Northwest Voices Archive

NW Voices Winter 2025 Presents, Jane Wong

Jane Wong is the author of the memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023), winner of the Washington State book award. She also wrote two poetry collections:  How to Not Be Afraid of Everything  (Alice James, 2021) and Overpour (Action Books, 2016). She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room, Artist Trust, Hedgebrook, Ucross, Loghaven, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and others. An interdisciplinary artist as well, she has exhibited her poetry installations and performances at the Frye Art Museum, Richmond Art Gallery, and the Asian Art Museum. She grew up in a take-out restaurant on the Jersey shore and is an Associate Professor at Western Washington University.

NW Voices Winter 2025 Presents, Poet Peter Ludwin (Canceled)

Inspired by poets as diverse as Theodore Roethke, Federico García Lorca and Robert Wrigley, Peter Ludwin is drawn to physical and spiritual aspects of the natural world, different cultures, history and the quality of being alive in the moment. He has found richness especially in the American West and the celebratory cultures of Greece and Mexico. The recipient of a Literary Fellowship from Artist Trust, the W.D. Snodgrass Award for Endeavor and Excellence in Poetry and the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award for his poem “Wolf Concerto,” he also won the 2024 Trail to Table Editors’ Award in Poetry for his newest collection, An Altar of Tides.

Kimberly King Parsons

Kimberly King Parsons is the author of the national bestselling novel We Were the Universe, a Dakota Johnson Book Club pick the New York Times calls “a profound, gutsy tale of grief’s dismantling power.” Parsons’s story collection, Black Light, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Story Prize. A recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and Columbia University, Parsons won the 2020 National Magazine Award for Foxes, a story published in The Paris Review. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her partner and children.

Watch the Recorded Presentation

Rene Denfeld

Rene Denfeld is the award-winning, bestselling author of four novels, The Enchanted, The Child Finder, The Butterfly Girl, and Sleeping Giants. Her writing has been praised by Margaret Atwood as “astonishing.”  

Rene’s novels are influenced by her work as a licensed death row investigator. She is the past Chief Investigator for a public defenders and has worked hundreds of cases, including exonerations and helping rape trafficking victims. The survivor of a difficult background, Rene regularly speaks on social justice issues, as well as writing and overcoming trauma.

In 2017 The New York Times named Rene a hero of the year and she was awarded the Break The Silence Award in Washington, DC. Her novels have received many prestigious literary awards, including a French Prix, an ALA Medal for Excellence in Fiction, a Carnegie Listing, a listing for the International Dublin Literary Award, and she was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She lives in Portland, Oregon, where she is the happy parent of kids from foster care.

Dayle Olson

Dayle Olson is a poet and short fiction writer living in Cathlamet, WA. Her pocket zines feature poetry and drawings inspired by life on the Lower Columbia. Her work appears in The Salal Review, RAIN Magazine, Litmora Literary Magazine, Thin Veil Press, And Other Poems, Timber Ghost Press, and North Coast Squid, among others. She is a frequent book review contributor to the Columbia River Reader. Dayle’s writing community includes WordFest of Longview, The Writer’s Guild of Astoria, and Willamette Writers, Portland. Along with hosting a quarterly poetry open mic at River Mile 38 brew pub in Cathlamet, she enjoys teaching poetry zine workshops, and popping into Mark Morris High School and Wahkiakum High School to talk about poetry. Dayle has compiled her first chapbook collection of poetry, which is currently on submission.

Watch the Recorded Presentation

Douglas Wolk

Douglas Wolk is a pop culture critic, teacher and writer, and the author of All of the Marvels, Reading Comics and 33 1/3: Live at the Apollo. He’s written about comics and music for magazines, newspapers and web sites including Time, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, The Believer, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, Slate and Pitchfork. Wolk has been a National Arts Journalism Fellow at Columbia University and a Fellow in the USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Program. His other projects have included the comic book Judge Dredd: Mega-City Two and the record label Dark Beloved Cloud.
Wolk has lectured and moderated panels at Comic-Con International, the Experience Music Project Pop Conference, the Center for Cartoon Studies, New York Comic-Con, Rose City Comic Con, Emerald City Comic Con, WonderCon, and elsewhere; he’s appeared in the documentaries Marvel’s Behind the Mask, Cartoon College, Ink: Alter Egos Exposed and Jandek on Corwood. He’s been honored with the Will Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Book, the Harvey Award for Best Biographical, Historical or Journalistic Presentation, and the Krill Tro Thargo for Service to Thrill-Power. Currently, he teaches at Portland State University and hosts the podcast Voice of Latveria. He lives in Portland, OR.

