Agnes Vadas was born in 1929 in Budapest, Hungary. A child prodigy violinist, she gave her first professional recital at the age of six. She survived World War II and the Communist takeover in Hungary, from where she escaped in 1956. After nearly ten years living in exile in France and Germany, Agi moved to the US where she lived and taught in universities in Indiana, Texas, Georgia and Ithaca, New York. For fourteen years she played violin with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra. In 1993, Agi retired and moved to San Juan Island where she immediately started a chapter of Amnesty International. Shortly after, she began to write. Agi's first memoir, Tales From Hungary, published in 2002, illuminates her young adulthood amongst Bohemian artists, musicians and writers in Budapest. Truth Be Told: Life Lessons from Death Row chronicles the first six-years of her correspondence with Rich Nields, a death-row inmate in Ohio. Before her death in June, 2007, she completed, Memoirs Of A Stupid Woman, about the complexity of her life as a woman, an artist, and an activist.
Alaya Battalia wrote Songs of the World and Good Verse Survival when she was 16 years old. She was born in a little shack on Lopez and therefore describes herself as “an Island girl for life.” Alaya says she “loves life, all aspects of it, even the parts that are supposed to ‘make you stronger.’ ” She considers traveling a necessity in her life, and she travels whenever possible.
Alie Wiegersma Smaalders was born in 1923 in Fryslan, a northern province of the Netherlands, and came of age during World War Two, when the country was under German occupation for five years. Her first published work—at age fourteen—appeared in a national Dutch newspaper. It was a story on the occasion of the birth of Princess (now Queen) Beatrix in 1938. Alie received a Fulbright award to study at Carnegie-Mellon University, and went on to study at UCLA on an Alpha Xi Delta scholarship. She worked as a reference librarian in Amsterdam and, after emigrating to the U.S. in 1954, at the Unversity of Southern California. Alie has written a book of historical fiction, The Judgement Tree, and was the recipient of a Jack Straw Writers Award 2001. She was also selected by Jack Straw in 2004 for a matching grant that allowed her to record a collage of her stories about living under German occupation in World War II. The Sky Was a Brilliant Blue is the title of the CD of some of these stories. She has lived on Lopez Island since 1982 with her husband Oscar. They have three adult children and five grandchildren.
Amalia Driscoll “I am an old lady with a complicated history that includes six children and a couple of husbands. I worked as a teacher, counselor, lawyer, secretary and farm manager. I lived in urban and rural settings in eight different states in the U.S. and traveled a bit abroad as I got older.”
Amanda Brooks Eldridge spent hours in high school watching all her drama-club friends rehearse and perform in school plays. “I'd know all their lines,” she said, but she never acted in the productions.
Her first play, Sophie, was produced at the San Juan Community Theatre in 2002. At twenty she was the youngest playwright in the history of the Dan Weber Memorial Playwrights' Festival. Extracurricular Activities was chosen for the March, 2003 Monologue Madness production at the San Juan Community Theatre.
Eldridge loves the process and evolution of a play, the deeper understanding of what's going on and the relationships between the characters.
She says, “I love being in a theater when it's empty...the smell, the sensations...”
Ande Finley is euphoric to see her life-long dream of writing full time manifesting here in her remote Lopez forest. Her English major in college morphed somehow into a professional life of crunching numbers and she guiltily filed her writing life away until all her kids had left home. Now, she mainly composes for herself, but her work has appeared in Uncapped, Satsang, and previously, in SHARK REEF. With the help of her brilliantly-creative family, she produced her first chapbook, Simply Love, to commemorate her mother’s 75th birthday. She offers heartfelt thanks to her husband, Scott, for all the years of unwavering support.
Andrew Zoerb wrote Dirt Bikes when he was 10 years old. He was born January 31st, 1995. He lives on Lopez Island with his one dog, a fish and two bunnies, four sisters and two brothers. Two of his sisters are adopted. Grace is adopted from Cambodia and Madeline is adopted from China. He likes to ride dirt bikes and play with dogs.
Anita Leigh Holladay has considered herself a poet for around thirty years but has put more time into other pursuits, such as massage therapy, photography, and mothering. She has been published in an anthology dedicated to writer Meridel Le Sueur and has self-published some chapbooks but is still at work on her first full-length book of poetry. She has been active in the Orcas Island poetry community for the past decade.
Ann Bodle Nash is a "non-traditional" graduate student at the University of Montana in Missoula, where she has found her voice in both non-fiction and, surprisingly to her, fiction. Her family has been patient during her sabbatical from them, and hopes she at least changes their names in her stories, unless the stories portray them as clever, handsome and out of the ordinary. Neither a broken arm, sprained ankle, injured index finger nor loneliness that comes from the solitary pursuit of writing, has prevented her from producing her homework in a timely manner. She looks forward to summer vacation.
