May Windfall features Laura Winter and Carol Ann Bassett

WINDFALL READING SERIES , Tuesday, May 18, 2010, 5:30 pm, Eugene Public Library

Desert Landscapes – This month we will hear from two writers who have learned to make a passionate defense for the fragility, austere beauty and rich variety hidden in arid environments.

Laura Winter, as the Introduction to her collection Coming Here to Be Alone declares, “has actually been to all the places she writes about.” She writes about “shadows of moon and cloud painting figures of bronze across the white sand mounds.” These poems are exquisite renderings of the particular way the desert frames and emphasizes solitude. Yet the landscape, as desert lovers know, is actually full of movement and life, and Laura pays attention to the bats, the lizards, the nettles and white-crusted pools. A Portland-based poet, Laura is the author of four previous collections of poetry:Skin Into Dust, No Gravy Baby, Not Gone/Just Not Here, and Sleeping Leaves. She is the publisher of Take Out, “a ‘bag-a-zine’ of art, writing and music that features powerful voices from around the globe.” She has written for and performed with jazz musicians and improvisers in the U.S. and Europe. The art-song clarity of her desert-inspired verses inspired two multi-media artists to translate them into German, and this newest book is published in bilingual form.

Carol Ann Bassett is a teacher of environmental writing and literary nonfiction at the University of Oregon. Her work has tended to focus on landscapes that much of the world regards as “empty” or “lifeless,” such as the deserts of the American Southwest, and most recently, the Galapagos islands of the South Pacific. She goes to these places not only as a writer but as a naturalist; lives among the inhabitants—human and non-human—and brings back stories both personal and universal in an effort to help keep them from literally disappearing from the face of the earth. Carol Ann is the author of three works of literary nonfiction: Organ Pipe: Life on the Edge, A Gathering of Stones: Journeys to the Edges of a Changing World (a finalist for the Oregon Book Award), and most recently,Galápagos at the Crossroads. She has been a regular contributor to The New York Times and Time-Life, and her work has appeared in The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, Condé Nast Traveler and other national publications.