Watch the Recorded Presentation

Debra Elisa Wöhrmann

 Debra Elisa Wöhrmann co-hosts The Humble Poets Open Mic in North Portland, leads Poetry Play and other creative workshops, and has taught college. She lived as a Peace Corp Volunteer in the Philippines, and values travels of all sorts to show her what’s possible and teach her what she doesn’t know. Writing is her ballast, and she believes sharing stories can save lives. Her collection You Can Call It Beautiful (MoonPath Press) debuted in 2023, and her novel,The StoryCatcher, is on submission. She lives with her husband and dog in Portland, Oregon and loves to lose herself in her backyard garden, along the coast, and for days camping near Trapper Creek. Please visit www.debraelisa.com. 

Shasha LaPointe

Sasha LaPointe is from the Upper Skagit and Nooksack Indian Tribe. Native to the Pacific Northwest, she draws inspiration from her coastal heritage as well as her life in the city. She writes with a focus on trauma and resilience, ranging topics from PTSD, sexual violence, the work her great grandmother did for the Lushootseed language revitalization, to loud basement punk shows and what it means to grow up mixed heritage. With strange obsessions revolving around Twin Peaks, the Seattle music scene, and Coast Salish Salmon Ceremonies, Sasha explores her own truth of indigenous identity in the Coast Salish territory.

Her memoir Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk was published by Counterpoint Press on March 8, 2022.

Her collection of poetry, Rose Quartz was published by Milkweed in Spring, 2023.

Watch the Recorded Presentation

Sara Marshall

Sarah Marshall is a writer, podcaster, and media critic focused on setting straight our collective memory—or at least getting to the bottom of why we believe and in turn define ourselves by popular narrative and myth. Why is the maligned woman a staple of our news media? Why do we believe that serial killers are brilliant? How do we keep stumbling into all these moral panics? These are some of the questions that propel Sarah forward. She is the co-host of the popular modern history podcast You’re Wrong About, which has been highlighted in The New Yorker, The Guardian and Time Magazine. Her writing has appeared in the Believer, Buzzfeed and the true crime collection Unspeakable Acts.

 Watch the Recorded Presentation

Curits C. Chen

Once a Silicon Valley software engineer, Curtis C. Chen (陳致宇) now writes stories and runs puzzle games near Portland, Oregon. His debut novel Waypoint Kangaroo (a 2017 Locus Awards and Endeavour Award Finalist) is the first in a series of funny science fiction spy thrillers. He has written for the Realm originals Echo Park, Ninth Step Murders, and Machina.

Curtis' short fiction has appeared in Playboy Magazine, Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey, Daily Science Fiction, and elsewhere. His homebrew cat feeding robot was displayed in the "Worlds Beyond Here" exhibit at Seattle's Wing Luke Museum. He is a graduate of the Clarion West and Viable Paradise writers' workshops.

Want to know a secret? There are visual clues hidden in the KANGAROO book covers that lead to online puzzle trails! Finding the rabbit holes is left as an exercise for the reader.

Rena Priest

Stephen Robinson

Stephen Robinson is a writer and social kibbitzer based in Portland, Oregon. He writes political commentary for Wonkette and TV criticism for Primetimer. He also writes make believe for Cafe Nordo, an immersive theatre space in Seattle. He is the author of a novel called Mahogany Slade. He's also on the board of the Portland Playhouse theatre. His son describes him as a “play typer guy.”

Elaine Cockrell

During World War II, xenophobia peaks as Japanese Americans are interned in Western US states. George Yano and his mother, sister, and brothers succumb to this fear: they are forced to abandon their farmland in Central Washington and must relocate to a Portland, Oregon assembly center. While the Yanos scrabble for normalcy—pickup baseball games for the boys, homey touches in the family's cramped private quarters—George becomes a recruiter of Japanese ancestry workers for Eastern Oregon's sugar beet fields. While George charts a course for the Yanos through financial ruin, racism, and hardship, Molly Mita does the same for her family. As Molly and George grow closer, so too do their families.

