Jessica Lamb

JESSICA LAMB walks the night rounds of the spirit in this first, unflinching collection of poems, keeping her accounts of desire and disappointment, loneliness and kinship, fertility and decay. The book is animated by a fierce, imperfect love–a mother's love for her young son; a woman's love for her long-time husband; a human's love for this afflicted earth. In poems of gratitude and lament, Jessica Lamb explores the private, and often silent, negotiations a woman makes between the longings of the solitary heart and the demands of marriage and parenting. In the midst of hunger, plunder, and surrender, she finds small stubborn signs of promise and renewal.

Raised in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, Jessica Lamb received a master’s degree in Italian literature from Stanford University before settling in Portland, where she has taught writing for many years through the Northwest Writing Institute, Portland Community College, and Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools program. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, The Southern Review, and Willow Spring.

To learn more about Jessica Lamb, click here

Video copyright by Carla Perry
Photo copyright by Carla Perry

John Witte

JOHN WITTE's poems have appeared widely, in publications such as The New Yorker, Paris Review, and American Poetry Review, and been included in The Norton Introduction to Literature, among several anthologies. He is the author of Loving the Days (Wesleyan University Press, 1978), The Hurtling (Orchises Press, 2005), and Second Nature (University of Washington Press, 2008).

John is also the editor of The Collected Poems of Hazel Hall (Oregon State University Press, 2000), and a former editor of Northwest Review. He is the recipient of two writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a residency at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. He lives with his family in Eugene, Oregon, where he teaches literature at the University of Oregon.

For more info:

http://www.washington.edu/uwpress
http://poems.com

Video copyright by Carla Perry
Photo copyright by Carla Perry

Michele Longo Eder

Introduction by Marianne Klekacz:

Michele Longo Eder's first book was published in 2008. Salt in Our Blood: The Memoir of a Fisherman's Wife, draws on Eder's journals, public records, interviews, essays, and other sources to reflect the realities of the life of a commercial fisherman and his family.

Just as Overstory Zero, by Robert Leo Heilman, did for the logging industry several year's ago, Salt in Our Blood opens a window to look in on a unique and endangered Oregon way of life.

Eder's book is aptly titled. Oceans contain roughly the same percentage of salt as do our blood, sweat, and tears. Salt in Our Blood is full of all four.

Eder's narrative shows us the joy, frustration, hard work, and tragedy in the life of a commercial fisherman. Coming from the outside to join her husband in his chosen environment and career, she casts a clear eye not only on the fishing but on the politics, pettiness, and lack of comprehension that endanger Oregon's fisheries and fishermen, and on the very real dangers they face with each trip to sea to harvest food.

Salt in Our Blood is a gripping read.

All of us have, in our veins, the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it, we are going back from whence we came.

President John F. Kennedy
Newport, Rhode Island
September 14, 1962

Born in upstate New York, Eder graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1976, moved to Portland, Oregon, and graduated from the Lewis & Clark law school before moving to Newport. She currently serves on the board of directors of the North Pacific Research Board, and, as a two-term Presidential appointee, is a Commissioner with the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. She also serves on the board of directors of the Newport Library Foundation.

To learn more visit saltinourblood.com

Jim Lynch

Video by Carla Perry

Introduction by Marianne Klekacz:

Jim Lynch's first novel, The Highest Tide, was published in 2006 to critical acclaim. It's loosely described as a "coming-of-age fable." I'm not sure that description does the book justice. From the wonderful foreshadowing on page 2 -- "...one freakish summer in which I was ambushed by science, fame, and suggestions of the divine"­- Lynch had me. I read the book in one sitting.

Lately, I've been chatting with a number of folks about the things we seem to lose as we "grow up" ­the sense of wonder, the less-jaded eye, the curiosity, those sorts of things. It takes a skilled and thoughtful writer to reconstruct the sense and sensibilities of childhood and adolescence and to reproduce those on the page. Jim Lynch is clearly both skilled and thoughtful.

Like Harper Lee's Scout Finch and J. D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield, "little Miles O'Malley," self-described wimpy nerd, teeters on the brink of big life changes. He guides us through a momentous summer in his adolescence with the unflinching eye of "an increasingly horny thirteen-year-old" who looks about nine but is blessed with a brain that wraps itself around the events in the story in a sophisticated way. He took me by the hand, and I gladly shared his journey.

