2014 Cascadia Poetry Festival 2 – SEATTLE POETS
Joanne Arnott
Joanne Arnott (Richmond, BC) is a Canadian Métis writer. Arnott’s works are intimate with an activist slant, exploring the issues faced by a mixed-race girl and woman in poverty, the family, danger, love and childbirth. She received the Gerald Lampert Award for her 1991 collection of poetry Wiles of Girlhood. Arnott lives in British Columbia with her family. She is a founding member of the Aboriginal Writers Collective West Coast, and The Aunties Collective. She has served on The Writers Union of Canada National Council (2009), The Writers Trust of Canada Authors Committee, and as jury member for the Governor General’s Awards/Poetry (2011).
Yvonne Blomer
Yvonne Blomer (Victoria, BC), Writer, critic, teacher and poet, Yvonne Blomer was born in Zimbabwe, and came to Canada when she was two years old. With her husband she has taught in Japan, cycled through Southeast Asia, and lived in the UK, where she completed a Masters in Creative Writing with Distinction at The University of East Anglia. Yvonne is the Artistic Director and Host of the Planet Earth Poetry reading series in Victoria BC.
George Bowering
George Bowering, (Vancouver, BC), OC, OBC (born December 1, 1935) is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer. He has served as Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate. He was born in Penticton, British Columbia, and raised in the nearby town of Oliver, where his father was a high-school chemistry teacher. Bowering is author of more than 100 books. Bowering is the best-known of a group of young poets including Frank Davey, Fred Wah, Jamie Reid, and David Dawson who studied together at the University of British Columbia in the 1950s. There they founded the journal TISH. Bowering lives in Vancouver, British Columbia and is Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University, where he worked for 30 years. Never having written as an adherent of organized religion, he has in the past wryly described himself as a Baptist agnostic. In 2002, Bowering was appointed the first ever Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. That same year, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He was awarded the Order of British Columbia in 2004. When the Indian Hungryalist, also known as Hungry generation, poet Malay Roy Choudhury, was arrested at Kolkata, India, Bowering brought out a special issue of Imago for helping the Indian poet in his trial. Bowering was one of the judges for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize.
Trevor Carolan
Trevor Carolan (North Vancouver, BC) teaches at University of the Fraser Valley and is Co-editor of the newly published eco-lit anthology Cascadia: The Life and Breath of the World (Univ. Hawaii Press). A former elected municipal Councillor in the District of North Vancouver, he has worked as media advocate on behalf of Pacific Coast watershed issues and First Nations land claims. As councillor, he worked to preserve the North Shore’s Cove and Mountain forests in Seymour from logging and massive real estate development, and was instrumental in shepherding the Varley Trail at Lynn Canyon Headwaters and the Lower Seymour Conservation Area into being. He earned his Ph.D. in Australia for studies in Literature, Ecology and Ideas of the Sacred in International Relations, and has published 18 books; his work has appeared in five languages. His civic affairs column “Poetic Licence” appears in the North Shore News.Books, which he co-edited with Richard Olafson.
STEPHEN COLLIS
Stephen Collis is the author of five books of poetry, including the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize-winning On the Material (Talonbooks 2010) and three parts of the on-going “Barricades Project”: Anarchive (New Star 2005), The Commons (Talonbooks 2008), and the forthcoming To the Barricades (2013). An activist and social critic, his writing on the Occupy movement is collected in Dispatches from the Occupation (Talonbooks 2012). He teaches contemporary poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University, where he was a 2011/12 Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellow.
LINDA CROSFIELD
Linda Crosfield’s (Nelson, BC) poems appear in several journals, including The Minnesota Review, The Antigonish Review, and Room. She’s been featured poet in The New Orphic Review. Last year she read at Nelson’s Elephant Mountain Literary Festival, one of her poems became a miniature accordion book by UpDown Press & Bindery in Baltimore, and she published a chapbook for George Bowering through her micro press, Nose in Book. She lives just above the border in Castlegar, BC.