In a rich novel spanning Portland's assembly center, farming communities in Eastern Oregon, and internment camps like Minidoka in Idaho, A Shrug of the Shoulders renders the Yanos’ and Mitas’ lives with care, hope, and historical fidelity. Through multiple points of view and dozens of vivid settings, author Elaine Cockrell creates a mosaic of Japanese-American perseverance: one tiled with humor, frustration, despair, anger, and love.

The event featured the author's latest work, A Shrug of the Shoulders.

Alan Rose

Alan Rose worked with Cascade AIDS Project in Portland, Oregon, from 1993 to 1999, and prior to that was a volunteer with the Victorian AIDS Council (now Thorne Harbour Health) in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of three previous novels; The Legacy of Emily Hargraves, Tales of Tokyo, and The Unforgiven. He coordinates the monthly WordFest events in southwest Washington state, hosts the KLTV program Book Chat, and reviews books for The Columbia River Reader. The event featured the author’s latest work, As if Death Summoned. Set in 1995, the novel chronicles one man’s journey through the AIDS epidemic.

Krysten Ralston

Krysten Ralston was born in Mobile, Alabama into a military family and spent many of her formative years moving between states. When she was 10, the family settled in Washington state where she currently resides. She has been a storyteller for as long as she can remember, and has been a writer since she could hold a pencil. She studied English with a focus in Creative Writing at Washington State University. In addition to being a writer, Ralston is an artist, a coffee connoisseur, a nature lover, a wife and mother, and a dreamer. The event featured the author's latest work, Ink Blots.

Sallie Tisdale

Sallie Tisdale is the author of ten books, most recently The Lie About the Truck. Her earlier books include Talk Dirty to Me and Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them). She published a collection of essays, Violation, in 2015. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, Antioch Review, Conjunctions, Threepenny Review, The New Yorker, and Tricycle, among other journals. Sallie also teaches at Dharma Rain Zen Center in Portland, Oregon. The event featured the author's latest work, The Lie About the Truck.

PJ Peterson

Originally from Kalama, PJ Peterson attended LCC before transferring to the University of Washington where she earned a B.S. in Pharmacy. She went on to medical school at the University of Utah and then trained in Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. She practiced medicine for 37 years before retiring in 2016. Blind Fish Don’t Talk may be her first published novel, but PJ has been preparing for this second career as a writer since childhood. A voracious reader, she's always loved mysteries. PJ is thrilled that readers report they genuinely like her novel, and she's busy working on her second novel, Rembrandt Rides a Bike.

Florence Sage

Florence Sage, Astoria OR, has been an organizer of local poetry mics, a poetry editor, and for 22 years, a co-producer of the annual FisherPoets Gathering in Astoria.  She reads at Ric’s Poetry Mic, first Tuesdays in Astoria, as well as by invitation at local literary events.  Her 2014 collection is Nevertheless: Poems from the Gray Area, Hipfish Publications.  She is completing two new poetry manuscripts: The Man Who Whistled, The Woman Who Wished and What to Do with Night.

Peter Rock

Peter Rock was born and raised in Salt Lake City. He is the author of the novels SPELLS, Klickitat, The Shelter Cycle, My Abandonment, The Bewildered, The Ambidextrist, Carnival Wolves and This Is the Place, and a story collection, The Unsettling. Rock attended Deep Springs College, received a BA in English from Yale University, and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon, where he is a Professor in the English Dept. of Reed College. The film adaptation of My Abandonment, directed by Debra Granik, premiered at Sundance and Cannes and was released in June of 2018. Rock’s tenth work of fiction, The Night Swimmers, will be published in early 2019.

Claudia Castro Luna

Claudia Castro Luna is the Washington State Poet Laureate.  She served as Seattle’s Civic Poet from 2015-2017 and is the author of the Pushcart-nominated Killing Marías and This City. Born in El Salvador, she came to the United States in 1981.  She has an MA in Urban Planning, a teaching certificate, and an MFA in poetry.  Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, La Bloga, Dialogo and Psychological Perspectives among others.  Her non-fiction work can be found in several anthologies, among them This is the Place: Women Writing About Home. Claudia is currently working on a memoir, Like Water to Drink, about her experience escaping the civil war in El Salvador.

Robert Michael Pyle

Robert Michael Pyle grew up and learned his butterflies in Colorado, where he fell in love with the Magdalena Alpine and its high-country habitat. He took his Ph.D. in butterfly ecology at Yale University, worked as a conservation biologist in Papua New Guinea, Oregon, and Cambridge, and has written full-time for many years. His twenty-two books include Wintergreen (John Burroughs Medal), Where Bigfoot Walks (Guggenheim Fellowship), and Sky Time in Gray's River (National Outdoor Book Award). He lives in rural southwest Washington State and still studies butterflies.