Jim Lynch's second novel, Border Songs, will be released this summer. I can hardly wait.

Lynch grew up on a lake near Seattle. After graduating from the University of Washington in 1985, with degrees in creative writing and journalism, he worked as a reporter in a tiny Alaskan fishing town. He then escaped for Washington, D.C., where he wrote columns for syndicated muckraker Jack Anderson and short fiction for literary magazines.


When he returned to the Northwest, it was to Spokane, where his stories won national honors including the Livingston Young Journalist Award. Later, he wrote for The Seattle Times and served four years as the Portland Oregonian's Puget Sound reporter. He now devotes himself full-time to writing fiction. Lynch lives in Olympia, Washington, with his wife and daughter.

To learn more visit thehighesttide.com

Matt Love

Citadel of the Spirit: Oregon’s Sesquicentennial Anthology

Published by Nestucca Spit Press, edited by MATT LOVE, featuring DOROTHY BLACKCROW MACK, NIKI PRICE, CARLA PERRY, DENNIS E. JONES and ANDREW RODMAN.

February 14, 2009 marks the 150th birthday of the State of Oregon.

In celebration, several local writers included in "Citadel of the Spirit: Oregon's Sesquicentennial Anthology" will be the featured authors of the Nye Beach Writers' Series event held that night.

Matt Love chose the anthology's title from a quote by Oregon's celebrity author Ken Kesey: "Oregon is the citadel of the spirit." The book contains 63 original essays by writers who have called the State of Oregon home. In addition, 61 excerpts from primary documents related to Oregon history are included.

The whole idea was to commemorate Oregon's 150th birthday, said Matt Love, owner of Nestucca Spit Press, the book's publisher. Citadel merges past and present Oregon voices and stories. I wanted to produce an unconventional book that integrated the old stories and new perspectives and reflects Oregon's maverick nature.

a sampling of Citadel contents:

• "Lake Electric," written by Newport High School student Miri Goldade musing on the sometimes-eerie magic of Crater Lake
• "Its Great Vigor: A Letter on the Origin of the Himalayan Blackberry" by Luthor Burbank
• "Break Every Yoke: A Report on the Women's Suffrage Movement in Oregon" by legendary Oregon suffragist Abigail Scott Duniway
• "The KKK in Oregon" by Eckard Toy Jr.
• "That's When I Saw It: A Bigfoot Sighting" by Dr. Matthew Johnson
• "Mainstreaming Cannabis" by Alicia Williamson
• "I Voted to Stay as a Remaining Member: A Klamath Termination Oral History" by Delphine Jackson
• "An Ale Tale" by Brian Doyle
  
• and - believe it or not - "She is a Sexy Thing," a diary entry by the infamous, impeached U.S. Senator Bob Packwood
• Other topics include the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, physician-assisted suicide, the Grateful Dead, Oregon's rivers and the animals who live there, the Portland Trail Blazers, and the perennial University of Oregon vs. Oregon State University rivalry.

Matt Love made a point of having the anthology printed by an Oregon printing press. "I could have shipped my order to Asia and saved a lot of money. Thousands of dollars. But, a book celebrating Oregon's 150th birthday printed in China? Are you kidding me? I'm a real Oregonian - I know who my neighbors are and I don't rationalize my capitalism at their expense."

Nestucca Spit Press

Carlos Reyes

Carlos Reyes is a long-time noted Portland poet, writer and translator. Most recent book of poetry: A Suitcase Full of Crows (1995). Forthcoming poetry from Lost Horse Press in Spring 2004: At the Edge of the Western Wave. Books of translations: Poemas de la Isla/Island Poems by Josefina de la Torre (Eastern Washington University Press, 2000); Puertas abiertas/Open Doors by Edwin Madrid (2000), Hojas sueltas/Scattered Leaves by Josefina de la Torre (2002) and Páginas de Arena/Pages of Sand by Selena Millares (2003). Of interest is the fact that Open Doors has been translated into Arabic and this year was published in Baharain. Reyes has completed translating the Obra poética completa (Complete Poetic Works) of the preeminent Ecuadorean poet Jorge Carrera Andrade, which will be published this year in a bilingual edition in Ecuador. Current translation project: Mario Benedetti, Rincón de los haiku / Corner of Haikus. Publisher/Editor Trask House Books, Inc. Former poetry reviewer for Willamette Week, a weekly newspaper in Portland, Oregon. He travels often to Ireland where he maintains an 18th century Irish cottage and is a frequent visitor to Spain and Ecuador.

