Elizabeth McLagan

ELIZABETH McLAGAN was a founding member of CALYX. She has also been a bookkeeper, gardener, housecleaner, writer and high school English teacher. After her son graduated from high school, Ms. McLagan returned to graduate studies and earned an MFA in Poetry from Eastern Washington University. Since then she has taught composition, creative writing and literature at Portland Community College, Cascade Campus. Ms. McLagan has also pursued research and writing in the area of minority history in Oregon. Her nonfiction publications include A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, Women and Minorities in the Construction Industry, and Notes Toward a Biography: The Papers of John Hiram Jackson. Her poems have been published in numerous literary journals, and in 1990 a chapbook of poetry was published by Howlet Press. She has won poetry awards from the Oregon State Poetry Society, Clark College, and Cream City Review, as well as the 2001 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Introjournals Award. Her full-length manuscript, Visitation in the Form of a Blue Feather, is currently in search of a publisher.

Margarita Donnelly

MARGARITA DONNELLY, one of the founding authors of CALYX is currently its Director. She is the recipient of the American Book Award, Literary Arts Stewart H. Holbrook Award, two CCLM Editors Awards, and a Fishtrap Gathering Fellowship for her short fiction. Her work has appeared in The American Book Awards Poetry Anthology, Small Press Magazine, Women and Aging, the Feminist Bookstore Newsletter, and Women's Press, for which she was a founding editor. She writes book reviews for the Oregonian and Women's Review of Books. She received the 1994 inaugural Distinguished Achievement Award from the Oregon State University Friends of the Library, as well as the 1990 Women of Achievement Award from the OSU Women's Studies Center. She has lectured widely, including at the 6th International Feminist Publishers Conference in Melbourne, Australia, and the Hawaii Literary Council in Honolulu. Ms. Donnelly has taught at the Centrum Writers Workshop, Bay Area Writers Conference, and at the American Library Association Conference. She served on the selection panels for the Washington State Arts Commission, Idaho Arts Commission, Oregon Arts Commission, Seattle Arts Commission, and the Cottages at Hedgebrook Women's Writing Retreat on Whidbey Island, Washington. She has also edited six anthologies at CALYX Books including their newest, A Fierce Brightness. She was born and raised in Venezuela and Spanish is her first language.

Donna Henderson

DONNA HENDERSON chapbook, Transparent Woman, produced on a letterpress from handset type, printed on fine paper and bound with string, was a finalist for the 1997 Oregon Book Award for Poetry. The title poem of this collection was first published in Calyx Journal and subsequently included in A Fierce Brightness." Her most recent chapbook, Gazpacho, contains a sequence of poems on the final illness and death of her mother, together with watercolors by her sister Darcy V. Henderson. In the past few years, Donna Henderson's poems have appeared in Fireweed, First Things, Room of One's Own, and other magazines. Her reviews and articles have been published in journals of spirituality, literary scholarship and social work. Her poem Dawn is included on the CD Alive at Dawn by pianist Diane Baxter, principal keyboard artist for Yaquina Orchestra and the Bloch Music Festival. She has received various state, national and international recognitions, including a Pushcart Prize nomination. Ms. Henderson recently completed her first full-length collection of poems, Are You With Me Here? Her photography and mixed media artwork is regularly exhibited at the River Gallery in Independence as well as in one-woman shows around the Willamette Valley. Ms. Henderson is a licensed clinical social worker with a private practice in pyschotherapy in Monmouth, teaches counseling at Western Oregon University and is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at Warren Wilson College.

Janice Gould

JANICE GOULD is a Native American poet of Koyangk'auwi/Maidu descent. She has published three books of poetry, Beneath My Heart, Earthquake Weather, and Alphabet. Her newest book, Speak to My Words: Essays on American Indian Poetry, was co-edited with Dean Rader and published by the University of Arizona Press. Her poetry and essays have been appeared in numerous journals, reviews, and anthologies. She was awarded grants for her writing from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Astraea Foundation. She earned a Ph.D in English at the University of New Mexico and currently teaches Imaginative Writing and Native American literature at Willamette University in Salem where she is an assistant professor and serves as the Hallie Ford Chair in Creative Writing.