Jon Gosch

Jon Gosch was raised in Longview, WA and studied creative writing and journalism at the University of Washington. His second novel, Deep Fire Rise, concerns the Mount St. Helens eruption and has been praised by some of the Northwest's most revered authors, including Washington State Book Award winner Robert Michael Pyle and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist William Dietrich. Jon has also been active as a book editor, investigative journalist, travel writer and radio guest.

Alex Vigue

Alex Vigue is a poet and storyteller from Ridgefield, Washington. He has a bachelor's degree in creative writing from Western Washington University. His work has been published in Vinyl, Maudlin House, Lockjaw Magazine, and Drunken Monkeys. He works with Clark County Poets in The Schools to bring poetry into the classroom and make sure that students learn about poetry from poets. His debut chapbook “The Myth of Man” was a finalist for the Floating Bridge Press chapbook competition and was published in October 2017.

Donald Levering & Joseph Green

Donald Levering was born in Kansas City and grew up there and in Oceanside, New York. In addition to being awarded a NEA Fellowship, he won the Quest for Peace Prize in rhetoric, the 2017 Tor House Foundation Prize and was Runner-Up for the Ruth Stone Prize in 2016. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Joseph Green retired from teaching in 2010, his twenty-fifth year at Lower Columbia College. His poems have appeared in many publications such as The Bellingham Review, Cooweescoowee, Crab Creek Review, 5 AM, Free Lunch, Hubbub, etc. Together with his wife, Marquita, he produces letterpress-printed poetry broadsides through The Peasandcues Press.

Michael Schmeltzer

Michael Schmeltzer was born in Japan and eventually moved to the US. He is the co-author of A Single Throat Opens, an epistolary memoir which explores addiction, childhood, and family, as well as two books of poetry: Blood Song, which was a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards, and Elegy/Elk River, winner of the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. His writing can be found in numerous journals such as Black Warrior Review, Mid-American Review, The Shallow Ends, and PANK, among others.

Devery Anderson

Devery S. Anderson is an editor and marketing manager at Signature Books in Salt Lake City, and is currently working on a master’s degree in publishing at the George Washington University. He is the editor or co-editor of several books on Mormon History, and in 2015 the University Press of Mississippi published his book, Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement. It will be the basis of a Hollywood miniseries produced by JayZ, Will Smith, Casey Affleck, and Aaron Kaplan. He has spoken on Emmett Till at colleges, universities, and elsewhere in the United States and the UK. His research into Emmett Till resulted in over a dozen trips to Mississippi and Chicago, where he interviewed key players in the case, and conducted extensive archival research. He is currently working on a book on Clyde Kennard, another book on Mississippi civil rights.

Author Monica Drake

Monica Drake has an MFA from the University of Arizona and teaches at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Her debut novel, Clown Girl, was published by the amazing indie press, Hawthorne Books, and has won an Eric Hoffer Award as well as an IPPY. It's been translated into Italian, and recently optioned for film by Kristen Wiig (SNL, Bridesmaids). Her other books include, The Stud Book and her most recent The Folly of Loving Life: Stories. She currently lives in Portland.

Poet Tod Marshall

Tod Marshall is a Kansas native and Gonzaga University professor, is the 2016-18 Washington State Poet Laureate, 2015 Washington state Book Award winner, and author of Bugle, and The Tangled Line. He has also published a collection of his interviews with contemporary poets, Range of the Possible, and an attendant anthology of work by the interviewed poets, Range of Voices.

Author James R. Wells

James R. Wells is the author of the science fiction novel The Great Symmetry, grand prize winner of the 2015 Cygnus Award for speculative fiction. The second installment in the series, named The Eternal Moment, will be published in 2017. His stories combine adventure with an exploration of themes around the freedom of ideas and information. A life-long caver and outdoor explorer, he has mapped new passages in many of North America's great caves. When not writing or with family, James can be found in a cave, on a mountain, under the sea, or anywhere else outside. James is the great-grandson of pioneering science fiction author H.G. Wells.