Carlos Reyes is an Irish-American poet blessed with a Hispanic name. He is the bard of Cloonanaha (County Clare, Irleand) and a poet in Portland, Oregon. Carolyn Kizer has said:

Mr. Reyes is one of our local and national treasures. His poetry is as clear and strong as his social conscience. One is always struck by his sensual and sensory qualities: the touch, taste, feel, color of things, and his ability to capture a mood, a world, in a handful of lines.

ALIVE, ALIVE OH!

--for Tonja Larsen and Judy Fisher

At the bar words in Irish
sough between publican and customer.

He looks our way, a fisherman up
since six this morning,

abandons his half-finished pint.
Foam slides down the glass

like the tide falling away
from the stone quay a mile from here.

Uncertain of his landlegs, he staggers
away toward hearth.

We finish Guinnesses at our ease,
return to the carpark.

A man sells mussels from a burlap bag
out the boot of his car.

On the road through Letterfrack village
the freshly laid tarmacadam sizzles:

smoke and fog burn away
the soft evening sky.

Travis Champ

Nehalem born and bred. Travis Champ recently released a thirty-poem collection, Old Nehalem Road.

In the hearty tradition of Gary Snyder, Phillip Whalen and Walt Curtis, Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present Manzanita’s Travis Champ, and the release of his collection of poems, Old Nehalem Road.

Featuring thirty poems, all set in Oregon, Old Nehalem Road represents a remarkable literary debut for a 25-year-old poet.

As Nestucca Spit Publisher Matt Love wrote in his introduction to the book:

I first heard Travis Champ read his poetry in January of 2007, at an annual Friends of William Stafford gathering in Lincoln City. He had hitchhiked 80 miles from Manzanita to read one short poem, and when I heard it in a church that winter night, I was transfixed. It voiced the raw wet alienated stuff of what living at the Oregon Coast can do to some people—a perspective few poets had ever conveyed because they had not grown up here, as Travis had. After the reading, I asked him to send me all of his poems with an Oregon connection. I read them and knew at once I wanted to publish them.

Perhaps as equally remarkable is the story of Old Nehalem Road’s production: Champ set all the type for the book, printed its pages on a hundred-year-old press, and bound all three hundred copies of the first edition print run.

Published by Nestucca Spit Press.

Click here to order a copy of Old Nehalem Road

Walking Bridges

"Walking Bridges" authors featured at November 15 Nye Beach Writers' Series.

Seven contributors to the 70-poet compilation "Walking Bridges Using Poetry as a Compass," were featured on November 15, 2008: Jonah Bornstein, Don Colburn, Cecelia Hagen, Margaret Gish Miller, Rita Ott Ramstad, and Sandra Stone.


Sharon Wood Wortman, co-editor of the book, is also the author of "The Portland Bridge Book," which had its first and second editions published by the Oregon Historical Society Press in 1989 and 2001. "After OHS went out of the business of books, I founded my own press, took out a loan on our house, and published a third edition in 2006," said Wortman. That edition was awarded the 2007 Silver Medal from Independent Publisher. Wortman is also the driving force behind the ongoing "Portland Parks & Outdoor Recreation Bridge Walks" series held since 1991, which evolved into "Poetry and Bridge Walks" in 2006. Wortman is also involved with the 2009 Portland-Vancouver Bridges & Rivers Calendar, a fundraiser for the 100-year birthday celebration of the Hawthorne Bridge planned for 2010. Additional information about her many projects is posted at www.bridgestories.com.


Jonah Bornstein was raised in Southern California and received a Master's in creative writing from New York University before moving to Oregon in 1989, where he co-founded the Ashland Writers Conference. His published books include "A Path through Stone" and "Voices from the Siskiyous." His poem, "Night Blooming Men," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2000 and two of his poems are included in the nationally acclaimed anthology September 11, 2001, American Writers Respond. His many accolades include the Oregon State Poetry Association Prize and the inaugural Southern Oregon Prize for service to the writing community of the region.


