Clark’s Fourth Annual Creative Writing Festival brought together writers and readers from across the community to celebrate the written word. This week-long event was curated by the Creative Writing and English Department’s faculty, and it included a variety of opportunities for attendees to engage with the literary community. From author readings, book release parties, creative yoga classes, and culminating in the day-long Spring Writers Workshop, the festival inspired participants to fearlessly share their own stories.

Celebrating The Swift Literary Journal, Issue No. 3

“I always love a good story,” someone said as they opened the newest edition of The Swift, Clark College’s literary journal.

Some attendees at The Swift’s release party had found a seat and started reading the journal, while others chatted excitedly. It was an encouraging space for writers to showcase their creativity, as the contributing authors mingled with staff members, families, students, and alumni who came together to celebrate their hard work.

“Thank you for allowing us to publish your work,” Professor Dawn Knopf, an English Department faculty member addressed the authors in her introduction. “It’s an extraordinary issue, and we’re so proud of you.”

Authors took turns at the podium, reading excerpts of their work, which spanned genres – fiction, memoir, poetry, and essays.

The first author to read was student Shylee Greene, the only contributor to have work published in each of the three issues of The Swift. She read her poem, Hurt You to Stay.

Submissions for The Swift are also open to faculty and alumni. One alumnus, Tom Darby, was welcomed to the podium with loud applause before he shared an excerpt from his travel momoir about his time in Morocco in the 1970’s.

The entire publication was spearheaded by students—the photo used as the cover art was taken by one of the student contributors, Faith Hay, and the editors were students, Sean Gentry, Lizeth Hernandez, Samantha Phan, and Stephanie Wagner.

Staff members who missed the event can pick up a free copy of The Swift outside of the Creative Writing suite in Hanna Hall.

And the Award Goes To…

The 2025 Hawkins-Gallivan-Bostwick Awards for Excellence in Writing were presented during this year’s Creative Writing Festival. First through third place winners were announced for each category, including fiction, poetry, essays, analyses, and technical writing.

Professors introduced their students, emphasizing the talent and skill that the students displayed in their work. Students were then invited to read an excerpt of their work. Pieces addressed a variety of topics, such as religion, foster care, women’s rights in Algeria, and creative guides to crafting genre fiction. Regardless of genre, authors enchanted audience members with the way they weaved their stories, combining detail, structure, and flow to engage any reader.

“Writing has always been about community for me,” shared Dr. Jesse Morse during his introduction of one of the winners. “It’s something that can carry you through life.”

This event echoed Dr. Morse’s words, as faculty, staff, families, and fellow students came together to celebrate these students.

Coyote & Bear Discuss Modern Art

Faculty member Dr. Gerry Smith celebrated the release of his newest poetry collection, Coyote & Bear Discuss Modern Art, with a reading that highlighted the collaborative spirit behind the book.

He began with a personal story about how he met the artist who illustrated the collection and how their friendship quickly grew into a creative partnership. For the project, the artist would first send an illustration – each one titled – then Dr. Smith would create a poem inspired by his interpretation of the image. In some cases, his poems directly incorporated visual elements from the artwork. In others, the illustration sets the scene for the poem.

He then read a selection of poems while displaying the artwork that inspired each one. The titles of the poems matched those of the illustrations.

Each poem varied in tone, style, and perspective. Some played with the line structure to reflect the movement in the piece. Observant readers could spot recurring motifs, including the color blue and nods to Pittsburgh and the steel industry. One poem reimagined the iconic painting, American Gothic, envisioning what experiences the daughter of its infamous subjects might have.

The collection is a testament to artistic dialogue – two creators inspiring one another through the unique push and pull of their respective mediums.  Dr. Smith noted that this isn’t his first artistic collaboration, and he encouraged aspiring poets to seek out similar partnerships to deepen their own creative work.

Festival Highlights

The Creative Writing Festival also offered participants the opportunity to engage with authors and hone their own craft.

