books. Sage's poetry, essays, fiction and articles have appeared in more than thirty journals and anthologies including Poetry Flash, Oregon Literary Review, Cup of Comfort for Writers, Greater Good, Black Lamb, blueoregon.com and VoiceCatchers. She has taught creative writing at universities, hospitals, writing conferences, and online. Sage hosts a monthly reading series at the Lloyd Center Barnes & Noble in Portland, Oregon. Her nonfiction books, Writing the Life Poetic (2009) and The Productive Writer, both from Writer's Digest Books. She offers strategies and support for writers in multiple editions of Writer's Digest magazine, Poet's Market and Writer's Market.
She also is principal of Sage Communications, a marketing communications firm serving clients such as Kaiser Permanente, Dell, Wells Fargo, and Intuit. Visit her website at http://www.sagesaidso.com/.


Don Colburn
Writer and semi-retired journalist in Portland, Oregon. He has published three collections of poetry, most recently a chapbook titled Because You Might Not Remember (Finishing Line Press, 2010). His poems have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, and won the Discovery/The Nation Award, the Finishing Line Press Prize, the Cider Press Book Award and the Duckabush Prize for Poetry. During his newspaper career, he was a reporter for The Washington Post and The Oregonian, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. He became interested in poetry while on a midcareer Knight Fellowship at Stanford University.


Lon Cole
A man of many talents and many experiences, he was born a bona fide baby boomer in the Bay Area of California. His father had the distinction of serving in both World War II and the Korean War. Service to his country being part of his heritage, Lon followed the call to serve in the Navy as a combat medic in the Vietnam War where he was decorated as a war hero for gallantry and distinguished service to his fellow soldiers. This determination to help others is reflected in the diverse and interesting career paths he has experienced, including surgical nurse, police officer, business owner and entrepreneur. His friends and colleagues know him to be a man of great wit, a happy countenance and absolute integrity.
Lon has faced many adversities in his life from a dysfunctional childhood, serious wounds from his service in Vietnam, and many medical difficulties that have challenged him throughout his life He is supported by his wife of over forty years, his two children, their spouses, and eight grandchildren with one on the way. He also leans heavily on faith in God and his resolve to serve him by helping lift the burdens of others.  Lon has also found strength in helping others by writing poems. It started after his challenging service in Vietnam and has continued to be a passion of his in an effort to lift up his family, friends and anyone who needed encouragement through his poetic words. That collection of poems is titled You Are Not Alone: Poems of Hope and Faith.
In recent years Lon was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease and has found that this challenge in his life has motivated his pen, and the poetry has flowed freely and often as he puts his feelings and efforts to lift others into his poems. Even though he may forget some things, his efforts to record his inspirations and thoughts have been more productive then ever. He loves to make people laugh, lift their spirits and make them think about what matters most. Most of all he wants people to be alive and thankful for the privileges God has given them. He currently resides in Puyallup surrounded by his family. (Written by Alonzo P. Cole lV)


Elizabeth J. Colen
Earned a BA from Georgia State University, an MA in Fiction from Western Washington University, and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Washington, where she was the recipient of the Nelson Bentley and Frederick Ingham Fellowships. She is the author of poetry collections Money for Sunsets (Steel Toe Books, 2010; finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in 2011) and Waiting Up for the End of the World: Conspiracies (Jaded Ibis Press, 2012), as well as flash fiction collection Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake (Rose Metal Press, 2011), and the forthcoming hybrid long poem / lyric essay The Green Condition (Ricochet Editions, September 2013).


Minnie Collins
Adjunct and full time professor at Seattle Central and Bellevue Community Colleges, Seattle University, and the University of Washington. She has taught writing, African American Literature and interdisciplinary learning programs called Learning Communities. Her poems and essays have been published in Crosscurrents, Washington English Journal, Washington Center News, Innovation Abstracts, and Threads. The Purple Wash is her new book.


Daniel Comiskey
Poet who lives and works in Seattle. He is a member of the Seattle Research Institute, a group of writers who collaborate on books, lectures and other projects. With Kreg Hasegawa, he edited Monkey Puzzle, a magazine of poetry and prose. He was a member of the poetry programming committee for Northwest Bookfest in 2002, and a guest curator for the Subtext Reading Series in the fall of 2003. Other past tense involvements include his work as literary manager for The Poet's Theater, which produced readings of dramatic works written by poets including John Ashbery, e.e. cummings, Joyelle McSweeney, and Frank O'Hara. He has also been involved in a series of ongoing art pranks, including the "internationally recognized" installation piece entitled "Radiator," and has collaborated with other poets on a number of works, the most recent of which is the long poem "Crawlspace," written with C.E. Putnam and forthcoming as a chapbook.


Kyle David Congdon
Northwest native has been featured on KBOO Radio’s Talking Earth He is also known for his collaborative work with Kori Sayer in their chapbook series 365 Days of Angst, and also the finale issue in their series The Diet of Wolves and Elephants. Kyle Congdon currently lives in the downtown Vancouver, WA area. His book, The Anatomy of a Stopwatch, will be released September 2011.


Brendan Constantine
Born in Los Angeles and grew up there with his sister, the children of two working actors. His parents placed great value on the arts, going so far as to name him for Irish playwright Brendan Behan. Before ultimately beginning his MFA degree at Vermont college Constantine had already toured the US and Europe, published extensively and been finalist for three major poetry awards.

His work has appeared in numerous journals, most notably Ploughshares, The Los Angeles Review, Artlife, The Cortland Review, The Cider Press Review, Directions, RUNES, StellaZine and LA Times Best-seller The Underground Guide To Los Angeles. His first official book-length collection, Letters To Guns, was released in 2009 by Red Hen Press.
He is the creator of Industrial Poetry, a workshop for adults and teens struggling with writer’s block, and is currently poet in residence at the Windward School in west Los Angeles and the Idyllwild Arts Summer Youth Writing program in Idyllwild California.
A regular participant in both the Los Angeles and Orange County Poetry Festivals, Brendan has enjoyed an active role in southern California’s poetry communities. He is a three time finalist for the National Poetry Series and in 2002 was nominated by the Poetry Super Highway for poet laureate of the state of California.