Author Lilly Robbins Brock

Lilly Robbins Brock recently retired from her interior design business in Olympia and she and her husband have settled in the Cathlamet area on the Columbia River. She has written and published a recipe book, Food Gift Recipes from Nature's Bounty, based on organic gardening which received a Readers' Review award. She has written a historical novel, Intrepid Journey, about a family in the 1850s traveling on a paddle wheel steamship from New York crossing the Atlantic Ocean via the South America route to their final destination, the rugged Pacific Northwest. This project was interrupted when she came across two letters written by her now deceased father when he was on the battlefront in World War II. The letters inspired her to find a World War II veteran who is still living and to tell his story. She found her veteran and wrote Wooden Boats & Iron Men which is the life account of one of our own World War II veterans who settled in Longview, Washington with his bride after the war. He chose the Navy when he enlisted and became a PT sailor. His love for the motor torpedo boat lasted over seventy years, and he became an active participant in the rescue and restoration of PT-658—the only fully operational World War II motor torpedo boat remaining in the world.

Author Lyndsay Faye

Lyndsay Faye is the internationally bestselling author of five novels including her latest, Jane Steele, a reimagining of Jane Eyre as a heroic vigilante murderess. The first book in her Timothy Wilde trilogy, The Gods of Gotham, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel and translated into fourteen languages. She writes Sherlock Holmes pastiches regularly for the Strand Magazine, and these plus several others will be gathered into a collection for her forthcoming The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes. Faye grew up in Longview, Washington, where she attended Robert. A. Long High School and took advanced English classes from Northwest author Jim LeMonds. She lives in Queens with her husband and fellow RAL graduate Gabriel Lehner.

Author Kate Kyer-Seeley

Kate Dyer-Seeley writes the Pacific Northwest Mystery Series for Kensington Publishing, featuring a young journalist, Meg Reed, who bills herself as an intrepid adventurer in order to land a gig writing for Northwest Extreme. Only Meg's idea of sport is climbing onto the couch without spilling her latte. She also writes the Bakeshop Mystery Series as Ellie Alexander for St. Martin's Press set in the charming Shakespearean town of Ashland, Oregon where pastry chef Juliet Montague Capshaw has returned home to heal her broken heart and run the family bakeshop. Recipes included! Kate lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and son, where you can find her hitting the trail, at an artisan coffee shop, or at her favorite pub. Better yet—at all three.

Author Robert Pyle

For thirty-two years, Robert Pyle has been an independent, full-time biologist, writer, teacher, and speaker. He has published hundreds of articles, essays, papers, stories, and poems, and eighteen books. They include Wintergreen, The Thunder Tree, Where Bigfoot Walks, Chasing Monarchs, Walking the High Ridge, Sky Time in Gray's River, and Mariposa Road: The First Butterfly Big Year; as well as The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies, The Butterflies of Cascadia, and several other standard works on butterflies. His latest book is Evolution of the Genus Iris: Poems. A Guggenheim Fellow, Pyle has won the John Burroughs Medal, three Governor's Writer's Awards, a Pacific Northwest Booksellers' Award, the Harry Nehls Award for Nature Writing, and the National Outdoor Book Award for natural history literature.

Author Courtney Shah

Courtney Shah has been teaching history at Lower Columbia College for eight years. She received her Ph.D. from University of Houston. She specializes in the history of gender, sexuality, medicine, and race. Her work has been published in academic journals and encyclopedias. Sex Ed, Segregated is her first book and the product of 12 years of effort. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, kayaking, and reading.

Author Dave Tucker

Dave Tucker lives in Bellingham, Washington. He has a Masters degree in geology and is a research associate in the geology department at Western Washington University. He leads public field trips and gives presentations about the geology of northwest Washington, and is author of a popular blog, Northwest Geology Field Trips: nwgeology.wordpress.com. Geology Underfoot in Western Washington is his first book. Dave is a director of the Mount Baker Volcano Research Center, an all-volunteer nonprofit organization that raises funds to support research at the active volcano and educate the public about volcanic hazards of Mount Baker. Learn more about MBVRC at mbvrc.wordpress.com. Tucker has been mapping Mount Baker's geology since the mid-1990s, in particular the distribution of volcanic ash deposits. He has also done geologic studies throughout the Cascades, Alaska, and in Chile.

Author John R. Nutting

Following his Honorable Discharge from the Marine Corps in 1969, Nutting spent two years trying to find himself, resulting from what is now known as PTSD. Being a natural storyteller, Nutting was able to compose this book with eloquence seldom displayed by most writers. His book, The Court Martial of Corporal Nutting, was published in October 2014.