Aviva Kana was in the tenth grade at Lopez High School when she wrote this piece. She grew up on Lopez Island with her mother, Doreen, and her older sister, Talula. Aviva was recently given the AFS award for excellence in leadership, community service and academics. The scholarship award enabled her to spend six months in Argentina in 2002.
Barbara Lewis lives on Orcas Island with her husband, Brian. She is a graduate of the Vermont College MFA program in fiction writing and director of the Orcas Island Writers Festival.
Breanne Ward wrote Day Dreamer when she was 11 years old. She has lived on Lopez Island her whole life, and takes writing classes in school. “I get my ideas from things I see, and from things in my head.”
Brooks arrived on the last ferry to Lopez Island September 11, 2001. Recently she made another cross-country move, this time to North Carolina. She writes, makes art, does ocean stuff, teaches classes and workshops. She also walks on beaches and among tall trees, collects bones and rocks, and laughs a lot.
Cady Chapman Davies lives on five acres on an island in the Puget Sound. Her cabin’s picture window overlooks a valley scattered with farms and livestock. On clear days she and her new husband are gifted with a sighting of Mt Rainier hanging low on the horizon like a Japanese painting. She grew up with her father’s easel dominating the living room and family vacations were opportunities to watercolor. Writing has become her outlet in the last few years. Her imagination has been unleashed. Her latest creative endeavor is a detective novel full of off-beat characters.
Caleb Cunningham wrote Dinnertime when he was 7. He is often described as having an amazing imagination and a great vocabulary. He became an aspiring writer when he first heard about “royalties.” He loves theatre, drama and music and is an avid skateboarder.
Caroline Buchanan lives on Obstruction Island, a small, non-ferry island in the San Juans, where she and her husband Jeffrey Unterschuetz have carved a charming enclave out of the wilderness. They have been the only residents much of the time since moving to the Island permanently in 1992. In the studio her husband built for her, she paints her watercolors – often paintings started on location. Her work is well-known for its clear, bright light, resonant colors, and depth of layering. Caroline holds a BA with honors in Art History from Wellesley College and a Masters in Teaching in Art (specializing in teaching adults) from Western Oregon State College. She is a past president, vice president, and board member of the Watercolor Society of Oregon and a signature member of the Northwest Watercolor Society. She has had articles published in American Artist Watercolor Magazine and Daniel Smith’s Inksmith. She is a frequent juror as well as teacher of watercolor workshops throughout the Northwest, and also teaches on-line watercolor for Loyola Marymount College. Her paintings hang in private, corporate and museum collections. Caroline may be contacted at watercolors@rockisland.com or 360-376-5509. More of her work and listing of classes can be seen at www.buchananwatercolors.com.
Chrys Buckley writes longhand first because she loves the feel of pen and paper. She writes short stories and poetry and is currently focused on Moonchild, a memoir about her freshman year of college, a coming-of-age story in which she tries to untangle all the difficulties that came with growing up as an albino. In Moonchild, Chrys relies on her determination and her fierce love of rock music to fuel her self-discovery.
Chrys loves writing about real life because it lets her re-experience and give voice to all the moments of love, sorrow, anguish and grace, and feel them in a new, sometimes deeper, light. Chrys sees letters as different colors in her mind, so writing for her is a lot like painting; her only rule in writing her memoir is to be real, raw and “ruthless with truth.” Chrys currently works at Camp Orkila on Orcas Island and reads tarot cards. She was featured in the Readers Write section of the February 2008 issue of The Sun magazine. She writes a blog at http://chrysbuckley.blogspot.com called "Prying Open My Third Eye." This chapter is an excerpt from the first section of Moonchild, called "Eclipses," a collection of chapters that look into Chrys's childhood before she leaves for college.Clark Gilbert , originally from the equality state of Wyoming, began at an early age to tell stories about all sorts of things—mostly to keep out of trouble. Since 1994, he has lived on San Juan Island, working, boating, running and writing down his stories. He has been published in Marathon and Beyond, Adventures Northwest Magazine and various on-line sources. He can be reached at clarkgilbert@rockisland.com.
Colleen Smith Armstrong was raised on Lopez and is thrilled to still be a part of our vibrant community. She is editor of The Islands' Weekly and a freelance book critic for Seattle Weekly. She can be spotted in and around the island doing her favorite activities: dancing, writing, and reading.
David Halpern earned a B.A. at the University of Washington and his Master's at Brown University, both in writing. His work has appeared in the Seattle Review, Works in Progress, Spindrift, ERGO! and other regional literary publications. He has been a featured writer at Bumbershoot, been selected as a Jack Straw writer/reader, and received a Fishtrap fellowship. A film made from a screenplay he wrote won best comedy at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.
David Huddle is the author of six poetry collections, the most recent of which are Grayscale and Glory River. He's also a novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He lives in Burlington, Vermont, and visited Kangaroo house on Orcas last August.