There is no single approach to poetry in Constantine’s view, no school of style. In a recent interview with G. Murray Thomas of Next Magazine, Constantine says, “Every poem is different. Every poem requires something different from its poet. When I think of it, I imagine that the poem exists as a complete but invisible impulse, an entity just outside our heads, spinning slowly or quickly in the air, until it is translated into some physical arrangement. If we get it right, it allows itself to be unspooled onto the page. Every poet is thus a translator charged with re-expressing what the phenomenal world has already expressed to us.” His web site is www.rendanconstantine.com.


Elizabeth Cook-Lynn(1930- )
Cook-Lynn, Professor Emerita from Eastern Washington University (1971-1991) and member of the Crow Creek Sioux tribe, is a poet, story-teller, literary scholar, essayist, and editor well known for her writings on the cultural history of Native Americans. After retiring from teaching, she returned to South Dakota to focus on her writing.

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn's book titles include:
I Remember the Fallen Trees: New and Selected Poems, Eastern Washington Press, 1998
Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays, University of Wisconsin Press, 1996
From the River's Edge (novel), Arcade, 1991
The Power of Horses and Other Stories (short stories), Arcade, 1990
Seek the House of Relatives (chapbook), Blue Cloud Quarterly, 1983.


Glenna Cook
Long-time resident of Northwest Washington, except for eight years spent in St. Regis, Montana, before she returned to Tacoma. She graduated from the University of Puget Sound, in 1994, at age fifty-eight, with a degree in English Literature. While there, she won the Hearst Essay award for the Humanities, and the Nixeon Handy award for poetry. She has been published in a variety of Northwest journals, including some South Sound issues of Raven Chronicles. She loves to read and play the violin.


T. L. Cooper
Strives to empower and inspire by exploring the human condition through writing. Her published books include a novel, a collection of short stories, and five books of poetry including her latest release, Vulnerability in Silhouette: Poems. She currently lives in Albany, Oregon.


Mary Cornish
Former writer and illustrator of children’s books. Studied creative non-fiction at Sarah Lawrence College and continued her studies at Stanford University on a Wallace Stegner Fellowship. Has published works in Poetry magazine, Poetry Northwest and the New England Review. She currently teaches creative writing at Western Washington University.


Brittney Corrigan
Was raised in Colorado but has called Oregon her home since 1990. She holds a degree from Reed College, where she is also employed. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and she is the author of the collection, Navigation (The Habit of Rainy Nights Press, 2012), and a chapbook, 40 Weeks, (Finishing Line Press, 2012). She is the poetry editor for the online journal Hyperlexia – poetry and prose about the autism spectrum– and lives in Portland with her husband and two children.


Kevin Craft
Born in Delaware and raised in southern New Jersey, he holds a Bachelor of Arts in both English and French from the University of Maryland, a Master of Fine Arts in English from the University of Washington. He has also studied drama at the University of Sheffield in Great Britain and romance languages at the Universitè de Perpignan in France. His poems have appeared in many reviews and journals, including Poetry, Gulf Coast, AGNI, Verse, Antioch Review, Cream City Review, Willow Springs, Pontoon, Crab Creek Review, Puerto del Sol, and Poetry Northwest. He was a book editor and contributing writer for the late great Northwest writer's periodical, Wordscape, as well as an associate poetry editor at Seattle Review. Craft was twice featured in the Mississippi Review Prize Poems of the Year (2000, 2001), was a Bread Loaf Scholar in 1996, and has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, The Bogliasco Foundation (Italy), The Camargo Foundation (France), and the Washington State Arts Commission/Artist Trust. He currently resides in Seattle and teaches English and Creative Writing at Everett Community College and at the University of Washington's Rome Center in Italy. Kevin Craft's first book of poems, Solar Prominence, won the 2004 Gorsline Prize from Cloudbank Books. In 2010 assumed editorship of Poetry Northwest. Check out his web site at http://www.geocities.com/solarpr.


Michael Earl Craig
Author of Can You Relax In My House (Fence Books, 2002), Yes, Master (Fence Books, 2006), Thin Kimono (Wave Books, 2010) and Jombang Jet, a chapbook from Factory Hollow Press (January 2012). He lives near Livingston, Montana where he works as a Certified Journeyman Farrier.


Jeff Crandall (1964-)
A Washington native, Jeff received a B.A. in Creative Writing with an emphasis on poetry from the University of Washington. In 1994 he co-founded Floating Bridge Press, a non-profit organization created to support Washington State poets. His first book of poems The Grief Pool (Firestorm Press, Seattle) won a 1999 King County Arts Commission Special Projects Award. He makes his living in Seattle as an artist combining poetic text with glass and serves as an editor for Floating Bridge Press.


Mary Eliza Crane
Mary Eliza Crane is a native of New England who began writing poetry at age fourteen. She migrated to the Pacific Northwest three decades ago and settled into the Cascade foothills east of Puget Sound. Deeply and passionately in love with the natural world and rural culture, Mary's voice lives in the understory and fog of the Snoqualmie River, her poetry a fusion of the natural, personal, and political world. A regular feature at poetry venues throughout the Puget Sound region, she has read her poetry from Woodstock to LA, including opening for Graham Nash at a benefit concert in 2012.  Mary has two volumes of poetry What I Can Hold In My Hands (Gazoobi Tales Publishing, 2009) and At First Light (Gazoobi Tales Publishing, 2011). Her work has also appeared in Raven Chronicles, The Cartier Street Review, Quill and Parchment, The Far Field, and several anthologies, including Cradle Songs: An Anthology of Poetry on Motherhood by Quill and Parchment Press which won the 2013 International Book award for Best Poetry Anthology. Mary's third volume of poetry will be published by Moon Path Press in 2016.