SHARON CUMBERLAND
Sharon Cumberland’s (Seattle) poems have been published in many literary journals, including Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Image, and Beloit Poetry Journal. She has been awarded Kalliope’s Sue Saniel Elkind Award, twice awarded The Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association’s Zola Award for Poetry, and the Writers Haven Press Bright Side Award. Peculiar Honors, a full-length collection of poems, was published by Black Heron Press in 2012. Her chapbooks are The Arithmetic of Mourning from Green Rock Press, and Greatest Hits 1985-2000, from Pudding House Press. She has been a resident artist at Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs, NY, the Jack Straw Foundation in Seattle, and the Grünewald Guild, in Plain, WA. She was the Poet-in-Residence at The Seasons Music Festival in Yakima, WA in 2010. A lifelong Episcopalian, she spent two years as a member of the Order of St. Helena, and one year at the Catholic Worker in New York City. She is a Professor of English at Seattle University and director of the Creative Writing Program.
ERIC DE PLACE
Eric de Place, (Seattle) policy director, is a researcher, writer, speaker, and policy analyst. He spearheads Sightline’s work on climate and energy policy. He is known as a leading Northwest expert on strategies to cut carbon pollution, producing widely influential analyses of cap-and-trade programs and carbon taxes. He writes extensively about coal and oil exports, and he is considered an authority on a range of issues connected to fossil fuel transport including carbon emissions, railway congestion, coal dust, water pollution, and economics. He also contributes research on demographics, stormwater runoff, transportation, land use, and economic security. Eric is a widely sought-after speaker, presenter, and media spokesperson. Before coming to Sightline, he worked with the Northwest Area Foundation, developing strategies to alleviate poverty in rural communities. He has a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. Find his latest blog posts here, and email him at eric [at] sightline [dot] org.
EMILY KENDAL FREY
Emily Kendal Frey (Portland) is the author of the full-length poetry collection The Grief Performance (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011); the chapbooks Frances (Poor Claudia, 2010), The New Planet (Mindmade Books, 2010), and Airport (Blue Hour, 2009); as well as three chapbook collaborations. Frey’s The Grief Performance was selected for the Cleveland State Poetry Center’s 2010 First Book Prize by Rae Armantrout. She also won the Poetry Society of America’s 2012 Norma Farber First Book Award. Frey’s poetry also appears in journals such as Octopus and The Oregonian. Frey received a B.A. from The Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and an M.F.A. from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts.
KIM GOLDBERG
Kim Goldberg (Nanaimo, BC) Kim Goldberg (born 1954 in Eugene, Oregon) is an American-born writer who has lived in Canada since the 1970s. She is the author of four non-fiction books and two collections of poetry. Much of her published work has addressed contemporary social and environmental issues including poverty, homelessness, aboriginal rights, deforestation and nuclear weapons. She was the British Columbia Current Affairs columnist for Canadian Dimension magazine from 1990-2002.She has written extensively about the 1990 car bombing of environmental activist Judi Bari in Oakland, California. Her 2007 book, Ride Backwards On Dragon, was a finalist for Canada’s Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for poetry. She is the 2008 winner of the Rannu Fund Poetry Prize for Speculative Literature. Her 2009 book, Red Zone, is a collection of poems and photographs about the homeless population in Nanaimo, British Columbia, where she has lived for more than thirty years. The book has been taught as a literature course text at Vancouver Island University and at Aspengrove School in Lantzville, British Columbia.Goldberg was born and raised in Oregon, and she holds a degree in Biology from the University of Oregon. She relocated to Canada with her family during the Vietnam War years
HEIDI GRECO
Heidi Greco (White Rock, BC) Although Heidi Greco has spent most of the past thirty years in the Lower Mainland of B.C., she’s also had the good fortune to spend two years in Australia. Her poems, reviews and fiction have appeared in many publications. Currently residing in South Surrey, she and her partner live in a house surrounded by trees. Greco works as a writer and editor; she is the mother of adult sons.Selected Publications: Shrinking Violets (Quattro Books, 2011); A: The Amelia Poems (Lipstick Press, 2009); Rattlesnake Plantain (Anvil, 2002); Siren Tattoo: A Poetry Triptych.
JEANNE HEUVING
Jeanne Heuving (Seattle) is a scholar and writer. Her published books include Incapacity, Transducer, and Omissions Are Not Accidents: Gender in the Art of Marianne Moore. She has just completed her book length-study The Transmutation of Love and Avant-Garde Poetics, under contract at the University of Alabama Press. She recently published her long poem, “Miss Lonelyhearts,” in Hambone 20. Heuving directs the MFA program in Creative Writing & Poetics at the University of Washington, Bothell, where she is a professor in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences program. She is an adjunct professor in Women Studies and on the graduate faculty in the English Department at the University of Washington Seattle. She is the recipient of grants from the Fulbright Foundation, National Endowment of the Humanities, Simpson Humanities Center, and the Beinecke Library at Yale, where she was the H.D. Fellow. Her cross genre book Incapacity won a 2004 Book of the Year Award from Small Press Traffic.