Washington Poet Laureate Elizabeth Doyle and Poet Joseph Green

Elizabeth Austen is the Washington State Poet Laureate for 2014-16. Her collection Every Dress a Decision was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She's also the author of two chapbooks, The Girl Who Goes Alone and Where Currents Meet.

Joseph Green retired from teaching in 2010, his twenty-fifth year at Lower Columbia College. His poems have been appearing in magazines and journals since 1975, and many have been collected in five chapbooks, most recently That Thread Still Connecting Us.

Author Brian Doyle

Doyle is the author of 14 books of essays, poems, stories, nonfiction (The Grail, about a year in an Oregon vineyard, and The Wet Engine, about the “muddles & musics of the heart”), and the sprawling novels Mink River and The Plover (April 2014).

Author Joshua Howe

Joshua Howe is Assistant Professor of History and Environmental Studies at Reed College. His new book, Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming, explores the political history of climate change since the 1950s, and he continues to work on historical questions about sustainability and the global environment that bridge environmental history, the history of science, and the history of American foreign policy.

Josh earned his Ph.D. in History from Stanford in 2010, and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral fellow with the National Science Foundation's John Tyndall Correspondence Project at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana until he moved to Portland to take up his position at Reed in the fall of 2012.

Josh writes for a variety of outlets, including Mountain Outlaw Magazine, the Big Sky Weekly, a popular cycling website called Velominati, and has appeared in Climatic Change and Historical Studies of the Natural Sciences.

Author Kevin O'Brien

Before his thrillers landed him on the New York Times Bestseller list, Kevin O'Brien was a railroad inspector. He quit his job in 1997, when his novel, Only Son, was picked up by Readers Digest and also optioned for film, thanks to interest from Tom Hanks. He has been writing full time ever since. The author of 15 internationally-published thrillers, he won the Spotted Owl Award for Best Pacific Northwest Mystery (The Last Victim). He is a core member of Seattle 7 Writers. In May, look for Kevin's new thriller, Tell Me You're Sorry.

Author Terry Brooks

A writer since the age of ten, Terry Brooks published his first novel, The Sword of Shannara, in 1977. It became the first work of fiction ever to appear on the New York Times Trade Paperback Bestseller List, where it remained for over five months. He has written thirty bestselling novels, movie adaptations of Hook and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and a memoir on his writing life titled Sometimes the Magic Works. He has sold millions of copies of his books domestically and is published worldwide. His Magic Kingdom series is currently under option at Warner Brothers. The Elfstones of Shannara is scheduled to be adapted as a television series on MTV. His next novel, The High Druid's Blade, will be published in August 2014.

Poet Carolyne Wright

Carolyne Wright has published nine books of poetry, four volumes of poetry in translation from Spanish and Bengali, and a collection of essays. Her latest book is Mania Klepto: the Book of Eulene.

Previous books include A Change of Maps, and Seasons of Mangoes & Brainfire which won the Blue Lynx Prize and the American Book Award. In 2005 she returned to her native Seattle, where she is on the faculty of the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts' Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA Program.

Author Sarah Thebarge

The Invisible Girls (Jericho Books, 2013).

Author James Zerndt

Hiding the Ball James Zerndt's fiction most recently appeared in Gray 's Sporting Journal and SWINK Magazine, and his poetry occasionally appears in The Oregonian. His first novel, The Cloud Seeders, is based on a short story that originally appeared in The Salal Review. His second novel, The Korean Word For Butterfly, came out in April.

Author Langdon Cook

Writing in the Wild Langdon Cook is a writer, instructor, and lecturer on wild foods and the outdoors. His books include Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager, which the Seattle Times called "lyrical, practical and quixotic," and forthcoming The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America. Cook has been profiled in Bon Appetit, WSJ magazine, Whole Living, and Salon.com, and his writing has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including Sunset, Gray's Sporting Journal, Outside, The Stranger, and Seattle Magazine. A graduate of Middlebury College (MA) in Vermont and the University of Washington (MFA), he lives in Seattle with his wife and two children. Langdon Cook's website

Author/Poet Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

 Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning author, poet and teacher. Her honors include an American Book Award, a PEN/Josephine Miles Award, two PEN Syndicated Fiction awards, and a Distinguished Author Award from the South Asian Literary Association. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and a Pushcart Prize anthology. Her sixteen books have been translated into 29 languages. Two novels, The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart, have been made into films. A frequently sought-after op-ed commentator regarding South Asian-American culture, Divakaruni is the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Houston.