Tom Crawford
Author of five books of poems: If It Weren’t for Trees; Lauds (Oregon Book Award for Poetry), China Dancing, The Temple on Monday (winner of ForeWord Book of the Year Award), and Wu Wei (Milkweed Editions, 2007). Widely published in journals and anthologies, Crawford has been recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Oregon Arts Commission. For 30 years he has taught throughout the Western US as well as in the People’s Republic of China and at Chonnam National University in Kwangju, Korea. In 2008 he was Poet in Residence at Harborview Hospital in Seattle. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.


Larry Crist
Originally from California, but he also has lived in Chicago, Houston, London & Philadelphia, where he attended graduate school receiving an MFA in theatre. He has lived in Chicago, Houston, London, and Philadelphia where he attended Temple U receiving an MFA in theatre. He has lived in Seattle for the past 20 years. His work has been widely published including J. Journal, Slipstream, Alimentum, Bloodroot, Hawaii Review, Dos Passo Review, and Pontoon Floating Bridge Press Review and he has had three Pushcart nominations. He dabbles in theatre and has appeared in well over 100 productions. His poem “Tuba Man” is published in Jack Straw Writers Anthology, 2013. Undertow Overtures (2014) is Larry’s first poetry collection, and is available through Amazon.


Clark Crouch (1928 - )
Clark Crouch Clark Crouch, western and cowboy poet of Woodenville, Washington, delivers the reality of the west through his original poetry. Born in rural Nebraska in 1928, he worked as a cowboy from the age of twelve until he was nearly eighteen. His poetry is drawn from that personal experience, capturing the humor and the pathos of the west of yesterday and today. Inspired by a 1940's acquaintance with Badger Clark, the classic western poet who was then Poet Laureate of South Dakota, he wrote his first cowboy poem in 1941. Sixty years later his interest was revived by meeting Sherman Alexie, the Native American author. As a result, he has been professionally writing poetry since 2002 and performing in a variety of Northwestern venues since 2004.

Current poems not yet published in book format appear on his web site at http://poetlariat.org. In addition to his own books, his poetry has been published in Open Range Magazine, Country Register, Tri-City Herald, Everett Herald, Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, Chopin with Cherries: a tribute in verse (anthology), In the Voices of Children, and Thirteenth as well as on numerous web sites. He is a member of PoetsWest and the Western Music Association.

Author/Editor of thirteen books of poetry, all in commercial distribution internationally:
Western Viewpoints (Editor…an anthology featuring sixteen cowboy poets, 2014
Prairie Knights (in press, 2014
Rustic Ruminations, 2013
Poetic Reflections at the Creekside (Editor…an anthology featuring thirty contemporary poets., Creekside Poetry Publications, 2013
Thirty: poems from The Country Register, 2004-2009 (2012)
Harkin Home (Foreword by Brian Crane, creator of the Pickles cartoon strip, 2010)
Views from the Saddle with Foreword by Richard W. Slatta, PhD., Western Poetry Publications, 2009. Winner of the 2010 Will Rogers Medallion Award for Cowboy poetry, 2009)
Eight Viewpoints: Editor an anthology featuring eight contemporary poets, Western Poetry Publications, 2009
Western Images, Western Poetry Publications, 2007. Winner of the 2007 Will Rogers Medallion Award for cowboy poetry
Where Horses Reign, CD by Ediger Media, 2004
Sun, Sand & Soapweed (print and ebook editions), Western Poetry Publications, 2005
Where Horses Reign (print and ebook editions), Western Poetry Publications, 2004
Reflections: a second poetic journal of life, attitude, and remembrance, iUniverse, 2003
Voices of the Wind: a poetic journal of life, attitude, and remembrance, Writer's Club Press, 2002.

Website home: http://crouchnet.com
Website: http://poetlariat.org
Website: http://westernpoetry.org
Website: http://creeksiders.org
Email: cecrouch@live.com
Weblog: weblog.crouchnet.com


Lorna Crozier (1948- )
Born in Saskatchewan, Lorna Crozier lives on Vancouver Island and teaches writing at the University of Victoria where she is Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Writing. In 2004, she received an Honourary Doctorate from the University of Regina for her contribution to Canadian literature. In 2007, she received one from the University of Saskatchewan. Her poems have been translated into several languages and she has read her work in Canada, South Africa, Australia, Malaysia, Europe, and Chile, as well as a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II.

She also devotes herself to mentoring other poets, giving workshops across the globe, and is an activist for social causes, with benefit readings for organizations such as the British Columbia Land Conservancy and PEERS, a group committed to helping prostitutes get off the streets.

Her publications include:
The Blue Hour of the Day (2007) poems (selected by London's Times Literary Supplement as a notable book of 2007)
Whetstone (2005) poetry
Bones in Their Wings: Ghazals (2003) poems
Apocrypha of Light (2002) poems
Addicted: Notes for the Belly of the Beast (2001) essays co-edited with Patrick Lane.
Desire in Seven Voices (Douglas & McIntyre, 1999) essays editor.
Her tenth book of poetry, What the Living Won't Let Go (McClelland & Stewart, 1999) received the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award for the best book of poetry in B.C. that year.
Everything Arrives at the Light, received the Pat Lowther Award for 1995, and a selection of poems from that collection was awarded the National Magazine Gold Medal.
Inventing the Hawk (1992) received all three of Canada's national poetry awards: the Governor General's Award, the Pat Lowther Award for the Best Book of Poetry by a Canadian Woman, and the Canadian Authors' Association Award for poetry.

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Sharon Cumberland
After a career in New York as an arts manager, working for the Lincoln Center Theater Company and the Metropolitan Opera, she became an educator, teaching in the New York City public school system before earning a Ph.D. in English from the City University of New York. She has lived in Seattle since 1994. Has been writing poetry since 1983, and has published in a wide variety of magazines and journals, including Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Verse. Her poems have been nominated three times for Pushcart Prizes, and her full-length manuscript, Peculiar Honors, has been a finalist in several publication competitions, coming in second for the Whitman Award in 1995. In 1998 she was awarded the Sue Saniel Elkind Award by Kalliope: a Journal of Women's Arts for her poem "Before," and in 2005 her poem “Runaway” won first prize in the Writer’s Haven Bright Side competition. Her first chapbook, The Arithmetic of Mourning, was published in 1998 by Green Rock Press, and her second chapbook, Sharon Cumberland: Greatest Hits 1985-2000, was published by Pudding House Press in 2002. She had recently completed her first novel. She is now Director of Creative Writing at Seattle University. Black Heron Press will publish her book Peculiar Honors in 2011.


