Paul E Nelson, B.A., M.A. Founding Director.
Founder of the Cascadia Poetics LAB and the Cascadia Poetry Festival, Paul was a professional broadcaster from 1980 to 2006, and researched, hosted and produced over 450 original public affairs radio programs (1993-2004) and over 300 additional interviews since then. On-air host, news anchor, and public affairs coordinator in Chicago, Seattle, Baltimore and other towns, he’s a poet who has given presentations or readings in Brussels, London, China, Los Angeles, Nanaimo, Cumberland, Kelowna and other places while being very active since 1994 in the Puget Sound literary community. Published books include: DaySong Miracle (Past 62) (Carbonation Press, 2024); Cascadian Prophets: Interviews 1999-2023 (2023); Haibun de la Serna (Goldfish Press, Seattle, 2022), American Prophets (Interviews, Seattle Poetics LAB, 2018) American Sentences (Apprentice House, 2015, 2nd edition 2021), A Time Before Slaughter (Apprentice House, Nov. 2009, shortlisted for the Stranger Genius Award in 2010), and the second edition including Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia (2020), Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies, published in English and Portuguese by Lumme Editions of Brazil in 2013 and Organic Poetry (VDM, Verlag, Germany, October 2008). He is also co-editor of four anthologies: Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia, Samthology: A Tribute to Sam Hamill (Seattle Poetics LAB, 2019), Make it True meets Medusario (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2019) and 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards. He writes a Cascadian Sentence every day and lives with his wife Bhakti Watts in Seattle’s Rainier Beach neighborhood in the dəxʷwuqʷad Creek/Cedar River watershed in the Cascadia bioregion. He serves as the Literary Executor for Sam Hamill.
Diana Elser, Board of Directors Chair
was elected to the Board on April 5, 2021. Diana graduated from Utah State with a BA in English, then worked as a grant and technical writer in healthcare services and consulting. Born in Montana, she’s lived in El Paso, Texas, Great Falls, Montana; Jackson, Wyoming; Bountiful, Utah; Bay Area (Rodeo/Crockett); and Seattle (also Canada and Thailand). She’s turned over peaches, waitressed, tended bar, and sold Bibles along the way – as well as raising three children and helping raise a stepson. She moved to Seattle for love (which has lasted) in 1994 and went to work for Group Health (now Kaiser Health Plan of Washington) where she did market research and competitive intelligence as part of strategic planning. In 2013, she retired, and dedicated her retirement to “the arts” and having fun – taking writing classes at Hugo House and the Jackson Hole Writers Conference, year after year, as well as traveling, gardening, playing guitar/songwriting and becoming a grandmother. Finishing Line Press published her first chapbook in April, 2021, and she has a couple more in the works. Diana discovered CPL through the Poetry Postcard Festival (collaged her own cards), and continues to take classes. She lives in San Clemente, but spends part of the summer in Seattle. She’s new to the CPL Board and serves as Board Secretary, and on the Governance Committee.
Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs
Board member since September 11, 2023.
Dr. Gutiérrez y Muhs is a poet and professor in Modern Languages and Women and Gender Studies at Seattle University. She has served as former Director for various programs and been honored with two Chairs. She is a polylingual poet, critic, cultural worker. Gabriella is the author/editor of twelve books of poetry, criticism and culture, and multiple articles, encyclopedia entries, opinion pieces. She received her MA and PhD from Stanford University. She is first editor of Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, single editor of various other books on Chicana criticism, (University of Arizona Press, Lexington Books). She also authored the published and forthcoming poetry collections: Kneading Words: Amasando palabras: Intersectionality, Gooddesss and Beyond and How Many Indians Can We Be? (Flowersong Press) She is the author of A Most Improbable Life, The Runaway Poems, (Finishing Line Press) and The Plastic Book.
In Xochitl, In Cuícatl, a bilingual poetry anthology of Chicanx/Latinx poetry, published in 2021 in Madrid, Spain, including more than 66 poets, and another multigenre Latinx women’s anthology Indomitable/Indomables is forthcoming this year with San Diego State University Press. Her second volume of Presumed Incompetent: Race, Class, Power and Resistance of Women in Academia, for which she is known for having contributed in changing the climate in academia came out from Colorado University Press, in 2020.
Shelly Rogers
Treasurer
Board Member since February 11, 2025
Shelly Rogers is a CPA and seasoned financial professional with extensive experience in accounting, financial planning, and business advisory. As Treasurer and board member, she brings strategic insight and disciplined financial oversight to the organization. Shelly stands out for her strong command of not-for-profit financial management, specializing in cash flow forecasting and budget development. Known for her adventurous spirit and creative approach to numbers, she sees accounting as her art form and finds joy in mentoring emerging professionals. When asked what’s still on her bucket list, she said she hopes to jump out of an airplane again soon – this time, on purpose.
