Patty  Wixon is the author of Airing the Sheets (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Her poetry has appeared in regional and national journals and anthologies, including Deer Drink the Moon: Poems of Oregon. She was first president of the Friends of William Stafford, and is a researcher in the William Stafford Literary Archive. A retired teacher and school administrator, she lives in Ashland, Oregon, with her husband Vince. Together they are poetry editors for Jefferson Monthly, a public radio magazine.

Vince Wixon is the author of the recent poetry collection Blue Moon (Wordcraft of Oregon, 2010) and has published two previous books of poems: The Square Grove (Traprock Books, 2006) and Seed (May Day Press, 1993). His poem “Tornado Weather” appears in Garrison Keillor’s recent anthology, Good Poems, American Places. He has also co-produced  documentary films on Lawson Inada and on William Stafford, and has co-edited two books on writing by William Stafford for the University of Michigan Press.

Eugene Public Library, February 21, 5:30 p.m. — FREE!

Maxine Scates‘ third collection of poetry, Undone was published last spring as part of the Western Michigan University’s ‘New Issues’ series. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Maxine came to Oregon in 1973. She taught at Lewis and Clark College and at Reed College for a number of years, and for more than a decade has conducted private workshops from her home in Eugene. She has won numerous awards for both her individual poems and for her previous collections Toluca Street and Black Loam, and has been included in anthologies, including most recently Poets of the American West. She devotes much time to editing and critical essay writing in addition to teaching. Maxine has been a vital presence in the local literary community as a quiet mentor to many poets. As Vern Rutsala says, “A new book by Maxine Scates is always a notable event,” and Dorianne Laux speaks of “a deft ability to glide between realms of perception tripped open by memory and emotion.”

John Addiego is a Corvallis-based novelist who, like Maxine Scates, was once Poetry Editor of the University of  Oregon’sNorthwest Review. His second novel Tears of the Mountain was recently published by Unbridled Books. It is partly a hair-raising adventure tale of the settling of Sonoma, California in the 1840’s, and partly a complex love story, all firmly grounded in details of the natural and human world, and based on the history of John’s early-pioneer family in the San Francisco area, including the first raising of the Bear Flag of California. John has published numerous stories and poems in literary journals, and he teaches students with special needs in the Corvallis area public schools.

Karen Holmberg is a poet who teaches in the MFA program at Oregon State University. Her second book of poems, AxisMundi,won the John Ciardi Prize and will be published in the fall of 2012 by BkMk Press. A reviewer of her first collection, The Perseids (2001) writes that the poetry “insists that the visual contemplation of the world is an act of the soul.” Her poems and nonfiction have appeared  in such magazines as The Paris Review, Quarterly West, The Nation, Cimarron Review, Nimrod, Cave Wall, Southern Poetry Review, and Black Warrior Review. Karen earned a degree in Slavic Languages before turning to poetry as a career choice.

Catherine McGuire’s new collection Palimpsests from Uttered Chaos Press, Eugene, includes a cover designed by the poet herself.  Arts and crafts of all kinds compete with her writing time, as does the writing of children’s books (she has published two). Originally from New Jersey, Catherine has lived on “the west coast” for 32 years, most recently settling in Sweet Home. She has published poetry in a variety of journals including Adagio, Folio, Fireweed, Gray Sparrow Press, Green Fuse, New Verse News, Portland Lights Anthology, and The Smoking Poet. She is webmaster for the Oregon Poetry Society and has two self-published chapbooks.

Eugene Public Library

Tuesday, October 18, 5:30 p.m.

Cecelia Hagen has been actively writing, editing, and teaching literature in Eugene since she graduated from the University of Oregon with an M.F.A. in poetry in 1976. Reaching out to the local writing community in almost every possible way, she joined the editorial staff of Northwest Review, where she read both poetry and fiction manuscripts, joined a poetry critique group through the Lane Literary Guild, and became managing editor of two monthly trade magazines for computer programmers. She was also the first director of the Windfall Series, starting in 2002. Hagen’s curiosity and enthusiasm for the arts has continued throughout her career: she became a member of a local jazz-dance troupe, audited art history classes at the University, and married visual artist Craig Spilman, with whom she currently enjoys taking part in tango dancing. The poems in Hagen’s first chapbook Fringe Living (26 Book Press, 1999) were described as able to “evoke a wildness and freedom that excite the spirit.” More recently she published a second chapbook Among Others with Eugene’s Traprock Books. Her first full-length collection, Entering, is published this month by Airlie Press. Presently, Hagen is working on translating Russian poetry with her brother, who is a Slavic linguist.