Dylan Ellis wrote Perfected Beat when he was 18 years old. He was raised on Lopez Island where he developed interests in nature, drawing, and growing exotic chickens. Dylan graduated from Spring Street School in the class of 2004 and is now attending Vassar College in upstate NY. He likes Political Science and plays varsity lacrosse.
Eleanor Burke is a South Carolina native. She has written since the age of seven and has a bachelor's degree in Creative Writing from the University of South Carolina. She moved to Lopez in March 2008 to learn to farm. She has produced, designed and self-published two poetry chapbooks, A Kiss for the Whole World (Spring 2008) and Hunger (Winter 2008), as well as the zine, It's a Farm Life. She is partner to Andre Entermann and full time new mama to Weston River Burke.
Elizabeth Landrum is a clinical psychologist now retiring to Lopez Island after eleven years of having a summer cabin there. She is looking forward to having more time for her new interest in poetry writing.
Ellen Fisher was 12 when she created these works. She was born December 28, 1992, grew up on a farm in Idaho, and moved to Lopez Island when she was five. She has been drawing and painting since she was four. She started selling art cards at the age of eight. She hopes to study art in college.
Elsie McFarland splits her time between writing, yoga and friends on Orcas and a still active business life in Portland. Elsie says she is honored to be included in this issue of SHARK REEF.
Eski Benson wrote Good Bad Good when he was 10 years old. He was born in Los Angeles in 1994 and understood Spanish before he learned to speak English. Eski moved to Lopez Island in 1999 when he was 5. Since then he has started riding horses and studying French.
Faith Van De Putte grew up on Lopez and after leaving for a good many years moved back to the island. She currently writes, has a massage therapy practice, is starting a garden and spends quality time with the tides and the trees.
Galen Ellis Wrote Surprise on the Cay when he was 16 years old. Galen is interested in film, and his senior project film Footprints was screened in at the Hazel Wolf Film Festival in Leavenworth.
George Karnikis was born in Athens Greece, and has lived the last thirty-five years on Orcas Island working as a general contractor. He reads and writes in both Greek and English. He attends the Writer's Round Table on Orcas and and has taken memoir classes. He just finished a Sci Fi novel, Project Anastrophe ( in English), and is currently in the process of publishing it.
Georgie Muska grew up on a farm near the sea in southeast England. From the time she was eleven, she attended an isolated coastal boarding school, where the sea and the written word (letter writing) were links to home. After working in London in her twenties, she traveled to the U.S., meeting her husband Hank and eventually moving with him to Lopez Island in 1980. With their two children they have been commercial fishing in southeast Alaska for the last sixteen years. Georgie's writing interests are poetry and memoir.
Glen Stephens lives in West Sound on Orcas Island. He has been writing poetry since his retirement a few years ago as a partner in one of California's larger law firms.
Graham Ellis wrote Haiku when he was 12 years old. He was born on Shaw Island and is a good friend with a poet's heart.
Gwenna Coiley wrote War when she was 13 years old. She has lived on Lopez all her life. “My writing is inspired by everything that I see in the world around me.”
Heather June lives with her family in the woods. Before Lopez, she grew up in Colorado.
Helen Sanders fell in love with the tortured Vulcan soul of Mr. Spock when she was fourteen years old. Appalled that there were no similar elven-eared, angst-ridden creatures around her, she went on a library jihad to seek out others like Spock who had journeyed far from their interesting alien lands. She read every science fiction and fantasy book that she could get her hands on, and thus tainted by writers like Jorge Luis Borges, Ursula K. LeGuin and Theodore Sturgeon, she started creating her own fantasy worlds when she was 17. It must also be unfortunately noted that she enjoyed dressing up as Admiral Kirk for conventions, she enjoyed earning a Master's degree in creative writing, and she still secretly enjoys the guilty pleasure of writing Harry Potter fan fiction. She lives on Lopez amidst the company of her friends, which include a deranged horse wrangler, a movie producing diva, a steamboat captain, a whole herd of singers, and a doughty band of pipers and drummers who tolerate her politely. Her partner tolerates her desire to be a writer with a compassion that approaches sainthood.
Hildegarde Goss was born in Los Angeles, and she attended boarding school in Sweden during her teenage years, spending summers and holidays with relatives in the coastal islands of her immigrant parents' native country. She studied art in night school at the Art Center in Los Angeles while working in the daytime. Hildegarde and her late husband, Bill Goss, moved to Lopez Island in 1975, where she still resides with her beloved Corgi and Big Dog, Bill's Rottweiler.
From early childhood throughout a 40-year career as a massage therapist, Hildegarde Goss says, “I always painted.”
Ingrid Karnikis and her husband George have lived on Orcas for 35 years. Her primary job has been mother and wife. Her four children, now grown up, all went to school on Orcas. Ingrid has been writing poetry for many years and was published In Unity Magazine and in local collections. She draws inspiration from the natural world and from our mysterious human nature.