Zach Charles
Board Member since February 11, 2025
In BR [BioRegional] Basics: 22 Ways to Come Home, David McCloskey writes about several ways, 22 to be exact, to live with the rhythms of the planet, to live effectively as the small part of a much larger organism that we as homo sapien are. These manners of living emerge from many places: simply sitting and listening to the land and the water, from deep study of the land and the water, and from certain human traditions, often from indigenous peoples around the world. In the 21st way, he consolidates this down to 6 practices of “‘The Real Work’ of Our Time: 1–Restore Integrity of Ecosystems, 2–Rebuild Infrastructure Along Ecological and Community-Based Lines, 3–Revitalize Communities, 4–Regenerate Ties of Local-Regional Economies, 5–Grow a Restorative Life-Place Politics, 6–Celebrate the Place and Build a New Grounded Culture.” Zachary Brett Charles (They/He) sees art, and especially poetry, as a powerful and peaceful medium through which to change the human imagination. They feel their role as a member of Cascadia 2050 is an opportunity to use art and poetry to help their friends, peers, and fellow Cascadians move toward living their lives in a manner consistent with the rhythms of the planet. They volunteer at the Cascadia Poetry Lab as a member of the Cascadia 2050 Youth Committee, Poetry Postcard Fest project board, the Podcast committee, and wherever else is helpful at the moment.
Laura Anderson
Board Member since February 11, 2025
Laura graduated with a B.A. in English from U.C. Berkeley in 2002 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2013. She practiced environmental law, focusing on climate change, with Western Environmental Law Center in Helena, Montana from 2013 to 2021, and she currently practices appellate, arbitration, and immigration law from her home in Upland, California. She first found the Postcard Poetry Fest during a challenging season of motherhood and work, and it was the permission she needed to return to the spacious creativity of her own childhood. She has continued to be grounded and opened by CPL’s workshops. When not practicing law, writing, or spending time with her two sons, she can be found in the yoga shala, swimming in the Pacific Ocean, or wandering the San Gabriel Mountains, rehearsing for the next poem.
Joe Chiveney
Board Member June 15, 2011 – Dec 31, 2020
President, July 17, 2012 – Dec 31, 2020.
Chair Governance committee, December 2020 – present.
Joe is a mental health professional, an athlete (running, hiking, biking) with a healthy lifestyle emotionally and spiritually. Since 1986, he has worked therapeutically with youth, families and individuals from many cultures and backgrounds in educational, community and home based settings. He lives and works in Olympia, WA.
Veronica Martinez – Administrative Support (Joined June 7, 2023)
Veronica Martinez (she/they) is a Seattle-based writer, musician and community worker. Growing up in a military family with musician parents, Veronica moved around the U.S. and Europe during her childhood, always finding home within art and music in her communities and schools. After settling in Tucson, AZ as a teenager, Veronica received a BA in Creative Writing and English from the University of Arizona, and soon after moved to Seattle with her partner, Angel, and their cat, Naboo, to engage with the city’s music scene.
In June of 2023, Veronica was hired as the administrative assistant of Cascadia Poetics Lab. Her work with Cascadia Poetics Lab has exposed her to bioregionalism and expanded her passion for the intersection of art and community. Discovering the ability to use art and writing to connect with environmentalists, ecologists and cultural workers to bring attention to current social and environmental crises has been vital and essential to Veronica’s progression as both a writer and community worker.
Veronica is also the editor in chief, head writer and head designer of Disposable Parts, a DIY arts and culture media outlet created by Veronica and Angel. The outlet releases film videography of music and culture events shot and edited by Angel, along with full size, full color magazines designed and edited by Veronica featuring art and interviews by DIY creators in Seattle and beyond. This experience has exposed Veronica to the pursuit of arts and culture journalism, combining her love for community with her passion for writing. You can see Veronica’s work with Disposable Parts on Instagram @disposable.parts and read her writing on analogfog.substack.com.
Megan Durham – Digital Marketing
Megan Durham is a writer, event organizer, and tech enthusiast who has been working in digital marketing since the early days of the internet- back when she stumbled into making Angelfire fan websites and never managed to pull herself back out. She is a graduate of the Literature/Writing Department at UCSD and loves exploring how stories and writing have changed with the times.
She comes from a long line of nerds, event planners, prop makers, and storytellers and likes playing with fire and heights considerably more than is reasonable or safe- and can usually be found working on extravagant contraptions or crafting interactive stories when not at her computer.