ALYSE KNORR
Alyse Knorr is the author of Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books 2013) and Alternates (Dancing Girl Press 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming inDenver Quarterly, Drunken Boat, Caketrain, RHINO, Puerto Del Sol, The Minnesota Review, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, among others. She received her MFA from George Mason University. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Gazing Grain Press and teaches English at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
JOANNE KYGER
Joanne Kyger (Bolinas), is influenced by her practice of Zen Buddhism and her ties to the poets of Black Mountain, the San Francisco Renaissance, and the Beat generation. Kyger studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara,[1] before moving to San Francisco, in 1957,and becoming involved with the poetry scene around Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan. In 1960 she joined Gary Snyder (whom she had met in San Francisco in 1958) in Japan. They were married on February 28, immediately after her arrival. She later travelled to India with Snyder, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, where she met with the Dalai Lama.[2] She returned to the United States in 1964[3] and her first book, The Tapestry and the Web was published the next year. In 1965, she married Jack Boyce. They separated in the early seventies. Kyger has published more than twenty books of poetry and prose, including Going On: Selected Poems, 1958–1980, (1983);and, Just Space: poems, 1979-1989 (1991). She has lived in Bolinas since 1968, where she has edited the local newspaper. She has also done some occasional teaching at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics of the Naropa Institute, in Boulder, Colorado. In 2000, her 1981 collection of autobiographical writings was republished as Strange Big Moon: Japan and India Journals, 1960-1964, which Anne Waldman has called “one of the finest books ever in the genre of ‘journal writing’.More recent poetry collections include God Never Dies (Blue Press), The Distressed Look (Coyote Books), Again (La Alameda Press), and As Ever: Selected Poems published by Penguin Books. Her most recent book is About Now: Collected Poems from National Poetry Foundation. It won the 2008 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Award for Poetry. In 2006 she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.
ROBERT LASHLEY
Robert Lashley (Tacoma and Bellingham, WA) A semi finalist for the PEN/Rosenthal fellowship, Robert lashley often performs at Northwest spoken word venues and has helped Bellingham, where he lives, develop one of the nation’s finest poetry slam scenes. He has had poems published in such Journals as Feminete, No Regrets, and Your Hands, Your Mouth. His poetry was also featured in “Many Trails To The Summit”, an anthology of Northwest form and Lyric poetry. His full length book, Songs My City Taught Me, was published by Radical Lunchbox Press in 2009.
JARED LEISING
JOANNA LILLEY
Joanna Lilley lives just over the Cascadia border in Whitehorse, Yukon. After a summer in Seattle and a bicycle ride all the way from Nova Scotia to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories, she decided she wanted to leave Britain and make her home permanently in the northwest. Joanna’s awards include second prize in the 2013 Dr. W H Drummond poetry contest, first prize in the 2012 Vancouver International Writers Festival poetry contest and two Government of Yukon Advanced Artist Awards. Joanna has an MLitt in Creative Writing from the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde and is a Humber School for Writers graduate. Her poetry collection, The Fleece Era, was published by Brick Books earlier this year and her short fiction collection, The Birthday Books, will be published by Hagios Press in their Strike Fire New Author Series in 2015.
NADINE ANTOINETTE MAESTAS
Nadine Antoinette Maestas is a poet’s poet and believes that the empire of the sentence is an extremely oppressive totalitarian regime. She prefers the company of poems so much that she would rather read a bad poem than a good novel, but when she is not doing poetry, Nadine loves mountain biking in dangerous and remote places in the Northwest. She teaches at the University of Washington and North Seattle Community College. She has facilitated writing workshops at the University of Michigan, Youthspeaks and has helped to pioneer poetry workshops in several public schools in California and Michigan. Nadine holds an M.F.A. from University of Michigan where she was awarded the Faraar award for playwriting. Her hybrid poem play “Hellen on Wheels: a Play of Rhyme and Reason” was performed at California College of the Arts. She is the co-author with Karen Weiser of “Beneath the Bright Discus” (Potes & Poets Press, 2000), and earned her Ph.D. at the University of Washington in 2013 with a dissertation on postmodern American anthropoetics.