Cole Robinson

COLE ROBINSON performs solo acoustic guitar. "Robinson's improvisational style is a fusion between organic acoustic precision and raw electric power, with overtones of American string band and East Indian raga."

COLE ROBINSON states that he has been greatly influenced by the music of Jimmy Hendrix, Miles Davis, Dave Matthews, and the Smashing Pumpkins. "I appreciate all forms of music but lately I've taken a particular interest in American string band music and East Indian raga."

Robinson studied with such notables as Dan Balmer, Tony Kaltenberg, Jeff Peretz, and Mel Brown. He has performed in numerous and varied venues including the E.M.U. Ballroom at the University of Oregon.

"I am capable of delivering a hard driving beat as well as employing the use of free time to create ambient modal soundscapes."

Lorrie Haight

EXTREME SELF-PUBLISHING!

"HOW TO MAKE A HARDCOVER BOOK AT HOME IN YOUR SPARE TIME"

A demonstration by Lorrie Haight of Long Beach, Washington.

Lorrie Haight began creating hardcover books by hand for her husband, Smitty, a fisher poet and storyteller. Ten years later, after producing hundreds of hardcover books, she began teaching the craft of bookmaking to others who were interested in both the process and self-publishing. She now gives bookmaking demonstrations at craft shows.

Lorrie has been a featured workshop instructor at the Fisher Poets Gathering in Astoria for the past few years. She is also the author of her own book of stories based on her days as an Alaska fisherwoman.

During the presentation, participants learn how to lay out written material, then fold, gather and sew the pages into sections of the book called "signatures." She demonstrates how to bind the book, measure material for the book cover, cut and glue the covers together and ultimately glue the finished books into the finished covers using starch in the hinge crease.

Handouts available at the demonstration include contact information for all book publication requirements such as ISBN and Library of Congress numbers, bar codes and copyright forms.

Lorrie Haight's video, "Lorrie's Book Making Demonstration," is available for purchase, through email: booklady@pacifier.com or call Lorrie directly at 360-642-8090.

Charles Goodrich

As creator of introductions for guests of the Nye Beach Writers Series I spend a short, intense bit of time with their work, looking for things to say that illuminate their style or personality or career for an engaged and intelligent audience. Most of the time I don't meet the writers until shortly before show time. Sometimes I'm surprised how different they are than I expected, sometimes not. Occasionally, I'm just surprised, period.

My taste in poetry is simple and straightforward. I don't care for work that depends on obscure and mysterious personal references that are meaningless to the reader. I think poetry is a window to the mind of the poet. A clear window works better than a muddy one. Frankly, some poetry makes a better door than a window.

I've learned to be cautious when I see a new title. Some have been apt, but some I still haven't figured out. Here's a sampling of titles by writers I've introduced: In the Margins of the World, A Small Song Called Ash from the Fire, The Mad Painter Poems, Summer Mystagogia, Pink Menace, and Come Over Here and Leave Me Alone.

So you can see, the title of a work can sometimes be a prelude to obfuscation. Some of the writers couldn't tell me what the titles meant. I admit I felt my neck-hairs tense up a little when I picked up Charles Goodrich's collection, entitled Insects of South Corvallis. But that tension just melted away when I began to read, quickly realizing the poems were not only very well-written, but actually about bugs.

The guy writes about what he knows. He was a career gardener for twenty-five years. He's been published widely and Garrison Keillor has read his work on National Public Radio. He is presently an instructor for the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature and the Written Word at Oregon State, a program that brings together creative writers, philosophers and environmental scientists.