Laura Da'
A poet and public school teacher. A lifetime resident of the Pacific Northwest, Da' studied creative writing at the University of Washington and the Institute of American Indian Arts. Da' is an enrolled member of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. Her first chapbook, The Tecumseh Motel, was published in Effigies II. The University of Arizona Press will publish her first full-length manuscript, Tributaries, in 2015. Da' lives near Seattle with her husband and son.


Nancy Dahlberg
Nancy Dahlberg is a Seattle poet with roots in Chicago, Houston, and Eugene, OR . She has a BFA in studio art from the University of Chicago and an MA in creative writing from the University of Houston. She has read at many poetry venues in the Seattle area and her poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies—most recently in Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer's Disease (Kent State University Press, 2009) and Many Trails to the Summit (Rose Alley Press, 2010) as well as in Seattle's Poetry on Buses 2015. Other journals include Shenandoah, Northwest Review, CALYX, PoetsWest, Fireweed, Stringtown, and Poets Table Anthology, A Collection of Poetry by Northwest Poets. She has served on the editorial board of Northwest Review, serves on the advisory board of PoetsWest and is a past board member of the Washington Poets Association. Nancy lives in Ballard and is an active member of the Poets Table group. 


Michael Daley (1947- )
Born on March 25, 1947 in Boston, Massachusetts. He later took vows and prepared to become a Catholic priest. Upon leaving religious life, he was wild in the streets, protesting wars and seeking a life of experience. He holds a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts and an M.F.A. from the University of Washington. His poems have appeared inAmerican Poetry Review, Hudson Review, Ploughshares, New England Review, Rhino, North American Review, Writers Almanac, Raven Chronicles, Seattle Review, Jeopardy, Prairie Schooner, Cirque, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cascadia Review, and elsewhere. He is the founding editor of Empty Bowl Press, publisher of the Dalmo’ma series of anthologies among other titles; former Poet-in-Residence for the Washington State Arts Commission, the Skagit River Poetry Foundation, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and a retired English Instructor for Mount Vernon High School.  His reviews and essays have appeared in Pacific Northwest Review of Books, Raven Chronicles, Port Townsend Leader, and Book/Mark Quarterly Review. In addition to seven chapbooks, he has published three full-length collections of his poetry: The Straits, To Curve, Moonlight in the Redemptive Forest, and a book of essays: Way Out There/Lyrical Essays. He has been awarded by the Washington State Arts Commission, Seattle Arts Commission, Artist Trust, Fulbright, and the National Endowment of the Humanities; recently, Pleasure Boat Studio published his translation of Alter Mundus by Italian poet Lucia Gazzino. Of a Feather has just been published by Empty Bowl of Port Townsend, a division of Jack Estes’ Pleasure Boat Studio, New York City. See https://mdaleybooksbioreadings.wordpress.com/

Michael Daley's publications include:
Of a Feather, Empty Bowl Press, 2015
Alter Mundus, Translation of Lucia Gazzino's collection, Pleasure Boat Studio, 2013
Frankie the Milkman's Song CD, Old Dog New Trick, 2010
Moonlight in the Redemptive Forest, Pleasure Boat Studio, 2010
To Curve,Word Press, 2008
Way Out There (lyrical essays), Aequitas, New York, 2007
Rosehip Plum Cherry,Woodworks, 2002
Horace, Eleven Odes,
Brooding Heron, 2000
The Corn Maiden
, Tangram, 2000
Horace: Eleven Odes, translation, Brooding Heron Press, 2000
Original Sin, Pleasure Boat Studio, 2000
Yes, Five Poems, Sagittarius, 1988
Angels, Blue Begonia Press, 1986
Amigos, Empty Bowl Press, 1985
The Straits, Empty Bowl Press, 1983.

Michael's poetry and prose have appeared in American Poetry Review, Cumberland Review, Graham House Review, Tampa Review, Crab Creek Review, The Hudson Review, Manoa, Ploughshares, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner, Margin, Jeopardy, Kansas Quarterly, The Nebraska Review, Alaska Quarterly, Raven Chronicles, Litrag, The Temple, The Seattle Review, and other regional and national publications. One of his poems was selected for the Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry for 1995/1996. Pleasure Boat Studio has featured some of Michael's poems and essays and links to articles at www.pleasureboatstudio.com.


Hank Davis (1949- )
Was born in Cleveland, Ohio and grew up in Mentor on the Lake, then mostly summer cottages tucked into the woods along Lake Erie. Earned a B.A. in Ethnopoetics from Oberlin College where he studied poetry with David Young and an M.A. in Folklore and Linguistics from Indiana University.
While raising three children, Hank taught English in Brazil and worked as a technical writer in Chicago and Seattle. In recent years, he has returned to performing as a poet and acoustic guitarist at various local venues, including a workshop at last year's Northwest Folklife Festival.


Christine Deavel
Christine Deavel has B.A. in English from Indiana University and M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Iowa. She was the co-editor of Fine Madness magazine from 1988 to 1998, and, since 1989, has been the working co-owner (with John Marshall) of Open Books: A Poem Emporium from 1989 to present. She has published poetry in American Poetry Review, Poetry East, Poetry Northwest, Fence, and other literary magazines around the country. Woodnote (Bear Star Press) is Christine Deavel's debut collection and winner of the 2011 Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize and a Washington State Book Award in 2012. She has given readings locally at Red Sky Poetry Theater, It's About Time Reading Series, Seattle Poetry Slam, Blue Moon Tavern, and other local venues. She is 2001 co-recipient of the Faith Beamer Cooke Award from the Washington Poets Association.