Iris Graville is a freelance writer from Lopez Island. Her interviews, essays, and memoir pieces have been published in national and regional journals and magazines. This profile will be included in the upcoming book, Hands at Work—Portraits and Profiles of People Who Work with Their Hands by Iris Graville, with photography by Summer Moon Scriver. The book was published in Fall 2008 (visit www.handsworking.com for more information).
Jan Loudin wrote two children’s stories following an Artist’s Way workshop with fellow Orcas Islanders. One of them was a finalist in the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference while the other, The Witch and the ‘Roo of Wicky Woo, was self-published. Jan joined an Orcas writers group, inspiring her to create adult short stories, novellas and, eventually, prose poems. Observing the daily beauty, intimacy and goings-on of the Islands tickles her fancy, prompting that urgent need to “write it down!” She happily lives and laughs with her husband Frank and their white standard poodle Spencer. (She also has to make time to help manage Frank’s art business.)
Janet Thomas was born in Wales and lived ten years in Canada before moving to the Northwest. She's lived on San Juan Island for 15 years. Throughout the 1980s, Thomas' plays were produced in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Washington DC. She wrote At Home In Hostel Territory, a travel guide to hostels of the west, and was editor of SPA Magazine for five years. The Battle in Seattle: The Story Behind and Beyond the WTO Demonstrations was published in 2000. Thomas was a contributing editor to the 2007 Northwest Best Places.
Janet Yang has written poetry sporadically for 45 years and so far has no desire to try writing prose. However, in her "day job" as a visual artist she occasionally succumbs to a narrative style. In 2005, Janet and her family moved full time to Lopez Island, where she and her husband continually hope to finish building their house and move on to other activities.
Jeff Otis has been creating photographs since high school (a long time ago) when he first picked-up his grandfather's camera and apparently forgot to put it down. His photos have been published in newspapers, magazines, books, on the internet, and displayed in shows. He had the unique opportunity of working at the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite when Ansel was alive, as well as participating in an adventurous book project in Ethiopia. He lives on Orcas Island with his wonderful dog Bo.
Jill McCabe Johnson is the director of Artsmith, a non-profit to support the arts. She was awarded the Paula Jones Gardiner Poetry Award from Floating Bridge Press, and has had poetry and prose in publications such as Umbrella Journal, Pontoon, Paddle magazine, and Oak Bend Review. Jill has an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University, and is pursuing a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska.
Jodi Fragnoli wrote Gum-Shoe Jasper when she was 17 years old.
JoEllen Moldoff has been enjoying a creative phase of life inspired by the people and environment of Orcas Island. Poetry and visual art are her primary interests since retiring from a career in education and counseling. Teaching poetry and memoir writing, as well as coordinating writing activities on the island, are greatly satisfying. In the realm of art, she is exploring various media including monoprinting and collage.
In her writing, teaching and art, it is the process, with all its creative surprises and discoveries, that she finds most rewarding.
John Sangster lives on Lopez Island. His work has appeared in several issues of SHARK REEF. His chapbook, Island Year, was published by Pudding House Publications in 2008. While working on a memoir about a one-year trip he and his wife took across North America, a number car poems began to appear. Those combined with earlier car poems might one day become a chapbook.
Judith Miller is a mostly-unpublished personal essayist and poet who writes for the love of words and the joy of being in the company of other writers. She lives on Orcas Island.
Julia Klimek spends summers on the old McLeod farm on Lopez Island. The rest of the year she lives in a small town in South Carolina, where she teaches English at a college.
Julie Van Camp was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the daughter of a Washington County farm boy turned pediatrician. She has a BA in journalism from the University of Iowa and an MS in criminal justice from Northeastern University in Boston. Her articles have appeared in Ancestry, Western New York Heritage, New England Ancestors, The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Examiner, The Judges Journal and various American Bar Association publications. Her books include Courts and the Classroom (Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Boston, MA) and State Courts and Law-Related Education (Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity, Washington, DC). After retiring in 1992, she moved to Lopez Island, Washington, where she writes and volunteers as a nonprofit management consultant.
Kaj Benson wrote Salvation Rock when he was in 6th grade. He lives on Lopez and goes to Lopez School. He has a dog (a family dog) and a cat and lives with his parents and younger brother (who has a cat and some fish.) He loves rock and roll, and plays trapset, djembe, and marimbas. He says that this was not his choice to put in, but that his mom chose it.
Karen Fisher is a writer currently at work on her second novel. Her first, A Sudden Country, which blends a story of Oregon immigrants with a history of the Hudson Bay Company, was published by Random House in 2005 to critical acclaim. She lives on Lopez Island with her husband, three small children, several horses. a dog, and assorted cats. When not writing, she spends her time chopping firewood, playing the marimba, growing vegetables, sailing, and building houses.