Her latest work, Oleander Girl is about seventeen-year-old Korobi Roy, orphaned at birth, the scion of a distinguished Kolkata family who has enjoyed a privileged, sheltered childhood with her adoring grandparents. But she is troubled by the silence that surrounds her parents' death and clings fiercely to her only inheritance from them: the unfinished love note she found hidden in her mother's book of poetry. Korobi dreams of one day finding a love as powerful as her parents’, and it seems her wish has come true when she meets the charming Rajat, the only son of a high-profile business family. On the night of their engagement party, Korobi’s grandfather dies of a sudden heart attack. His death reveals the family's unexpected financial problems as well as a dark secret. This secret will shatter Korobi's sense of self and will thrust her—against the wishes of her fiancé and his family—out of her sheltered Kolkata life into a courageous and troubled search, in the company of an attractive stranger, across post 9/11America, a country that she finds at once dangerous, unwelcoming and alluring. What she discovers at the end will force her to make the most difficult choice of her life.

Author Alice Derry: Celebrate William Stafford's Birthday

Author Alice Derry focuses on the works of the late poet William Stafford, participants will be encouraged to explore the thread they "don't ever let go of." Attendees can expect to complete exercises, discuss writing, practice presented techniques, and read and analyze poetry. Alice Derry's books include Tremolo, Strangers to Their Courage, Stages of Twilight, Clearwater, Getting Used to the Body and Not As You Once Imagined. Alice Derry's website.

Author Alice Derry: Celebrate William Stafford's Birthday

Author Alice Derry focuses on the works of the late poet William Stafford, participants will be encouraged to explore the thread they "don't ever let go of." Attendees can expect to complete exercises, discuss writing, practice presented techniques, and read and analyze poetry. Alice Derry's books include Tremolo, Strangers to Their Courage, Stages of Twilight, Clearwater, Getting Used to the Body and Not As You Once Imagined. Alice Derry's website.

Author Lois Leveen

The Secrets of Mary Bowser award-winning author Lois Leveen dwells in the spaces where literature and history meet. Her novel,The Secrets of Mary Bowser is based on the true story of a black woman who became a spy for the Union Army during the American Civil War--by pretending to be a slave to the family of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Leveen is a regular contributor to Disunion, the New York Times on-going coverage of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, and her poetry, short humour pieces, and scholarly essays have appeared in literary magazines, anthologies, and on National Public Radio. A former university professor, she frequently gives talks on race, writing, history, and literature at universities, museums, libraries, and conferences throughout the country. Lois Leveen's website

News Story:

Entertainment Briefs: Portland novelist Lois Leveen to read at Longview Library The Daily News | October 24, 2012

Comic Book Writer/Artist Jonathan Case

Comic Book Writer and Artist Jonathan Case is an artist/writer, and member of Periscope Studio in Portland, Oregon. He is the creator of Dear Creature, and the artist of Green River Killer, and is currently at work on several new projects with Dark Horse comics.

Poet Kathleen Flenniken

2012-2014 Washington State Poet Laureate Kathleen Flenniken's new collection, Plume, is a meditation on the Hanford Nuclear Site. Her first book, Famous, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, was named a Notable Book by the American Library Association, and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award.

• More information about the Poet Laureate Program

• Kathleen Flenniken's Poet Laureate blog, The Far Field

• Kathleen Flenniken's website

News Story:

Library Corner: As poetry month winds down, sample these powerful verses The Daily News | April 28, 2012

Irene Martin

Irene Martin is known for her books and articles on Columbia River regional and fisheries history. Her latest book is The Flight of Bumble Bee, the Columbia River Packers Association and a Century in the Pursuit of Fish.

Poet Joseph Green

A Machine Made of Words: What Makes the Poem Run? Joseph Green's poems have appeared in literary journals since 1975. Many have been collected in His Inadequate Vocabulary (1986), Deluxe Motel (1991), Greatest Hits 1975-2000 (2001), and The End of Forgiveness (2001). He read mostly from his new book, That Thread Still Connecting Us (2012), available through MoonPath Press.

Author Kim Stafford: Celebrating William Stafford's Birthday

Kim Stafford is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College, and the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft, and Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford. He is the literary executor for the Estate of William Stafford and teaches at the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology and the Fishtrap Gathering.