• Chelsea Bieker, author of the national bestseller Madwoman, concluded this year’s Columbia Writers Series with a reading and discussion. She offered practical advice on various aspects of the writing process, including point of view, plotting, revision, and handling rejection. She reminded attendees that while their work may not resonate with everyone, the right audience will find them eventually.
• Bestselling local author Emiko Jean opened the festival with a reading from The Return of Ellie Black, followed by a talk on hope, persistence, and the writing process. She spoke about the Pacific Northwest’s influence on her work, answered audience questions, and encouraged aspiring writers to embrace failure as part of the journey.
• Participants engaged their entire bodies in the process of being creative in a Yoga for Creativity class.
• The 2025 Spring Writing Workshop, themed “Ghost in the Machine,” concluded Clark College’s Creative Writing Festival with a full day of interactive sessions led by acclaimed authors and faculty members. Writers of all levels explored topics ranging from speculative fiction and memoir to poetry and visual storytelling.

Click here for a full lineup of workshops.

Learn More

Learn more about Creative Writing at Clark College, including the Columbia Writers Series returning in the fall, and submissions for The Swift Clark College Literary Journal.

Photos: Clark College/Malena Goerl

Whether you’re a seasoned writer or just love the written word, Clark College invites you to find inspiration, connection, and creativity at its annual Creative Writing Festival, taking place May 27–31. Free and open to the public, this week-long festival includes engaging readings, conversations, and workshops led by acclaimed authors—all designed to spark your imagination and grow your craft.

The festival wraps up with the popular Clark Spring Creative Writing Workshop on Saturday, May 31, featuring a full day of interactive sessions for writers of all backgrounds.

All events will be in the Penguin Union Building (PUB) on Clark College’s main campus, 1933 Fort Vancouver Way, Vancouver.  Directions and maps are available online.

Creative Writing Festival Schedule:

May 27, 10 am–Noon, PUB258:
Reading & Conversation with New York Times bestselling young adult and adult fiction author Emiko Jean

May 28, 10 am–Noon, PUB161:
“The Swift” release party with student readings and a celebration of the publication of the third edition of Clark’s student-run literary journal

May 29, 10–11 am, PUB258:
Columbia Writers Series Fiction Reading: Chelsea Bieker

May 29, 3-4 pm, Cannell Library:
Book release celebration for Clark Professor Gerry Smith’s collaborative project Coyote and Bear Discuss Modern Art

May 30, 11am–Noon, PUB258:
Yoga for Creativity

May 31, 10 am–5 pm, Penguin Union Building:
Spring Writing Workshop: A full day of writing workshops, readings, and community building. Includes free lunch, coffee, and pastries.  Reserve your free tickets here.

Clark College is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution. Learn more at www.clark.edu/nds. If you need accommodation due to a disability in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Clark College’s Human Resources Office. Phone: 360-992-2105 or email: hr@clark.edu/.

Writing Workshop

Opening Remarks by Susan Dingle, the current Clark County Poet Laurate. Dingle earned a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of two books: In Pilgram Drag, published by Finishing Line Press and Parting Gifts, published by Local Gems. Dingle earned a Master of Social Work degree at SUNY Stony Brook University and is a licensed clinical social worker and alcohol and substance abuse counselor.

Workshop: Letters and Poems, Poems and Letters with Jeff Alessandrelli, a writer and editor living in Portland. The Kenyon Review called his most recent poetry collection Fur Not Light “an example of radical humility.”  Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of the novel  And Yet. In addition to his writing Jeff also directs and co-edits the non-profit record label/book press Fonograf Editions.

Workshop: Writing with Ghosts in the Archival Machine with Katy Anastasi (she/her), a Reference & Instruction Librarian at Clark College and a graduate student at Eastern Oregon University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. In this generative, open-genre craft workshop, participants will explore various library and archival materials with sensitivity to ghosts in the archival machine. 