Finance/Fundraising Committee
Lowell Murphree, Chair
Grant Writer & Strategic Plan Coordinator
Rev. Lowell Murphree, M.Div. is a self-employed grant writer and nonprofit consultant at Lowell Murphree Nonprofit Consulting, poet, retired United Methodist pastor, and former academic development officer, and community activist. He lives and works in Ellensburg, Washington. He has published a chapbook, Bindings Hazard Press Co., UK, and has a poem in Winter in America (Again from Carbonation Press.
Lowell grew up in Nebraska, received his M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary, NYC, and has lived in urban and rural settings in Western and Central Washington since 1975. He currently works with Cascadia Poetics Lab as a grant writer and organizational consultant.
He is a spiritual practitioner, with deep respect for diverse forms of spiritual exploration and the relationship between Spirit and creativity of all genres. Lowell initially came to Cascadia Poetics Lab through participation in Poetry Postcard Fest and Cascadia Poetry Festival more than a decade ago and began work with CPL in 2024.
Shelly Rogers
Treasurer
See bio above
Sally Hedges-Blanquez
is a poet and educator. Her work appears on the Seattle Poetic Grid, in the anthology Strange Fruit: Poems on the Death Penalty, as well as on postcards in mailboxes. She lives on the traditional land of the Coast Salish people where she writes, gardens, and shares plants and berries.
Matt Trease, M.A.
Board Member December 17, 2017 – January 3, 2026
Matt Trease is an artist, poet, IT Analyst, and astrologer living in south Seattle, WA, where he serves as Chair of the Cascadia Poetry Festival committee. Hea co-curates the Margin Shift reading series and is author of The Outside, published by Carbonation Press in 2025. His poems have recently appeared in small po[r]tions, WordLitZine, Phoebe, Fact-Simile, Hotel Amerika, Juked, and in the anthology, 56 Days of August: Postcard Poems (Five Oaks Press, 2017). He is the author of the chapbook Later Heaven: Production Cycles (busylittle1way designs, 2013).
-Leszek Chudinski
Committee Member since February 11, 2025
Leszek Chudziński (1950-) is a Polish-American poet who lives in Seattle, WA. He studied at the Academy of Physical Education in Poznan, where he worked at the Polish Radio Free Dormitory. During his university years, he did radio broadcasting at the Technical University of Szczecin and delved into writing poetry. Upon immigration to the United States, he continued his writing and cofounded the Polskie Radio Internetowe Wisła, an internet radio station that takes its name from the Vistula River, the longest river in Poland. The station is dedicated to programming for the Polish diaspora. Chudziński writes in both Polish and English, has authored two books of poetry: Niedzielni Poeci (Sunday Poets, 2018) and Podlesie (2022) and his writing has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, including No Longer Strangers: Haiku Northwest Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Anthology (2014)
Poetry Postcard Fest Committee
Dr. Ina Roy-Faderman
Poetry Postcard Board chair since its inception, Dr. Ina Roy-Faderman (she/her) has been a yearly participant in the Poetry Postcard Festival for over a decade and co-editor of the Poetry Postcard Fest anthology, 56 Days of August (Five Oaks Press, 2017). Her writings, focusing on the natural world and non-human animals, can be found in Trash Panda Magazine, Pigeon Papers, The Rumpus, Minding the Future (Springer Verlang, 2021) and the forthcoming Purr and Yowl anthology, among others. When she’s not writing, providing editorial assistance for Right Hand Pointing, or herding the human and non-human animals in her household, she teaches medical ethics and philosophy of science at Oregon State University.
Sally Hedges-Blanquez
is a poet and educator. Her work appears on the Seattle Poetic Grid, in the anthology Strange Fruit: Poems on the Death Penalty, as well as on postcards in mailboxes. She lives on the traditional land of the Coast Salish people where she writes, gardens, and shares plants and berries.
J.I. Kleinberg
An artist, poet, and freelance writer, J.I. Kleinberg lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, and on Instagram @jikleinberg. Her poems have been published in print and online journals worldwide. Her visual poems were featured in a solo exhibit at Peter Miller Books, Seattle, Washington, in May 2022, and displayed at the 2022 Skagit River Poetry Festival and in The Cutting Edge: Art of Collage in Asheville, North Carolina, in April 2023. Her chapbooks include The Word for Standing Alone in a Field (Bottlecap Press, 2023), How to pronounce the wind (Paper View Books, 2023), Desire’s Authority (Ravenna Press Triple Series No. 23, 2023), and Sleeping Lessons (Milk & Cake Press, 2025). A full-length collection of visual poems, She needs the river (Poem Atlas), was published in 2024.