Please welcome Charles Goodrich . . .

http://springcreek.oregonstate.edu/

Rick Bartow and Bill Stiffler

Original songs and stories by Rick Bartow highlight a concert by guitarist Bartow and bassist Bill Stiffler. Dubbed "Songs from a lifetime of living," the evening's concert spans the thirty years since Bartow introduced live music to Lincoln county at the Uptown tavern in Newport.

Rick Bartow is a world-renown artist in addition to being a Newport musical treasure. His paintings, prints, masks and sculptures are shown in Oregon, Chicago, San Francisco, Arizona, British Columbia, Germany, Japan and New Zealand. "The Cedar Mill Pole" is on display in the First Ladies Sculpture Garden at the White House. Rick, park Yurok Indian, was born and raised in Newport.

Bill Stiffler has been involved in the Newport theatre, music and art scene for over thirty years. He has been a wanderer, fish merchant, musician in many local historic bands, and a teacher in Lincoln County schools. But it was music that brought Stiffler to Newport from Seattle. Stiffler performed with a string of pioneer bands here in Lincoln County, including Mushin, Bones, The Sons of the Beaches, Original Face, and Cyrano the Snub-Nosed Dullards. He currently performs with Rick Bartow and Friends every Thursday night at Mo's Annex on the Newport bayfront.

Jerry Martien

Poets have a lot of latitude when it comes to the role they play in a culture. They can chronicle or comment, entertain or enlighten or simply bear witness to the slice of time they occupy. Jerry Martien does all these things. An environmental and political activist in the Humboldt Region of Northern California for thirty years, he has labored as a carpenter, editor, teacher and board member of several organizations. He has taught creative writing and nature writing for the past seven years at Humboldt State University. His published work includes Shell Game, described as A True Account of Beads and Money in North America, and a collection of poetry, Pieces in Place.

Pieces in Place is a collection of poems that are best described in the opening lines of Martien's essay, "A Defense of Poetry (Is a Defense of Place:)"

"The poem arises from the ground of its making. By way of a human attention, deliberately placed there-- held there, till it is shaped by the rule of that ground. ... The poem surrounds us. The poet loiters deliberately in the dooryard, maintaining cultural access to that nourishing circumstance. Speaks on behalf of the still-living, still sacred grove, and labors to restore the springs to which we all go when thirsty."

Please welcome Jerry Martien

Jennie Shortridge

JENNIE SHORTRIDGE was a plumber, cook, rock-and-roll singer, corporate marketing executive and freelance writer before tackling the project that has sent her back on the road in 2003--writing the slightly autobiographical adventure novel Riding With The Queen.

"I wanted to write about my beautiful hometown of Denver, and I wanted to write about a musician coming home from the road," explains Shortridge. "I've been a working musician since age 16 and I thought it would be an interesting lifestyle to explore."

Riding With The Queen is about Tallie Beck, a hard-luck gal in her mid-thirties who has made many bad decisions about men and has finally hit the wall in her chosen profession of bar singer. In disgrace, she returns home to Denver, the place she escaped from at age 17. Talli has a bad attitude and continues making bad decisions, but at least she wishes she wouldn't. Out of character, she falls in love with Perry, a man who runs a homeless shelter, and somehow life begins to change for Tallie. Not improve, but change.

With a deft and touching hand, Shortridge creates a funny, sexy, smart and heartbreakingly real protagonist. Talli's relationships rise and fall in response to lies, deceptions and omissions, much the way real life gets in the way of denial. Talli eventually admits she is an alcoholic, commits to a relationship with Perry, is offered a recording contract, and becomes a bar manager. It looks like a happy ending.

Jennie Shortridge now lives in Portland, Oregon and is working on her second novel. "This one is about a freelance food writer with big-time food issues," says Shortridge. "She's losing someone she dearly loves to cancer, dealing with an emotionally distant mother, and trying to unravel the mysteries of her family's secrets while at the same time trying not to eat herself into blimplike proportions. Like Tallie in 'Riding With The Queen,' like many of us, she's on a mission to understand her past so she can move on with her life." Shortridge promises to accompany herself on guitar and sing on February 21, besides reading from her novel.