Chris Anderson, a native of Washington state, wrote poetry all throughgrammar and secondary school, but took a Ph.D. in English, which led to a career at Oregon State University teaching and writing nonfiction. His collection of essays Edge Effects was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction in 1993. During the same period, Anderson received a master’s degree in theology at Mount Angel, which led to a second job as Catholic deacon. His book Teaching as Believing tells about this overlapping of life and career. In his academic work Anderson celebrated and developed what he called the “free/style”, in which he seeks to work towards “a written voice that seems natural and spontaneous.” His first collection of poetry My Problem with the Truth (Cloudbank Books 2003) sought to manifest these ideas. His most recent collection, The Next Thing Always Belongs, was published this month by Airlie Press, and poet/editor Tim Green says “These poems are parables, told in the impossible logic of dreams.” Anderson continues his work as a deacon, while teaching full-time at Oregon State, focusing now on the Bible as Literature, Dante, and Spiritual Autobiography.

Eugene Public Library

Tuesday, November 15, 5:30 p.m.

“Much About the Birds and the Trees”

Poetry and prose from two authors known for their love of the natural world.

John Daniel recently won the Oregon Book Award for the second time with a collection of essays that comes out of his 23 years as a resident here. “The land has an argument to make,” he says, and he has spent time listening to the land all over the state, although he and his wife live in the country west of Eugene, where “they don’t call it rainforest for nothing.” The latest result of his years in Oregon with his wife Marilyn, is a naturalist’s memoir The Far Corner, the fifth of his collections of lyrical prose about various aspects of his life. John has also published two books of poetry, and has edited a collection Wild Song: Poems of the Natural World. Originally from the East Coast, John came to the West by way of California, where he spent time as a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (and one of the essays in the new collection is about Stegner). In Oregon he believes he has found his home, a place where “Nature has a slew of wildly various thoughts.”

Ann Staley has been both a writer and a teacher of writing for all of her adult life, and has never found itnecessary to keep the two separate. Her teaching method inevitably includes opening a notebook herself and joining her students in the assignment. Although well known in Western Oregon as one who has taught  grandmothers, fifth-graders, prisoners, graduate students and writing teachers for many years, only recently has Ann become known as a poet, especially through her explorations of ekphrastic poetry—the response of poetry to a painting. Her first full collection of poems, Primary Sources, was published this August by Booktrope Editions of Washington State, and includes many ekphrastic poems. Recently, Ann and a former student, visual artist Jenny Fowler, shared a collaborative residency in a cabin at Shotpouch Creek of the Spring Creek Project for Nature and the Written Word, where Ann wrote poems in response to Jenny’s paintings. The results of this collaboration will be exhibited at the Corvallis Arts Center’s Corrine Woodman Gallery Dec. 6-24, 2011. Ann lives in Corvallis with her husband Courtney.

Geri Doran is the author of Resin (LSU, 2005), selected by Henri Cole for the Academy of American Poets’ Walt Whitman Award, and Sanderlings (Tupelo, 2011).

She has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Scholarship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Portland’s Literary Arts. Born in northwestern Montana, she holds degrees from Vassar College and the University of Florida, and currently teaches poetry in the University of Oregon’s Creative Writing Program.

Lauren Kessler is the author of six works of narrative nonfiction, including her most recent book,  My Teenage Werewolf: AMother, A Daughter, A Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence. She is also the author of Dancing with Rose, which won a Pacific Northwest Book Award and Stubborn Twig, which won an Oregon Book Award and was chosen as the book for all of Oregon to read in honor of the state’s 2009 sesquicentennial.

Deb Casey published a poetry chapbook with Finishing Line Press last year, AS-IS, Several Sisters, a collection that draws the reader into a vicarious experience of everyday life as it would be in the constant presence of a very lively group of sisters. The poems exhibit a unique style that Deb has developed over the years, publishing earlier versions of these and other poems in numerous magazines including Calyx, Chicago Review, Epoch, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares. At the UO she directs a grant-funded program that provides support-services for non-traditional students.

Michael Hanner worked in Eugene as an architect for 35 years, during which hedeveloped a variety of ancillary skills such as poetry, sitting on porches, cooking, tango, travel and photography. He is a member of the Lane Literary Guild’s Red Sofa Poets, and has published a number of chapbooks, including the most recent Closing Down the Piccolo Bar (2008) and Palm Sunday (2009). He is a frequent OSPA contest winner, and has published poems in Cloudbank, Crab Creek Review, Nimrod, Tiger’s Eye, and other magazines, as well as in several anthologies.

Jenny Root moved to Eugene in 1989 from Detroit, Michigan to attend the UO, and chose to make this her home. Over the years she has never ceased to offer her skills to local literary enterprises, both professionally and as a volunteer. She worked with Story Line Press, Tsunami Books and other independent booksellers, as well as the Lane Literary Guild. She also helped get the Poetry Slam—in an earlier incarnation—off and slamming in Eugene. She is currently preparing a manuscript, while planning future multi-voiced readings. Jenny works as an editor and graphic designer with a nonprofit organization in criminal justice.