Kate Scott 's work emanates from what she sees around her -- not only the great beauty of nature, but also the threat to it -- and the way people interact with each other. She uses humor to try convey her ideas. She doesn't mean to be satiric or funny; her work just comes out that way. Kate lives in cabin in the woods with a dog, a cat and a big garden. She considers her son Julian her best work of art by far. She shows her work at Gallery Ten on Lopez.
Ken Jenks grew up in a movie theatre run by his mother in a small town in southwestern Wyoming. The two lived in three rooms at the back of the theatre. With this daily diet of drama, of course he'd write film scenarios and poetry as a boy, radio plays in high school, then graduate into live theatre. He taught Theatre in a city college in Chicago, and Playwriting at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Twenty-six of his plays have been produced, the most recent, "All Dress Wild", at the Dan Weber Memorial Playwrights Festival at the San Juan Community Theatre, September, 2001. He has lived on Lopez Island since 1991.
Kim Secunda ’s earliest visual memories are of neon, casino marquis, road signs and boxcars. As a schoolgirl, she adored her spelling lists. The fortune of being born into a family of compulsive readers and having a busy mind makes words a natural means of artistic translation. Many miles of shampoo labels and raggedy note books bring you her work.
Kimie Jenks has lived on Lopez Island since 1991. Her artistic background includes a B.F.A. in Drawing and Painting, University of Utah.
Kip Robinson Greenthal holds a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her previous work experience includes eighteen years as a librarian in schools and public libraries. In 1993, she became the Education Director for Seattle Arts & Lectures, where she founded and directed the Writers in the Schools program until 2001.
Now a fulltime writer, she is currently working on a revision for her first novel, Shoal Water. In 2000, she was selected for the 2000 Jack Straw Writers Program, and was also awarded a Hedgebrook residency. Her short story, Tattoo Emporium, has appeared in print, online, and through the publication of Currents, an anthology published by the Lopez Writers Guild in 2004.
In January 2007, Elizabeth Austen selected her short story, Stealing, to be aired on KUOW’s On the Beat. Stealing is a piece to be included in Kip’s second novel, East Lee, a story about leaving her family home.
Laurie Junkins has lived with her husband and three children on Orcas Island for nine years, raising alpacas and writing poetry. She is currently working on her MFA in poetry at Whidbey Writers Workshop.
Laurie Parker grew up in Baltimore and moved to San Francisco when she was seventeen. She studied dance, theater, and film there and directed and acted in plays before moving to Los Angeles where she became a movie producer. She lives on Lopez Island with her sons Kaj and Eski Benson.
Leta Currie Marshall is a compulsive writer who grew up in Texas, lived in the Florida Keys for a while, and now shivers through much of the year in the Pacific Northwest. Her articles appear regularly in The Islands' Weekly and occasionally elsewhere. She also plays the flute and other small woodwinds, and freely admits to being a dilettante. She lives in a messy house with her husband and cat.
Lewis Spaulding found himself writing many poems thirty years ago while in college and was fortunate to enjoy publication of some of them. Now he finds himself waking the poetry path again, with new discoveries around each bend. He lives on San Juan Island.
Lin McNulty comfortably, peacefully, happily resides on Orcas Island, in her 18th year of a three-day camping trip. She writes poems, plays, occasional reviews for The Sounder newspaper, rambling emails, even procedure manuals—anything so she doesn't have to work on her novel, Monumental Task.
Linda Brainerd was a journalism major in college. During college she wrote news for a San Diego TV station; after college she worked at a small weekly newspaper outside Sacramento. She has worked with writing groups in San Diego, Sacramento, and Santa Barbara, and has written poetry and short stories with the Legacy Writers since its inception on Lopez.
Lindy Reese is a biannual visitor to Lopez who enjoys reading women’s (mostly) fiction, New Yorker-type articles and essays and the occasional homily. Canoeing and camping are interests, along with snuggling with her kitty. She lives in rural Minnesota .
Lisa Lawrence , a native San Juan Islander, is proud of her island heritage. Her father's ancestors moved here in the 1870s and her maternal ancestors were homesteaders who married local Native American women from the Mitchell Bay and Swinomish tribes. Lawrence has had her hand in many things, from commercial fishing, real estate, art and painting, owning a farm with her husband Jim, raising their two daughters, Natalia and Mara, and now is an adoring grandmother. Much of her writing reflects her relationship to these islands and the people here, the enchanting nature around her and her connection to it.
Liza Franzoni lives with the Salish Sea, eats seaweed, and makes medicine from land plants. She has a son, Miles, and a daughter, Alaria.
Lorna Reese was born and raised in Minnesota and lived for twenty years in Boston before moving with her husband to Lopez Island in 1994. After writing other people's words for most of her professional life, she discovered her own voice and has been writing memoir, essays and short stories since then. Lorna's work has been published in the Islands' Weekly newspaper, the Sun Magazine and in SHARK REEF.
