Derrick Jensen

Do you believe this culture is going to undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living? If you don't, and you care -- what do you do? asks Derrick Jensen.

Writers On The Edge presents an illuminating evening with writer, lecturer, social scientist, and grassroots environmentalist Derrick Jensen at the next Nye Beach Writers' Series event, Saturday July 19. The event begins at 7 p.m. at the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center, Visitor's Center Auditorium, located at 2020 SE Marine Science Drive in the South Beach area of Newport. Admission is $10 at the door; no advance sales. Students admitted free.

Jensen's writings explore the nature of balanced ecological sustainability -- beyond which type of light bulb people buy or whether they recycle their plastic water bottles. True sustainability, he says, resides in creating a social and economic system that exists in balance with the surrounding ecosystem. "The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system."

Jensen's two-volume non-fiction work Endgame, earned him the title of 2006 Person of the Year, an honor presented by Press Action, an online publication of news analysis and commentary. Press Action declared the work "the best nonfiction in 2006."

Jensen's diverse writings also include:

• A Language Older than Words
• The Culture of Make Believe
• Listening to the Land: Conversations about Nature, Culture, and Eros, Railroads and Clearcuts
• Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests
  

Other collaborative works include:

• Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control
• Walking on Water: Reading, Writing and Revolution (which highlights the natural desire to learn juxtaposed against social structures that eradicate the individual creative process)
• Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos
  

Jensen holds a bachelor of science degree in mineral engineering physics from the Colorado School of Mines, and a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from Eastern Washington University. He lives on the coast of northern California.

A great deal more information about Derrick Jensen is posted online at www.derrickjensen.org.

Marilyn Johnston

Wars don't end when the shooting stops. Poet Marilyn Johnston's husband Carroll served as a soldier in Vietnam and like many of the men and women who lived to return to their families, he brought the war home with him. Carroll's memories so intensely permeated their lives that Marilyn finally suggested that their entire family travel to Carroll's old war zone in Southeast Asia. Their journey in March 2002 provided relief and the poems that resulted helped them heal from the trauma of the barbarism Carroll witnessed and participated in. They heard stories of how Vietnamese families coped with death and destruction year upon year in a cruel succession of wars and of the unexpected kindnesses of strangers who were once mortal enemies. Marilyn's poems are collected in the award-winning book, Red Dust Rising published this year by The Habit of Rainy Nights Press of Portland, Oregon.

Marilyn Johnston has received national and regional awards for writing, including the Donna J. Stone Literary Award for Poetry, a Robert Penn Warren Award from the New England Writers, several first place prizes in the Oregon State Poetry Association competitions, and a Fellowship for Writers from Oregon Literary Arts. Her poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals and six anthologies. She is Human Rights and Relations Specialist for the city of Salem and formerly Director of the Oregon Governor's School.

Red Dust Rising, which the Salem Statesman Journal included in its list of the Best Oregon Books for 2003, is hand-sown on natural and handmade papers. The book received an award from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women, and the poems in this collection have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Proceeds from the sale of the book are used to encourage writing projects for veterans and their families.

Please welcome Marilyn Johnston.