Author Mary Doria Russell

Mary Doria Russell began her career as a paleoanthropologist with specialties in bone biology and biomechanics. Her five novels have earned eight awards and been nominated for two more. Mary is the author of The Sparrow, and sequel, Children of God, which explores the drastic consequences of the first contact of well-intentional humans with aliens on their faraway planet; andDoc, based on the historical figure Doc Holliday, four years before the famous shootout at the OK Corral. Mary Doria Russell on Facebook | Mary Doria Russel's website marydoriarussell.net

News Story:

Award-winning novelist Mary Doria Russell to speak Wednesday in Longview The Daily News | October 10, 2011.

Author Jennifer Blomgren

Jennifer Blomgren is an award winning author of two children's books and a recent novel. Jennifer also illustrates her own line of greeting cards. Jennifer's works include: Where Do I Sleep?, a tranquil bedtime poem featuring animals in their natural habitat that introduce children to the nature and geography of our region; Where Would I Be in an Evergreen Tree?, the story of an ancient tree's life cycle and the variety of plants and animals it supports; and The Tale of Alice's Quilt, a short novel about a young girl who discovers a stack of appliquéd quilt blocks, her first connection to a distant ancestor.

Author Peter Rock

Peter Rock, author of My Abandonment, based on the true story of a 13-year old girl and her father who lived in Forest Park in Portland, Oregon. It explores the themes of homelessness, mental illness and living close to nature. Learn more about Peter Rock: My Abandonment.

Author Lana Hechtman Ayers

Lana Hechtman Ayers led an afternoon writing workshop and read from her poetry. Learn more about Lana Hechtman Ayers.

News Story: 

Entertainment Briefs: Celebrate William Stafford's birthday with poetry workshop The Daily News | January 26, 2011

Author Naseem Rakha

Naseem Rakha, author of The Crying Tree, a novel about a mother's grief and how forgiveness can produce unexpected results. Naseem's stories have been heard on NPR's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Marketplace Radio, Christian Science Monitor,and Living on Earth. Prior to journalism Naseem taught Holistic Resource Management to farmers, ranchers and tribes throughout the US and Canada. Learn more about Naseem Rakha.

News Story:

Author of 'Crying Tree' to speak The Daily News | October 14, 2010

Author Ken Scholes

Ken Scholes is a Writers of the Future contest winner. His first novel, Lamentation, won the RUSA Reading List Award for Best Fantasy of 2009. His short story collection, Long Walks, Last Flights and Other Strange Journeys was a 2008 Endeavor Award finalist. Learn more about Ken Scholes.

News Story:

Novelist Ken Scholes visits library Monda yThe Daily News |April 14, 2010

Author Jamie Ford

Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, a New York Times bestseller, is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history. Learn more about Jamie Ford

This event was part of an array of activities for students and their families held during the 2010 Celebration of Literacy week. It was sponsored by local libraries, service organizations and LCC Transitional Studies, ECED and HOFL Programs.

News Story:

Library Corner: Jamie Ford's book is entertaining, relevant to today The Daily News | February 27, 2010

Author Floyd Skloot

Skloot's fifteen books include seven collections of poetry. His Selected Poems: 1970-2005 won a Pacific NW Booksellers Award and a ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Silver Award. His most recent collection is The Snow's Music, published in 2008 by LSU Press. Skloot's awards include three Pushcart Prizes, the PEN USA Literary Award, two Oregon Book Awards, and two Pacific NW Booksellers Awards. His work has been included in The Best American Essays, Best American Science Writing, Best Food Writing, Best Spiritual Writing, Best of the Best American Science Writing, the Penguin Book of the Sonnet, and many other anthologies. Learn more about Floyd Skloot.

News Story:

Portland Poet to lead free workshop Monday in Longview The Daily News | January 20, 2010

Author Nena Baker

Nena Baker's recent book The Body Toxic spells out surprising answers every consumer wants to know (but chemical companies would rather you didn't). The Body Toxic is powerful argument for urgent reforms to our nation's notoriously toothless toxics laws, and a clarion for greener, cleaner chemicals in consumer products.

Author John Daniel

John Daniel has won many literary awards including two Oregon Book Awards in Literary Nonfiction. His latest novel,The Far Corner: Northwestern Views on Land, Life, and Literature, is a collection of personal essays.

Author Molly Gloss

The Hearts of Horses, was this year's Cowlitz Reads choice.