TOD MARSHALL
Tod Marshall was born in Buffalo, NY. His first collection of poetry, Dare Say, was the 2002 winner of the University of Georgia’s Contemporary Poetry Series. His second collection, The Tangled Line, was published by Canarium Books in April, 2009. This third collection, Bugle, will be published by Canarium in fall of 2014. He has also published a collection of his interviews with contemporary poets, Range of the Possible (EWU Press, 2002), and edited an accompanying anthology of poems by the interviewed poets, Range of Voices (EWU Press 2005). Poets in these collections include Robert Hass, Li-Young Lee, Brenda Hillman, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ed Hirsch, Dorianne Laux, Kim Addonizio, Ed Hirsch, and other. His work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review, The American Poetry Review, The Boston Review, Boulevard, The Denver Quarterly, Volt, and elsewhere. He lives in Spokane, Washington, and teaches at Gonzaga University.
DAVID MCCLOSKEY
David McCloskey (Eugene, OR) A retired Professor of Sociology at Seattle University, he now spends his days in Eugene, Oregon, in the house where he grew up, waving the banner for bioregional culture and autonomy. Literally. And running the Cascadia Institute.
FRANCES MCCUE
Frances McCue (Seattle) is a poet, essayist, reviewer and arts instigator. From 1996-2006, she was the founding director of Richard Hugo House in Seattle. Her second poetry collection, THE BLED, published by Factory Hollow Press, won the Washington State Book Award in 2011. Her book of essays about Richard Hugo and the Northwest Towns that he wrote poems about is named after a line in Hugo’s epic poem, “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg”: THE CAR THAT BROUGHT YOU HERE STILL RUNS. That book was a runner up for the Washington State book award, also in 2011. Her other book of poems is THE STENOGRAPHER’S BREAKFAST and another book of prose, MARY RANDLETT PORTRAITS is forthcoming in September, 2014. Currently, she is the Writer in Residence in the University of Washington’s Undergraduate Honors Program where she is the 2013 “Teacher of Distinction.” As a public scholar and arts instigator, McCue has spent her career connecting academic inquiries with community life. www.francesmccue.com
HEATHER MCHUGH
Heather McHugh (Seattle) wrote poetry almost every day from 1955 to 2009. She has taught in the graduate writing programs at the U of Iowa, Berkeley, Stanford and elsewhere. Her current creative energies go chiefly to CAREGIFTED.org . Her most recent book of poems is UPGRADED TO SERIOUS from Copper Canyon; her most recent book of essays is BROKEN ENGLISH: POETRY AND PARTIALITY from Wesleyan University Press; her translations and imitations (with co-translators or alone) include books of poems from the works of poets Paul Celan and Jean Follain, and a version of Euripides’s play CYCLOPS. Since 1983 she has taught at the University of Washington in Seattle and even longer as a visiting faculty at the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College in Asheville NC.
PAUL NELSON
Paul Nelson (Seattle, WA) founded SPLAB in Seattle and the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Author of Organic Poetry (essays), a serial poem re-enacting history, A Time Before Slaughter (shortlisted for a 2010 Genius Award by The Stranger) and Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies. He has interviewed Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Sam Hamill, Robin Blaser, Nate Mackey, Joanne Kyger, Brenda Hillman, presented poetry/poetics in London, Brussels, Nanaimo, Qinghai & Beijing, China, has had work translated into Spanish, Chinese & Portuguese & writes an American Sentence every day. He was awarded a residency at The Lake, from the Morris Graves Foundation in Loleta, CA, and published work in Golden Handcuffs Review, Zen Monster, Hambone, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2014 Robin Blaser Award from The Capilano Review, he lives in Seattle with his wife Meredith and youngest daughter Ella Roque. www.PaulENelson.com
DAN RAPHAEL
dan raphael (Portland, OR) says: “Dan Raphael is 6 foot 6 and at times seems bedeviled by language,” a seattle critic wrote. Haven’t read much outside the northwest, and in most of the available places within Oregon & Washington, including Bumbershoot, Wordstock, Powells Books, Portland Jazz Festival, Eastern Oregon State, Fishtrap, Burning Word, Reed College and the Walla Walla Poetry Party. May have a CD of perfromance with a lcoal sax and drum combo out next summer. People can seem surprised to find out I have an MFA (Bowling Green State) and a BA from Cornell. Have never landed a teaching job, but am active in organizing readings, including a monthly series at a downtown bookstore that ran for 13 years, and Poetland—80 poets in 8 venues in an 8 hour span. I edited NRG magazine for 17 years, and published 26 Books—26 26 page chapbooks by 26 Oregon and Washington poets. I trade my time to the DMV to pay my bills, and live in an old house in a transitional neighborhood with wife Melba, son Orion, cat Katerina, and around 400 plant varieties. Otherwise I read news, novels and other non-poetry things; hike, work-out and socialize; and brew, drink and review beer.