Workshop: Writing the Magical, Writing the Real: On Making Magical Stories Believable with Emme Lund, an author living and writing in Portland, OR. She has an MFA from Mills College. Her debut novel, The Boy with a Bird in His Chest (Atria Books, 2022) was longlisted for the First Novel Prize from the Center For Fiction, was a finalist for an Oregon Book Award, was named a best book of the year by Buzzfeed and The Portland Mercury, and was included on lists in The Washington Post, USA Today, People Magazine, The Advocate, Cosmopolitan, and Shondaland.

Workshop: Talk Short to Me with Elena Passarello, whose essays on performance, pop culture, and the natural world have been translated into six languages. Her recent work appears in the New York Times Book Review, Paris Review, Audubon and Best American Science and Nature Writing.  She is the author of two collections, the most recent of which, Animals Strike Curious Poses, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her next book, about the spotty legacy of Elvis Presley, is forthcoming from Penguin Press in 2027. You can hear Elena every week on the nationally syndicated public radio program Live Wire! This class works through a few of Carson’s short talks and closes with a generative prompt to get you started on a Talk of your own.

Workshop: ‘As You Know, Captain…’ Avoiding Infodump in Speculative Fiction with Joe Pitkin. Pitkin has lived, taught, and studied in England, Hungary, Mexico, and at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. His short stories have appeared in The Boston Review, Analog, Black Static, Cosmos, and other magazines and podcasts, as well as on his blog, The Subway Test. Stranger Bird, his first novel, was published in 2017; his most recent novel, Exit Black, was published by Blackstone last year.

Workshop: Character Development: A Generative Tarot Writing Journey with Selah Saterstrom, the author of the innovative novels Slab, The Meat and Spirit Plan, and The Pink Institution, as well as two nonfiction collections, Rancher and the award-winning Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics. Selah Saterstrom is the co-founder of Four Queens Divination, an online platform dedicated to the intersection of creative writing and divinatory arts, where she offers classes and mentorship.

Workshop: Zenyatta Mondatta with Ed Skoogm, the author of four collections of poetry, Mister Skylight, Rough Day, Run the Red Lights, and Travelers Leaving for the City. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic, American Poetry Review, and the Best American Poetry series. This generative poetry workshop will focus on how poems can sound amazing and memorable, with language that resonates before it even means. 

Workshop: Poetry and Art: Ekphrastic Poetry with Gerald Donnelly Smith, who has published poems in various literary journals including The Adirondack Review, hummingbird, River Wind, Icon, and Talking Leaves as well as the anthologies War (Green Haven, 2007), The X-Y Experience (2001), and Playing with a Full Deck. He served as the director of the Columbia Writers Series at Clark College for seven years. In this workshop, we will review the different methods for writing poetry about artwork, focusing on painting. We will briefly discuss example poems about Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”  

Workshop: Multidisciplinary Workshop: Reading & Writing with Images by Dao Strom, a poet, musician, writer, and interdisciplinary artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. She is the author/composer of several hybrid-literary works, including the poetry-art collection, INSTRUMENT, and its musical companion of song-poems, TRAVELER’S ODE, and the forthcoming TENDER REVOLUTIONS/YELLOW SONGS (2025). Recently, she co-edited/co-curated the hybrid-literary anthology + exhibit A MOUTH HOLDS MANY THINGS (2024). Strom’s work encompasses both solo and collaborative art and writing projects, and has received support from the Creative Capital Foundation, NEA, Oregon Community Foundation, and others.

Workshop: Five Kinds of Trouble by Dr. Tara Williams (she/her), who earned her MFA in Fiction at Fresno State University. She also holds a master’s and doctorate in education. Currently she teaches composition and literature courses at Clark. Her literary work has appeared in Southwest Review, Tales of the Fantastic, Fatal Flaw, and other publications, and her short stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. An excerpt from her novel-in-progress won an honorable mention for the Plentitudes Prize, and an audio adaptation of one of her short stories took second place in Sycamore Review’s Deanna Tulley Multimedia Contest. Her work is also included in the climate fiction anthology Fire & Water: Stories of the Anthropocene (Black Lawrence Press, 2021).