Madeline DeFrees (1919- )
Born in Ontario, Oregon, she was educated at Marylhurst College (B.A. in 1948) and the University of Oregon (M.A. in Journalism in 1951). She studied poetry briefly with Karl Shapiro, Robert Fitzgerald and John Berryman. A former Roman Catholic nun with the Catholic Congregation of Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, her poetry was first published under the name of Sister Mary Gilbert. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry. She was a good friend and colleague of Richard Hugo and also taught English and Journalism at the University of Montana in Missoula from 1967 until 1979. She then was professor of English and director of the M.F.A. program in creative writing at the University of Massaachusetts, Amherst. until she retired and returned to the Northwest. Since she retired in 1985, she’s held residencies at Bucknell University, Eastern Washington University, and Wichita State University. She also received the 2002 PoetsWest Lifetime Achievement Award. Madeline DeFrees will be inducted into the 2013 Hall of Achievement at the University of Oregon on November 1, 2013. Poet and essayist Anne McDuffie, her literary executor, maintains a web site for Madeline DeFrees at www.madelinedefrees.com.

Madeline DeFrees has published two chapbooks and eight full-length poetry collections, including:
Spectral Waves: New & Uncollected Poems,Copper Canyon Press, 2006
Blue Dusk,Copper Canyon Press, 2001 Winner of 2002 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
Double Dutch, chapbook, Red Wing Press, 1999
Possible Sibyls, Lynx House Press, 1991
Imaginary Ancestors, Broken Moon Press, 1990
Magpie on the Gallows, Copper Canyon Press, 1982
When Sky Lets Go, George Braziller, 1978
From the Darkroom (published under the name of Sister Mary Gilbert), Bobbs-Merrill, 1964.


Oliver de la Paz
Born in Manila, Philippines, he received his MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University. Oliver de la Paz is the author of four collections of poetry, Names Above Houses, a book of his prose and verse, was a winner of the 2000 Crab Orchard Award Series, Furious Lullaby (Southern Illinois Press, 2001, 2007), Requiem for the Orchard (University of Akron Press, 2010), winner of the Akron Prize for poetry, and Post Subject: A Fable (U. Akron Press, 2014). De la Paz is the co-editor with Stacey Lynn Brown of A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (University of Akron Press, 2012). He co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Poetry and serves on the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Board. A recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship Award and a GAP Grant from Artist Trust, he has written works published in such journals as the Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Chattahoochee Review, and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. He teaches in the MFA Program at Western Washington University in Bellingham. For more information, check www.oliverdelapaz.com.


Tom A. (TA) Delmore
A published poet living in Bellevue, Washington. Tom’s first book of poetry: Eclipsing F Crow Poems was published in 1996 by Little Letterhead Press. His second book of poetry was published by Moon Pie Press: Child is working to Capacity in 2006. Tom’s third book of poetry, A Poultice for Belief, was published in September of 2009 by March Street Press. Published December 2011 by Moon Pie Press: Tell them that you saw me but you didn’t see me saw.

Individual poems have been published in: Raven Chronicles: “Dying Grackle,” “Dad’s Rosary” Stet: “In a Haze” Seattle M.E.N. Magazine: “Dad’s Bread Bowl-Ceramic,” “Learning the Trick of Quiet (The Open Prairie, 1870’s)” “Martha Washington’s,” “A Dad Thing,” “Questions to a Panhandler,” “Carcass,” “Mumbly Peg” Penwood Review: “Lake City Tribe” Addiction Quarterly Review: “Korean War Memorial” Drash Magazine: “Noah Worries” was published in May 2008 New Vilna Review: “Jacob’s Analyst”, and “Son of Laughter” February 2011.


Risa Denenberg
An aging hippie poet currently living in the Pacific Northwest. She earns her keep as a nurse practitioner and freelance medical writer. She is a moderator at The Gazebo, an online poetry board and reviews poetry for the American Journal of Nursing. Along with Mary Meriam and Jessica McFadden, she is a mistress at Headmistress Press, dedicated to publishing fine lesbian poetry. She has two chapbooks, what we owe each other (2013, The Lives You Touch Publications) and Blinded by Clouds (forthcoming, 2014, Hyacinth Girls Press) and a full-length volume of poems, Mean Distance from the Sun (2013, Aldrich Press). More information about Risa can be found here: http://risadenenberg.blogspot.com/ and https://risadenaday.wordpress.com/.


Susan Denning
Her work has appeared in Filter, New York Quarterly, Quick Fiction and elsewhere. Her chapbook, She Preferred to Read The Knives, is available from Dancing Girl Press. Her second chapbook, How to Live Forever, is forthcoming in the fall of 2014. She lives in Portland.


Alice Derry
Derry was born in Oregon and raised in Washington and Montana. Her M.F.A. is from Goddard College (now Warren Wilson). , and an M.A. in English from American University in Washington, D.C. Derry has won a number of prizes, and her poems have been widely published in anthologies. After twenty-nine years teaching English and German at Peninsula College in Port Angeles on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, she retired in 2009. She was a major force in conceiving and directing the college's Foothills Writers' Series from 1980 to 2009. Her fourth full collection of poems, Tremolo, was published by Red Hen Press in 2012. Her website is alicederry.com

Alice Derry's publications include:
Translations from the German poet Rainer Rilke (chapbook), Pleasure Boat Studio, 2002
Strangers to Their Courage, Louisiana University Press, 2001, (finalist for 2002 WA Book Award)
Clearwater, Blue Begonia Press, 1997
Not as You Once Imagined (chapbook), Trask House Books, Portland OR, 1993
Getting Used to the Body (chapbook), Sagittarius Press, Port Townsend WA, 1989
Stages of Twilight, Breitenbush Books, Portland, 1986 (King County Arts Publication winner)


Carol Despeaux
Earned her MFA degree from Goddard College. She is an award-winning poet whose work has appeared in many journals. In 2012, she won second place in nonfiction at the Surrey International Writer's Conference and first place for her memoir, Runner Between Worlds, at the Pacific NW Writer's Conference where she was also a finalist in poetry. In the same year, she won 8th place in poetry in the Writer's Digest Annual Competition for her poem "Prayer for Mother." In 2011, she won second place in poetry at the Surrey International Writer's Conference. She has been an assistant and lead editor for the Pitkin Review and co-editor for Jeopardy. In 2006, she received a poetry grant from Return to Creativity. She also co-writes a blog for writers at www.OneWildWord.com, is currently working on an urban fantasy novel, and continues to write poetry. She lives in Poulsbo.