JUDITH ROCHE
Judith Roche (Seattle) is the author of three poetry collections, most recently, Wisdom of the Body, an American Book Award winner, has published widely in various journals and magazines, has poems installed on several Seattle area public art projects and has taught at various universities and teaches poetry workshops throughout the country.
LINDA RUSSO
Linda Russo (Pullman, WA) (inhabitorypoetics.blogspot.
RENéE SAROJINI SAKLIKAR
Renée Sarojini Saklikar (New Westminister, BC) writes thecanadaproject, a life-long poem chronicle about her life from India to Canada, from coast to coast. Work from thecanadaproject appears in literary publications includingThe Georgia Straight,The Vancouver Review, PRISM international, Poetry is Dead, SubTerrain,Ricepaper, CV2,Ryga: a journal of provocations, Geistand Arc Poetry Magazine and is forthcoming in the recent anthologies, Alive at the Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwestand Force Field: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia. Renée is married to Adrian Dix, Leader of the Official Opposition in British Columbia. children of air india is her debut collection.
KAIA SAND
Kaia Sand (Portland) is the author of Remember to Wave (Tinfish Press 2010) and interval (Edge Books 2004), named Small Press Traffic Book of the Year; and co-author with Jules Boykoff of Landscapes of Dissent (Palm Press 2008). Her new collection, A Tale of Magicians Who Puffed Up Money that Lost its Puff, is forthcoming with Tinfish Press. Her text comprises two books in Jim Dine’s Hot Dream series (Steidl Editions 2008). Sand dislodges poetry from the book into other contexts, including Remember to Wave poetry walks and the Happy Valley Project, an investigation of housing foreclosures and financial speculation that included a magic show. In a collaboration with artist Garrick Imatani, she is artist-in-residence at the City of Portland Archives and Records Center, commissioned by the Regional Arts and Culture Council. They are creating the Watcher Files Project, which includes the Looseleaf Services serial artist book and installations, such as participation this spring in the Antena installation at the Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston. Sand is the resident poet for the Portland State University Honors Program, a member of PEN American Center and represented on Archive of the Now. Her projects are documented at http://kaiasand.net/
SHAE SAVOY
Shae Savoy is a Seattle poet and water cartographer whose roots tap back toward Kansas. She has published five chapbooks and her work has most recently appeared in Jet Fuel Review; J Journal: New Writing on Justice; WomenArts Quarterly; Wilde Magazine; Pocket Guide; Paper Nautilus; Common Ground Review and Trivia: Voices of Feminism. She blogs at www.shaesavoy.wordpress.com.
DEREK SHEFFIELD
Derek Sheffield was born in Portland, Oregon, and grew up there and on the shores of Washington’s Puget Sound. He is a graduate of the University of Washington’s creative writing program and has published his poems widely in literary journals such as Poetry, Orion, Georgia Review, North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Southern Review. Among his awards are the Hazel Lipa Environmental Chapbook Award, the Sparrow Prize in Poetry, and the James Hearst Poetry Prize judged by Li-Young Lee. In addition, he was the runner-up for the 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award and a finalist for the Walt Whitman Award. He teaches poetry and nature writing at Wenatchee Valley College and lives with his family in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains near Leavenworth, Washington, where he has led birdwatching hikes and where he participates annually in the Audubon winter bird count.