Lynn Aliya lives in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and is a frequent visitor to Lopez Island. This play was the winner of the Colorado Women's Playwrighting Festival and was also chosen by the LA Weekly as the Performance Pick of the Week. The play has been performed in LA, NYC and Denver by Aliya. It was also performed at SUNY, Stony Brook. She is currently working on a novel.
Lyra Dalton wrote The Long Cry when she was 12 years old. She lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest and loves to read and act. She loves challenges and to surprise people.
Makena Henriksen wrote Stupid Dyke when she was 17 years old. She was raised on Lopez Island since her birth. Although she liked reading the Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner in early elementary school, she found the books quite chauvinistic. She fell in love with Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in fourth grade and reread the series before she would see any of the movies. Currently she reads science fantasy books on a regular basis. A day isn't complete unless she's had time to read.
Marcia Barthelow lived on Lopez for 19 years. In 1999, she moved to Seattle but she kept her island home. She still attends her island writers' group, serves on the Cooperative Preschool Board, and continues to keep in touch with her island community. Though widely published in her dreams, this is Marcia's first actual publication of one of her "creative" pieces; unless of course you count sixth grade, when her teacher sent her poem in to a local newspaper. That piece had a major problem: when the poem was finally published, Marcia saw that her teacher had changed the last line, which had been somewhat "eerie," to a "happily ever after" kind of ending...resulting in the fact that she doesn't acknowledge the piece as having been published, and leaves it out of her "extensive writing resume." She hopes you don't end up having to read her "candle piece" as many times as she's revised it...and that it will give you something to reflect upon in times of struggle.
Marcia Simpson received her B.A. from Stanford University and her M.A. from the University of Wisconsin. Mother of four, she taught learning disabled children in Wisconsin and in Alaska. For several years she lived on a boat in a small Alaskan village, where she taught K through 12 at a public school and immersed herself in the stories that led to her mystery novels Crow in Stolen Colors and Sound Tracks, both published by The Berkley Publishing Group.
Margaret Payne is the recently retired chair for arts and humanities and English faculty member at Pierce College, near Tacoma. She has previously published in City Arts Magazine (Tacoma) and Cruising World. She built a small house on Orcas in 2007 and moved to the islands full time in 2009.
Maya Borhani has written stories and poems since childhood and went on to study literature and creative writing in college. After her formal education, she headed off into the mountains of California to study rocks, trees, flowers, fauna, Buddhism, herself, and poetry from the inside out. Along the way she learned to garden, gleaned some tricks of animal husbandry, cultivated a few crafty skills, and stockpiled a pharmacopeia of herbal and first aid remedies. In writing, the sounds of words and the flow of language as song are the elements that most intrigue her.
Meredith Giffith lives on Orcas Island. Her current occupation is raising two delightful small children, but she sneaks away to write during naptime. She was last seen in print in Trinity Western University’s three student publications: the literary journal, Libera; the annual, The Pillar; and the newspaper, Mars’ Hill. Her favorite genres are poetry and creative non-fiction (all previous attempts at fiction have been frightfully embarrassing). Meredith also makes use of her English Lit. B.A. to provide business writing and editing services to islanders.
Mike Conner sailed into the San Juan Islands intending a brief layover on his journey to Alaska. He has been here 16 years so far. "Crow" is part of a collection of stories which may coalesce into something if Mike ever writes it.
Molly Swan-Sheeran who makes her living as a metal smith, has been writing poetry for more than 35 years. She has also written a book about designing paper-cut Celtic knots. She and her husband live on a small sailboat and only recently installed a telephone. You can find her on the web at www.celticswan.com/poems
MollyBee Welkin has found poetry to be her delight in her elder years. Her poems have been published in the Grey Squirrel, Buzzwords, and Seattle's Real Change as well as that of her Missouri Southern State University's Winged Lion. MollyBee has found time to attend a wide variety of workshops including those in Bennington, Vermont, Whidbey Island and Seattle's Richard Hugo House. In her travels she is atracted to 'open mic' gigs. Her home is now on Orcas where she is enjoying writer groups.
Monica Woelfel has an M.F.A. in creative writing from University of British Columbia. Her work has appeared in literary journals, including Seattle Review, Room of One’s Own and The North American Review. She lived for many years on Orcas Island and served as a Washington State Artist in Residence before moving in 2006 to her mother’s hometown of Soquel, CA. In their spare time, she and her husband love to build structures using clay, straw, sand and stone.