Zachary Brett Charles
is a young artist and teacher living in Seattle, WA with his partner, their cat, Frankie, and their dog, Earle. He loves writing of all kinds but mostly works on poetry and short stories. He has poetry published in the ezine breatheeveryone.net. They also make multimedia works that involve painting, drawing, and collaging. They have lots of thoughts and feelings about the state of the world which can hopefully be deciphered in their works of art. Above all, they consider themself a storyteller weaving a tale they cannot finish. Other works of theirs can be found on Twitter @brettspoems, Instagram @bretts_poems, and now on their website https://brettcharles.wixsite.com/brettspoems. As a member of the Poetry Postcard Fest Project Board, they hope to get other young writers involved in the project and spread the love and connection of poetry.
CASCADIA 2050 Committee
Veronica Martinez
Veronica Martinez (she/they) is a Seattle-based writer, musician and community worker. Growing up in a military family with musician parents, Veronica moved around the U.S. and Europe during her childhood, always finding home within art and music in her communities and schools. After settling in Tucson, AZ as a teenager, Veronica received a BA in Creative Writing and English from the University of Arizona, and soon after moved to Seattle with her partner, Angel, and their cat, Naboo, to engage with the city’s music scene.
In June of 2023, Veronica was hired as the administrative assistant of Cascadia Poetics Lab. Her work with Cascadia Poetics Lab has exposed her to bioregionalism and expanded her passion for the intersection of art and community. Discovering the ability to use art and writing to connect with environmentalists, ecologists and cultural workers to bring attention to current social and environmental crises has been vital and essential to Veronica’s progression as both a writer and community worker.
Veronica is also the editor in chief, head writer and head designer of Disposable Parts, a DIY arts and culture media outlet created by Veronica and Angel. The outlet releases film videography of music and culture events shot and edited by Angel, along with full size, full color magazines designed and edited by Veronica featuring art and interviews by DIY creators in Seattle and beyond. This experience has exposed Veronica to the pursuit of arts and culture journalism, combining her love for community with her passion for writing. You can see Veronica’s work with Disposable Parts on Instagram @disposable.parts and read her writing on analogfog.substack.com.
Zach Charles
See bio above
Zaylan Jacobsen
Zaylan Jacobsen is a Seattle-based entrepreneur, mountaineer and Cascadian. He is originally from Sumner, Washington, a town whose motto is “Live Like the Mountain Is Out”. Growing up in the shadow of Mount Tahoma (Rainier), Zaylan grew a love of the mountains at a very early age that has played a key role in his identity and connection to Cascadia.
During the week he can be found at cafes or at the University of Washington, mainly working on mobile apps, web apps and websites. On the weekends, Zaylan spends time on the trails of Cascadia, always striving for a new summit to climb or trail to run. He loves to find unique ways to combine his passion for Cascadia and his skills in digital products, currently culminating in a web and mobile app at www.cascadia.world.
Zaylan first learned about Cascadia three years ago when studying the Cascade mountains and immediately resonated with the concept of identifying with place. He met the CPL crew at the 7th annual Cascadia Poetry Festival and was amazed by the brilliant minds that were there to discuss Cascadia. Although he would not call himself a full-on poet, Zaylan loves to write, dabbles in poetry and enjoys reading the works of others. He also always likes to know where he is at, which led him to an obsession with maps that now line the walls of his room. The centerpiece of his map collection is, of course, McCloskey’s incredible map of the Cascadian Bioregion.
Megan Foster
Megan Foster started her career at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt with the Peterson Field Guides and American Heritage Dictionary before pivoting west and never looking back. She works as a bookseller at Arundel Books, though you are just as likely to find her in the ocean, mountains, or forests of the Olympic Peninsula, where she likes to dig for razor clams and watch the red fore-edge of dusk spread across the horizon. The Pacific Northwest reminds her of the novel Holes by Louis Sanchar. Like the 5-foot wide by 5-foot deep holes the prisoners at Camp Green Lake dig, our land contains stories and secrets almost, but not quite, imperceptible by the passage of time.
Ankober Yewondwossen
Ankober is a Seattle-born poet who writes with the intention of achieving intergenerational healing for herself and her people.
Cascadia Poetry Festival Committee
Matt Trease, M.A.
See bio above
Paul E Nelson, B.A., M.A. Founding Director.
See bio above
Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs
See bio above
CPL committees do not have fiduciary responsibility, which remains with the CPL Board of Directors. Committees offer suggestions to CPL on best practices, improving the experience of participants and increasing levels of participation. Committee members act as ambassadors for the project they represent and for CPL.