Bhikshu Dharmamitra
A Chinese-tradition translator-monk and one of the earliest American disciples (since 1968) of the late Weiyang Ch’an patriarch, Dharma teacher, and exegete, the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua. He has a total of 23 years in robes during two periods as a monastic (1969 to 1975; 1991 to the present).
Dharmamitra’s principal educational foundations as a translator lie in four years of intensive monastic training and Chinese-language study of classic Mahayana texts in a small-group setting under Master Hua from 1968–1972, undergraduate Chinese language study at Portland State University, a year of intensive one-on-one Classical Chinese study at the Fu Jen University Language Center near Taipei, and two years at the University of Washington’s School of Asian Languages and Literature (1988–90).
Since taking robes again under Master Hua in 1991, Dharmamitra has devoted his energies primarily to study and translation of classic Mahayana texts with a special interest in works by Arya Nagarjuna and related authors. To date, he has translated approximately 25 translations of Chinese Buddhist Canonical Texts, most of which originated from Sanskrit, and most of them are being published by Kalavinka Press www.kalavinkapress.org.
Publication with a non-commercial press stewarded by the monastic Sangha ensures that the more abstruse titles won't go out of print simply because they don't cater to mass appeal while also ensuring that these sacred scriptures may always be freely available in ebook format easily distributed world-wide.


Olivia Diamond
Olivia DiamondAn Illinois native, Olivia Diamond is a poet, novelist, essayist, and short story writer living in Whitefish, Montana. She received a B.A. from Northern Illinois University (1969) and M.A. in English from the University of Missouri-Columbia (1972). She taught English as a second language in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for two years. She has written two books of narrative poetry: Women at the Well (American Studies Press, 1989) and Land of the Four Quarters: A Poetic History of the Incas (Northwoods Press, 1994). She has written a series of personal poems centered on Edith Sitwell's life. Geography of My Bones (Helm Publishing of Rockford, IL, 2004) is an extensive collection of her poetry. Active for years in poetry readings, she also was editor of The Rockford Review from 1988-90. Her short stories and poems have been widely published in small magazines and journals throughout the country, including Amelia, Raccoon, Haight Ashbury Review, Tamaqua, Bellowing Ark, and in Concert at Chopin's House (New Rivers Press, 1987). She is a featured writer in the Rockford Literary Anthology 2000, Confluence. Her novel, The Wheels of Being, and collection of stories, The Cat Who Would Be a Woman, are all available on Kindle. Her poetry books on Kindle are Playground, Please Trespass Here, Novenas for Grandmother, Geography of My Bones, Women at the Well, Land of the Four Quarters. Her latest book is a biography of Saul Alinsky in verse, Be Thou a Man, and is also available on Kindle. Three of her books, Women at the Well, The Pluperfect Phantom and Blue Angel are available at www.authorhouse.com/BookStore/ or through her website at www.mountainofdreams.com. Take a look at her blog http://oliviadiamond.wordpress.com.


Natalie Diaz
A Mojave and Pima tribe member, she was born and raised on the banks of the Colorado River in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Best of the West, The Speed Chronicles, and Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas. After playing professional basketball in Europe and Asia for several years, she completed a poetry and fiction MFA at Old Dominion University. She lives in Mohave Valley, Arizona, and directs a language revitalization program with the last Elder speakers of the Mojave language. Her first book, When My Brother Was an Aztec, a fast-paced tour of Mojave life and family narrative, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2012. She was awarded the Bread Loaf 2012 Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry, the 2012 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Literature Fellowship, a 2012 Lannan Residency, as well as a 2012 Lannan Literary Fellowship, and she won a Pushcart Prize in 2013. She was awarded the 2012 Narrative Prize for her poem “Downhill Triolets” http://www.narrativemagazine.com/authors/natalie-diaz.


Efrain Diaz-Horna
Peruvian by birth, has been writing poetry, painting and drawing since his childhood days. His poetry has been published in Expreso, The Oregonian, The Hispanic News, The National Catholic Reporter, and several newsletters. Efrain has been a member of the Oregon Council for the Humanities, The Regional Arts and Culture Council, the Oregon United Nations Association, the Silverton Poetry Association, the Oregon Poetry Association, the Instituto de Cultura Oregoniana, and has chaired the Oregon Hispanic Commission.

He is the author of the following poetry books The Many Faces of
Love (1983), Aire, agua y cenizas (2011), Cuatro poemas (2011), The Anvil of God (2011), and the Life of Oceans (2014).


Dana Dickerson
Grew up in Seattle. He spent his summers with family on the Colville reservation. He graduated from the Creative Writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM, where he received a scholarship to attend the Naropa University summer writing program. In 2001, he graduated from the Evergreen State College. His poetry appears in Volt, microliterature, New Poets of the American West and Raven Chronicles. He lives in Olympia.


Matthew Dickman
From Portland, Oregon, he is the author of All-American Poem, which won the 2008 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, the May Sarton poetry prize from the American Academy of Arts and Science, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Dickman's latest collection, The End of the West, was released in April 2009. His poems, which reflect his affinity for Portland, Oregon and the Lent district where he grew up, have appeared in a wide range of publications, including The New Yorker and Tin House. He has received several fellowships for his work; Dickman has been profiled in Poets & Writers and the New Yorker with his twin brother, poet Michael Dickman.