Nils Benson was born in 1966 and grew up in Pullman, Washington. He went to art school in Portland, Oregon at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and in the Chongqing provence of the People's Republic of China, where he studied traditonal Chinese painting for a year. He got his BA in Fine Arts from the Pacific Northwest College of Art, where he worked as the projectionist for the Northwest Film Study Center while going to school. He fell in with the film crowd led by Portland filmmaker Gus Van Sant, and worked as a cameraman and editor on Van Sant's early shorts and features. Nils moved to Los Angeles in 1990 and became a professional cinematographer. Since then he has split his time between film and fine art. He moved to Lopez Island in 1999 with his wife and two sons.
Oak Boesky has lived in the San Juan islands since 1985, mostly on Orcas, and since 2006 on San Juan Island. She is a visual artist and secret poet.
Paul Walsh and his wife, Valarie, live between Woodinville, WA and Moon Meadow Lane on San Juan Island depending on what week it is. Being the webmaster for almost 20 brain-injury related associations keeps him busy most days. Nights might find him at a telescope imaging the far fuzzies. His first brush with poetry came at the original Nuyorican Poets Café on E. 6th in New York City in the mid 70s but that’s another story and there’s a whole lot of mileage in between.
Renae Keep , mother, musician, poet, moved with her family to Orcas Island in 2009. She has a master of arts in comparative literature from the University of Washington and works as a free-lance writer, editor and translator. Her poems have appeared in Synapse and The Daily.
Reyna Ellis wrote My Sister when she was 9 years old. She found her way to Lopez Island at the age of six. As she learned to read and write and speak in English, she also discovered her writer's voice. She writes about her life, her friends, her past. When she isn't writing she spends her time playing piano and drawing nature prints. Her nickname is Tiny.
Richard Carter grew up in Portland, Oregon, the son of a doctor and a dancer. After graduating from Vassar College and receiving his MFA in playwriting from the University of Washington, Richard’s historical play Blood and Iron won Seattle’s Jumpstart New Play Competition and went on to be presented by the Seattle Shakespeare Festival in 1997 and by Living Theatre Company in London's West End in 1998. His musical play, Winds in the Morning, premiered at the 1997 Seattle Fringe Festival and was selected to inaugurate the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival in 2000.
Richard offers his talents in many venues. As Author/Director of the Community Shakespeare Company, his adaptations of Shakespeare for young actors are utterly faithful to the spirit of the original plays, while making them instantly accessible to modern students and audiences. Acknowledged by the Educational Theatre Association, CSC Editions are used by teachers across the U.S. and abroad to introduce elementary and middle schoolers to the Bard.
Richard lives with his wife Jeanna on a small farm on Lopez Island, where they have been raising their children and practicing sustainable agriculture together since 1988.
Pendarvis is his first novel.
Richard Singer has been creating paintings in the Pacific Northwest since the early 1970s. His off-center art pieces are in collections in Washington, Oregon and California. Since 1999, the artist has been including transferred and altered vintage photographs and old print media images in his works, which have added evocative reflections of the past to the paintings.
A former president of the Northwest Watercolor Society, Richard has strayed far afield from his pure watercolor roots. “You can't stop using your imagination and creative impulses to stay in line with watercolor show rules. I don't want to restrict myself in any way,” he says. His Kanji series includes old Chinese-based Japanese written characters. The nature of these characters as miniature pictographs with ancient origins fascinates him. The current themes are simple: earth, air, war, trees, fire, for example. The paintings themselves, however, may get complex, some taking weeks to execute. “I'm not running out of subjects,” he says. “As I get older, my growing sense of awe makes them grow geometrically.”
Richard Singer has been honored with many awards and art jury selections over the last 30 years. He was recently asked to participate in the Year 2000 60-year watercolor retrospective at Seattle's Frye Art Museum. Singer studied art at the University of Washington and Cornish School in Seattle. His major influences have been former acquaintances Kenneth Callahan and William Wiley. He particularly admires the works of J..M.W. Turner, Paul Klee and Robert Rauschenburg.
Richard Ward is a retired English teacher and long-time Lopez resident. He divides his time between traveling abroad and trying to finish his house, a project he calls "a race with death." Travel, he feels, is the best way to understand the power of culture to shape one's perception of the world. He shares his experiences through occasional writing and slide shows.
Rita Larom ’s interest in writing grew into a hobby after retirement and a move to Lopez Island, and it's slowly becoming a passion. She lives on the island with her husband, Gerhard Hoffman, and enjoys gardening and travel.
Rob Lyon is a writer whose wife, Pamela, referred to him recently as a kid with gray hair.
Sharon Wootton , a full-time independent writer/photographer, lives on Shaw Island. From her loft office, she writes an outdoors column, a nature column, a music column and travel stories for two daily newspapers and a Northwest magazine. Her stories have appeared in Washington Wildlands, Garden Showcase, Odyssey, Cross-Country Skier, U.S. News and World Reports, Soundings, Motorcyclist Magazine and Commercial Car Journal as well as the National Insider and Midnight. She’s also co-authored, with Maggie Savage, two books: “Washington Off the Beaten Path” (2009, Insiders’ Guide/Globe Pequot) and “You Know You’re in Washington When … 101 Quintessential Places, People, Events, Customs, Lingo and Eats of the Evergreen State” (2007, Globe Pequot). Sharon and Maggie also host individual and group retreats (songandword@rockisland.com).
