Barbara La Morticella

For twelve years, BARBARA La MORTICELLA has been co-host with Walt Curtis of a weekly poetry show "Talking Earth," broadcast on KBOO radio in Portland. From the station’s control booth, she has interviewed almost every writer that ever stepped across Portland city limits. Barbara is also poetry editor of the Alliance, a progressive newspaper.

Her most recent collection, Rain on Waterless Mountain, poems about environment and love, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in 1997. Her work also appears in numerous literary magazines and anthologies including From Here We Speak the Oregon Literary Series anthology, and Women’s Struggles, Women’s Visions published by the Maud Kern Art Gallery in Eugene, OR. She has given hundreds of poetry readings on the east coast and in Washington, Oregon, and California. She was the editor of the Portland Poetry Festival anthology, and is co-editor of Portland Lights. In 1999, she received the very first Oregon grant given specifically for Oregon women poets.