Don Colburn lives in Portland where he is a reporter for The Oregonian. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing, he worked for many years at The Washington Post. Colburn became interested in poetry and started writing poems while on a mid-career Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. In 2006, he had two collections of poetry published: His chapbook, "Another Way to Begin," won the Finishing Line Press Prize; and his full-length book, "As If Gravity Were a Theory," won the Cider Press Review Book Award. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.


Cecelia Hagen grew up Norfolk, Virginia, and studied writing and dance at Connecticut College, later receiving a Master's of fine arts in poetry from the University of Oregon. Her work has been published in many national magazines, and in 2007, Passager magazine in Baltimore chose her as its poet of the year. Presently, Hagen teaches memoir writing and coordinates the monthly Windfall Reading Series for the Lane Literary Guild in Eugene.


Margaret Gish Miller was born in Palo Alto, California and now lives in the Willamette Valley where she is a retired English teacher. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and she has received awards from New Millennium Writings and The Writers Digest.


Rita Ott Ramstad's first book, "The Play of Dark and Light," won the 2003 Stafford-Hall Award for Poetry at the Oregon Book Awards; and her poem "Night Beach" traveled on Portland's TriMet buses and MAX trains as part of Poetry in Motion, a campaign that showcases the work of local and national poets on transit vehicles. She teaches English at the Center for Advanced Learning, a charter high school in Gresham.


Sandra Stone is the 2007 winner of the Dana Award in poetry, which is presented to an under-recognized American poet for mastery of craft, inventive use of language, and substance. Her first collection of poems, "Cocktails with Breughel at the Museum Cafe," was selected in the Cleveland State University annual manuscript competition. The following year, "Cafe" received an Oregon Book Award. Stone's work has appeared in numerous national publications and in several anthologies.

Donna & Bonnie Henderson

Intro by Marianne Klekacz:

In 1995, Bonnie Henderson joined CoastWatch and adopted a mile-long stretch of beach known as Mile 157 between the Siuslaw and Umpqua river outlets to the Pacific Ocean.

On her regular patrols of "her" beach, she became intrigued by the variety of detritus washed up onto the shore. Her discoveries included glass fishing floats, brand new athletic shoes, dead birds, a dead whale, a half-buried shipwreck, and a "mermaid's purse" (If you're wondering what that is, you'll have to read her book, "Strand" to find out).

She began to try to track the debris back to its source. Her curiosity led her to Washington and ultimately to Japan and China. Along the way she learned that the Japanese call our treasured glass floats "gomi" (junk) and are amused that we collect them. She learned about the movements of sand along the shore, the intricacies of trans-Pacific container shipping, and the devastation that can result when oil is spilled into the ocean.

She then set what she had learned down into a book, "Strand." It's a fascinating read.

Please welcome Bonnie Henderson.

Airlie poet Donna Henderson is a busy woman. She is a mixed media artist, a licensed clinical social worker, has a private practice in psychotherapy, teaches at Western Oregon University, has published two chapbooks (one of which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in 1997), and will be publishing a full-length collection of poems, "The Eddy Fence," in 2009. She is widely published in journals and anthologies and teaches poetry workshops at The Attic in Portland.

It seems to me that Donna uses the imagery of lyric poetry to explore questions raised by other areas of her life. Her poetry tackles posers like the nature of death and identity. Her poetry is fluid and musical, and she often performs it to musical accompaniment.

Please welcome Donna Henderson.

Tim Sproul

TIM SPROUL was born and raised in Newport and graduated from Newport High. He received a Bachelor's degree in journalism and a Master's in creative writing, both from the University of Oregon. Sproul now resides in Milwaukie, Oregon, where his day job is creative director at Avenue A/Razorfish International Advertising Agency.

Sproul's formative years took place near Newport's Nye Beach. His father, a career Naval officer, supported the family by spending as much -- if not more -- time deployed at sea as he did at home.

His poem, 66 Days at Sea, captures a perspective that mirrors the childhood experiences of many commercial fishermen's sons and daughters:

With one small suitcase and a half-salute to the wind, my father steps onto the ship's gangplank and out of our lives ... We fall back to who we think we are -- tough beach kids who never go to the beach... I learn the language of loss in our eyes... we suffer this house and its various empties... time doesn't pass, it enters us.