Michael Dickman
His first collection is The End of the West. Dickman has received several fellowships, including a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton for 2009-2010, and he won the 2008 Narrative Prize. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Tin House, Narrative Magazine and others. He has been profiled in The New Yorker and Poets & Writers with his twin brother, poet Matthew Dickman. Matthew Dickman was a guest author at The Nature of Words' 2009 literary festival.

The Dickmans are twin nephews of Sharon Olds, both won the University of Oregon's Kidd Prize in poetry and Poetry Fellowships by Oregon Literary Arts. They are also actors who appear in the Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report with Tom Cruise.


Mike Dillon
Grew up on Bainbridge Island and lives in Indianola in Kitsap County with his wife, the painter Sydni Sterling. Is former publisher of Pacific Publishing Company in Seattle, which owns and operates community newspapers, including the Queen Anne & Magnolia News. His poems and haiku appear widely in the small press world. His fourth book of poems, Coracle, was published in 2011 by Bellowing Ark Press. He is the author of a book of haiku, The Road Behind, from Red Moon Press, and two other books of longer poems, Riverbank and That Which Is Named, both from Bellowing Ark Press. He has been a regular contributor to Modern Haiku for the past two decades. His haiku appear in Haiku in English, the First Hundred Years, published by W.W. Norton, and in contingencies published by Red Moon Press. His journalism has received numerous awards, including first place in the social issues category from the Society of Professional Journalists for a three-part series on sexual abuse.


Rachel Dilworth
Her first book, The Wild Rose Asylum: Poems of the Magdalen Laundries of Ireland (University of Akron Press) won the 2008 Akron Poetry Prize, chosen by Rita Dove. Her poems have appeared in TriQuarterly, AGNI Online, American Literary Review, Chautauqua, Spoon River Poetry Review, Southern Indiana Review, Bay Nature, on KUOW radio, and elsewhere. A finalist for the 2010 Shenandoah/Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, Rachel has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Ireland for creative writing, a Jack Straw Writers residency, Lyric Poetry Review’s Lyric Family Prize, commendation in the UK National Poetry Competition, Yale’s Clapp Fellowship for poetry, a Dorothy Prize, and other awards. Rachel grew up in Tacoma and continues to make the Puget Sound region her home.


Danika Dinsmore
Danika is a writer, performer, educator, and literary activist. She holds a B.A. and teaching credential in English from California Lutheran University and an M.F.A. in Writing and Poetics from The Naropa University in Boulder, CO. She has performed and conducted poetry workshops at multiple venues throughout the Pacific Northwest. In 2000, she assisted in organizing an international poetry festival in Prague, CZ. She is the co-founder and former executive director of the Northwest SPokenword LAB (SPLAB) in Auburn, Washington and the former director of the 2001 and 2002 annual Seattle Poetry Festivals while serving as Executive Director of Eleventh Hour Productions. She lives in Vancouver, Canada where she facilitates creative writing workshops.

Her publications include:
Her Red Book, En Theos Press, Seattle, 2004
Every Day Angels and Other Near Death Experiences, En Theos Press, Seattle, 2002
The 3:15 Experiment, The Owl Press, Woodacre, CA 2001
all over the road, spokenword CD, En Theos Productions, Seattle, 2000
SPLAB Poetry Curriculum Guide for Teachers, It Plays in Peoria Press, Auburn, WA, 1998
traffic, It Plays in Peoria Press, Auburn, WA, 1997.

Her awards include:
Jack Straw Writers Program, 2001
Bart Baxter Award for Performance Poetry, Washington Poets Association, 1999
King County Arts Commission Grant, 1997-1998.


Pamela Moore Dionne
Pamela is a poet/writer/visual artist, whose poetry and fiction have won awards and published nationally. Pamela was the creator and MC of the Second Sunday Poetry Series in Bremerton, Washington. Her poetry has appeared locally in PoetsWest, Synapse, Raven Chronicles.


Ed Dorn (1929-1999)
Ed Dorn was born in rural Illinois, educated at the University of Illinois, and studied under Charles Olson at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. He moved around a lot and his connections with the Pacific Northwest included a stint in the early 1950s living in Washington and working for Boeing before moving to Pocatello, Idaho where he taught at the University of Idaho. From 1965 to 1970 he was a lecturer at the University of Essex. While in England, he met his second wife, film-maker Jennifer Dunbar. In 1967 he began a twelve-year collaboration with Gordon Brotherston in translating the works of Native American poets in both Latin America and North America. Dorn moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1977 to teach Creative Writing at the University of Colorado. The translations then continued on both sides of the Atlantic. The collection, including original text, was published in 1999 as The Sun Unwound. Dorn and his wife, Jennifer Dunbar, also started Rolling Stock, a literary newspaper. Dorn produced some thirty books of poetry and prose, including the works on Native Americans. His long poem, Gunslinger, came out in four books between 1968 and 1971 and is considered one of the most important "Western" epic poems. (In 1975 it was published in a single volume as Slinger.) One of his later works, Abhorrences (1990), is an irreverent, and even savage, look at the decade of the eighties.


Mark Doty
Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008. His eight books of poems include School of the ArtsSource, and My Alexandria. He has also published four volumes of nonfiction prose: Still Life with Oysters and LemonHeaven’s CoastFirebird and Dog Years, which was a New York Times bestseller in 2007. The Art of Description, a handbook for writers, appeared in 2011.Doty’s work has been honored by the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers Award, two Lambda Literary Awards and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. He is the only American poet to have received the T.S. Eliot Prize in the U.K., and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ingram Merrill and Lila Wallace/Readers Digest foundations, and from the National Endowment for the Arts. Doty lives with his partner in New York City and in the hamlet of The Springs in East Hampton.