Steve Adams , who finds it disconcerting to speak of himself in the third person, has written stories, novels, newspaper articles, instructional manuals, promotional newsletters and copy, and grocery lists. He generally finds the latter to be his most useful work, but writes fiction because it's the only way to remove the voices crowding his head from his already addled brain pan.
Steve Horn began documenting family road trips at the age of six, using a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye camera. At nineteen he studied with the American landscape photographer Paul Caponigro. Steve has been a professional photographer since the mid-1980's specializing in portrait and documentary work, including many years as visual arts photographer at Bumbershoot, the Seattle Festival of the Arts. His photographs are in the collections of Amherst College, Yale University, the Seattle Arts Commission, and the Natural History Museum of Travnik, Bosnia. Recently Steve has been touring on the East Coast, presenting his slide show about revisiting Bosnia to college and community audiences. He was selected to participate in the national conference, "Who Speaks for the Common Good," sponsored by the Peace and Justice Studies Association, held in New York City in October, 2006. Steve lives on Lopez Island with his wife, Polly Ham, a sculptor and teacher.
Summer Moon Scriver has been exploring photography as a creative way to frame wordless moments in landscapes of the natural environment as well as “landscapes” of the human body and spirit for over 15 years. Her portrait and landscape photography has been shown in galleries across the Pacific Northwest, and she is a trusted wedding photographer. She lives on Lopez Island with her partner and two sons. For these photographs from Hands at Work—Portraits and Profiles of People Who Work with Their Hands, Summer used a Nikon D200 digital camera to tell visual stories through the richness and simplicity of black-and-white photography. For more information about Hands at Work, visit www.handsworking.com
Susan Hendrick is a new writer and a lover of people, life, and nature. She lives with her family on Orcas Island.
Susan Slapin is a visual artist, photographer and poet, who was born in Connecticut where the changing seasons presented a gorgeous mix of color. She later attended San Francisco Art Institute, and Marylhurst College in Oregon. Susan's Chapbook Island Passages is a collection of sepia photography and poetry. Her work has been published in magazines in Ojai, California and Lake Oswego, Oregon. Creating continues in the beautiful San Juan Islands.
Sylvia Chesley Smith attended Cornish Institute of the Arts in 1981 in mid-life after raising her three daughters, graduating in 1981 with a B.F.A. in painting and sculpture. Her art provides a balance against her work as a counselor. Sylvia is one of three daughters, as is her 93-year-old mother who still plays the piano.
“I like to build. Making something from nothing. Order from chaos. When I paint I start with color. Color and more color. Layers of paint rubbed back to show what was before. Then images appear. Air born things; seeds, leaves, birds. Flying. Floating. Or, references to people; bowls, hands, clothing. I ground it all with architectural references; houses, arches, windows. And, circles. Where it all begins and ends. Creating is a longing. A being. A process that, for me, is an inner journey that has its own language.”
Terrell Carter wrote Lost Soul and Short of Air when he was 13 years old. He has acted in many of Shakespeare's plays directed by his father, Richard. In addition to writing poetry, Terrell is a very fine short story writer and essayist. He speaks French and is an excellent student.
Tom Odegard 's poetry has been published in two books, Past Lives Led, Friends Well Met, from Beatitude Press, and 5 self-published chapbooks. Other poems have been published in collections in the SF Bay Area including Sacred Grounds, Blue and Gold, and Spasso's. He lives on San Juan with his wife and eight chickens.
Vilina Sanburn-Bill lives on a farm on Lopez Island, Washington. “This whole writing thing” started when she was five years old. She and her close friend made a book called Cat and Dog. One of them would write three sentences and the other would draw a picture to match the sentences. She wrote this story for a school assignment. Her teacher said “Write a story about anything you choose.”
Weyshawn Douglas Koons spent much of her childhood in the woods of the mid-west. She and her husband have lived on San Juan Island for over twenty five years where they have raised their two children. She works as a paramedic for San Juan Island EMS. In 1991 she went through Seattle Medic One’s Paramedic Training Program at Harborview Medical Center. She is currently working on a memoir about that experience.
White Bear Woman has been writing poetry for most of her life. She has also been a university teacher, a carpenter, a cook on a fishing boat, a kayak guide, a licensed masseuse, a restaurant owner and more. Whatever she does, she doesn't dabble; she plunges all the way in. "I follow my passion and my heart and they've led me through my life," she says. "I haven't stayed on one path because different things have gotten my attention. That's where my poetry comes from --that place." She has had five books of poetry published.