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
Was 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 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
Born 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 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.