Brian Doyle
Edits University of Portland's Portland Magazine, "the best university magazine in America", according to Newsweek, and “the best spiritual magazine in the country,” according to author Annie Dillard. Doyle has authored ten books: five collections of essays, two nonfiction books (The Grail and The Wet Engine), two collections of “proems,” most recently Thirsty for the Joy: Australian & American Voices (published in Australia); and the novel Mink River, published by Oregon State University Press. Doyle is a four time finalist for the Oregon Book Award, his essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion, The American Scholar, and in newspapers and magazines around the world. His essays have been reprinted in the annual Best American Essays, Best American Science & Nature Writing, and Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies. Honors for his work include two Pushcart Prizes and a 2008 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.


Barbara Drake (1939- )
Writes poetry and prose. Among other works she is the author of Peace at Heart: an Oregon Country Life, a memoir published by Oregon State University Press, and Writing Poetry, a widely used college textbook published by Thomson/Heinle Publishers (formerly by Harcourt Brace), which has been in print since 1983. Drake has also had several collections of poetry published by literary presses, including What We Say to Strangers, Love at the Egyptian Theatre, Life in a Gothic Novel, and Small Favors. Driving 100, her 7th collection was published by Fairweather Books, an imprint of Bedbug Press.

Drake's writing has appeared in anthologies such as Poets on Place (U. of Utah Press), The Plain Truth of Things (Harper Collins), The Sumac Reader (Michigan State University Press), The New Geography of Poets (U. of Arkansas Press), American Sports Poems (Orchard Books), Third Coast Fiction Anthology (Wayne State Press), The Prescott Street Reader, Varieties of Hope (prose) and From Here We Speak (poetry), (Oregon State University Press), and others. Her poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in many literary magazines. She has been the recipient of a Northwest Arts Foundation grant, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the Edith Green Distinguished Professor Award. Peace at Heart was an Oregon Book Award finalist in 1999.

After completing her B.A. and M.F.A. at the University of Oregon, she lived in Michigan for sixteen years, and taught at Michigan State University before returning to Oregon in 1983. Drake taught in the English department at Linfield College from 1983 to 2007 and is now Linfield Professor Emerita. She has also taught as a visiting writer at Whitman College, Lewis and Clark College, Willamette University, and Pacific University. Besides creative writing she has taught Irish literature, environmental literature, and a travel course, American Expatriate Writers in Europe.

Barbara Drake and her husband live on a small farm in the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range where they raise wine grapes and Romney sheep and enjoy introducing their grandchildren to the country life. Besides writing and teaching college, her interests include photography, travel, art, and long walks with their border collies. She also enjoys giving readings of her work. Contact: bdrake@linfield.edu or bdrake1@verizon.net.


Irene Drennan (1922-2008)
Was born in NYC; studied art at Albright Knox School of Fine Art Buffalo and the Buffalo Institute of Art; began to write and read in Greenwich village coffee houses & saloons during the Beat Period.  Moved to Bremerton in the 1960s, founded & led the Sons & Daughters of Dementia Workshop; author of Grass Stained Gold, Acid Rain & Other Voices (awarded the Louisa Kern Foundation grant); directed/produced radio show, Zounds (poetry & sound) on KRAB. She has two videos, Irene Drennan, City Poet & an autobiographical video in the Evergreen College Archives. Books of poetry: There Ain’t No Music on the A Train & A Longer Look is Needed Now, Acid Rain and Other Voices, published in The Duckabush Journals, the anthology Seattle Five Plus One, Raven Chronicles, Vermont Free Press, N.O.W., the Gray Panthers, and in Red Sky Morning, a 2004 chapbook published on the 24th anniversary of Red Sky Poetry Theatre.


Denise duMaurier
Born in Pennsylvania and educated in England. Graduate of The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, MN. Denise duMaurier worked as a stage actor for more than 50 years. Her latest book, Follow Me Down, poems of remembrance and aging, were mostly written in Minneapolis, MN, before moving in 2010 to Bellingham, WA. Her preferred style of poetry is the narrative form.


William Dunlop (1936-2005)
Poet and English scholar born Southampton, England 5 July 1936. He received his education at Eastbourne College, with the Gordon Highlanders, and at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he edited the magazine Granta. In 1962 he came to Seattle to work with Theodore Roethke. For many years he was soccer correspondent and opera critic for the Seattle Weekly. Instructor in English, University of Washington 1962-66, Assistant Professor 1966-73, Associate Professor 1973-2001. In 1997 Rose Alley Press published his first book, Caruso for the Children, & Other Poems. Died Seattle 20 October 2005.


Heidi Durrow
Grew up as a child of two cultures and languages: African-American and Danish. Her debut novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, received Barbara Kingsolver’s 2008 Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change, and was named one of the best novels of 2010 by the Washington Post, a Top 10 Book of 2010 by The Oregonian, and a Top 10 Debut of 2010 by Booklist. Durrow, originally from Portland, Ore., is a former corporate attorney, a former journalist, a former Life Skills trainer for NBA and NFL athletes, a podcaster and a festival producer.


Bobbi Dykema, Ph.D.
Was born and raised in rural North Dakota, and has called Minneapolis, Berkeley, and Seattle home. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Hawk Prairie Anthology (2009) and The Magdalene’s Notebook (2006), both from Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has received numerous awards, and her publication credits include Kalliope, Ruah, The Chaffin Journal and The Litchfield Review. Bobbi recently completed her Ph.D. in Art and Religion at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley with a dissertation on early Lutheran propaganda, and has several academic publications to her credit on images of Mary Magdalene in visual art.


Margaret Slavin Dyment (1939- )
The publications of this Canadian poet and fiction writer include Drawing the Spaces (fiction from Orca Press, 1994), Tracing a Line (poetry from Ekstasis, 1994), and I Didn't Get Used to It (poetry from Ouroboros, 1983). Dyment was born in Indian Head, SK. and grew up in Belleville, ON. Her undergraduate degree is from Queen's University in Kingston, ON, and she holds master's degrees in French Literature from Queen's, and in English Literature from the University of Waterloo, ON. Her poetry has been published in literary magazines and anthologies, and in Quaker publications. She teaches creative writing with her company, Write Away! Courses & Manuscripts Website: http://www.nexicom.net/~writeaway.

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