MARILYN STABLEIN
Marilyn Stablein’s (Portland) book of poems Splitting Hard Ground won the New Mexico Book Award and the National Federation of Press Women’s Book Award. Other works include an ongoing series of prose poems Night Travels to Tibet, a Himalayan memoir Sleeping in Caves and a collection of eco-essays Climate of Extremes. She is also an award winning book artist. After 25 years she recently returned home to the Northwest to open with her husband Anthology Booksellers in Portland’s Hawthorne district and online. Visit marilynstablein.com
RENéE SAROJINI SAKLIKAR
Renée Sarojini Saklikar (New Westminister, BC) writes thecanadaproject, a life-long poem chronicle about her life from India to Canada, from coast to coast. Work from thecanadaproject appears in literary publications includingThe Georgia Straight,The Vancouver Review, PRISM international, Poetry is Dead, SubTerrain,Ricepaper, CV2,Ryga: a journal of provocations, Geistand Arc Poetry Magazine and is forthcoming in the recent anthologies, Alive at the Center: Contemporary Poems from the Pacific Northwestand Force Field: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia. Renée is married to Adrian Dix, Leader of the Official Opposition in British Columbia. children of air india is her debut collection.
GEORGE STANLEY
George Stanley (Vancouver), is a West Coast poet. Born in San Francisco, he was active on the SF poetry scene in the 1960s. In 1971, he moved to British Columbia, where he taught English in BC community colleges for twenty-six years; he is now retired. His most recent books of poetry are Vancouver: A Poem (2008) and After Desire (2013), both from New Star Books of Vancouver.
ELENI STECOPOULOS
Eleni Stecopoulos is a poet and independent scholar living in Berkeley, California. She is the author of Armies of Compassion (Palm Press, 2010),Daphnephoria (Compline, 2012) and the forthcoming Visceral Poetics (ON Contemporary Practice, 2014), a hybrid work on languages, literature, and medicine. In collaboration with the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, she created and curated a multi-year program series called “The Poetics of Healing,” which brought together a diverse range of participants including writers, performance artists, physicians, psychotherapists, bodyworkers, historians, diviners, sound healers, and activists. She is currently finishing a related book called Dreaming in the Fault Zone, and some of her research interests include sacred landscapes and language preservation and revitalization. She has taught at Bard College and Naropa University, and currently teaches at the University of San Francisco.
MORRIS STEGOSAURUS
Morris Stegosaurus (Seattle)is the author of the book Zebra Feathers on Minor Arcana Press.
ANASTACIA TOLBERT
Anastacia Tolbert (Mukilteo, WA) is a writer, performance artist, documentarian, teacher and workshop facilitator. She was born in Kansas City, Missouri —home of jazz, crazy little women, and barbecue. She has been a Hedgebrook Alum, Cave Canem Fellow, EDGE Scholar Artist, and co-producer (with Annie Walsh) of GOT BREAST?–—a 2007 documentary about women’s bodies and self-image.
GAIL TREMBLAY
Gail Tremblay resides in Olympia, WA and has been an artist, poet and teacher for over forty years. She shares her unique vision through her multi-media visual works, art installations, her writing on Native American Art, and her poetry. She has been a member of the faculty at The Evergreen State College since 1980, where she has mentored students in the fields of visual arts, writing, Native American and cultural studies. Her new book of poems, Farther From and Too Close to Home will be out this winter from Lone Willow Press, and her book of poems, Indian Singing was published by Calyx Press. Her poetry is widely anthologized and poems have been translated into French, German, Spanish, and Japanese and published internationally.
URSULA VAIRA
Ursula Vaira (Lantzville, BC) was born in Germany … grew up in northern B.C. in a tiny place called Little Prairie, later renamed Chetwynd, 200 miles north of Prince George. After studying Education at UBC, she taught school on the north coast and in the Arctic, then moved to Vancouver Island in the early eighties. Ursula studied creative writing at Malaspina University-College (now Vancouver Island University) and worked at Oolichan Books for ten years; then founded Leaf Press, in 2001.
MAGED ZAHER
MAGED ZAHER (Seattle) is the author of THANK YOU FOR THE WINDOW OFFICE (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), THE REVOLUTION HAPPENED AND YOU DIDN’T CALL ME (Tinfish Press, 2012), and PORTRAIT OF THE POET AS AN ENGINEER (Pressed Wafer, 2009). His collaborative work with the Australian poet Pam Brown, FAROUT LIBRARY SOFTWARE, was published by Tinfish Press in 2007. His translations of contemporary Egyptian poetry have appeared in Jacket Magazine, Banipal, and Denver Quarterly. He performed his work at Subtext, Bumbershoot, the Kootenay School of Writing, St. Marks Project, Evergreen State College, and The American University in Cairo. Maged is the recipient of the 2013 Genius Award in Literature from the Seattle weekly The Stranger.