Workshop: The Poetry of Memoir by Jane Wong, the author of the memoir Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023), winner of the Washington State Book Award. She also wrote two poetry collections: How to Not Be Afraid of Everything (Alice James, 2021) and Overpour (Action Books, 2016). She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room, Artist Trust, Hedgebrook, Ucross, Loghaven, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and others. An interdisciplinary artist as well, she has exhibited her poetry installations and performances at the Frye Art Museum, Richmond Art Gallery, and the Asian Art Museum. She grew up in a take-out restaurant on the Jersey shore and is an Associate Professor at Western Washington University.

Learn More

• Creative Writing Festival – May 27-31: https://www.clark.edu/about/arts-events/cwf/
• Writing Workshop – Saturday, May 31: https://www.clark.edu/academics/programs/dept/english/writingworkshop.phpRegistration for the Writing Workshop only:https://www.eventbrite.com/e/clark-college-spring-writing-workshop-tickets-1075675828359

Award-winning poet Paisley Rekdal captivated a packed audience at Clark College’s Winter Columbia Writers Series on January 30. Students, faculty, staff, and community members filled Gaiser Hall 213, eager to hear her share from her work West: A Translation—a compelling collection commissioned to honor the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad. Blending poetry with multimedia storytelling, Rekdal’s work offers a powerful reexamination of history, migration, and identity.

Rekdal spent five years working on the project. Her research led her deep into railroad archives, where she found an abundance of histories celebrating the wealthy landowners and financiers behind the project. But stories of those laborers who built and worked for the railroad—the Chinese laborers, Black porters, and women who worked behind the scenes—were either absent or barely mentioned. Through her work, Rekdal seeks to restore their voices and reckon with the gaps in America’s historical narrative.

Rekdal said, “I’m half Chinese. I was aware of the history of the transcontinental railroad. I wanted to put the laborers of the railroad on the forefront.”

Countless Chinese who built the railroad with their sweat paid with their lives, but the railroad didn’t keep track of the number. Their stories are lost. When the two ends of the railroad were joined by the driving of the last spike on May 19, 1869, the work of the Chinese laborers was completed. Seen as a threat to the jobs of white laborers, they were no longer welcome in the U.S. and were denied a path to citizenship.

Rekdal talked about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that not only marginalized Chinese people but rounded up and detained them in a government-built detention center on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, some for up to two years.

Rekdal said many of these incarcerated Chinese people carved poems on the walls of the detention center in their own language. In her book, she included one of these poems that elegized someone who had committed suicide while in detention at Angel Island. At the event, Rekdal shared other poems she wrote in response to the stories.

She said, “This whole project is based on footnotes, but I wanted it to be the primary story.”

Today Angel Island is a state park that includes U.S. Immigration Station Detention Barracks Museum, an historic building preserved to show the original carvings that the detained immigrants left behind. Now we can learn about those lost stories.

Learn more:

West multimedia project by Paisley Rekdal

West: A Translation book by Paisley Rekdal is available in the Clark College Library

Angel Island State Park including U.S. Immigration Station Detention Barracks Museum, an historic building preserved to show the original carvings that the detained immigrants left behind from 1910-1940. Rooms are staged to reflect detention conditions.

Immigration Station at Angel Island State Park It It was designed to process Chinese immigrants whose entry was restricted by the Chinese Exclusion Law of 1882.  

The Chinese Exclusion Law of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States.

About Paisley Rekdal

Paisley Rekdal is the author of four books of nonfiction, and seven books of poetry, most recently, West: A Translation, which won the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her work has received the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, and various state arts council awards. The former Utah poet laureate, she teaches at the University of Utah where she directs the American West Center. Learn more about Paisley Rekdal here.

Next Up

All Columbia Writers Series events are free and open to the public. For more information email: creativewriting@clark.edu

Spring Columbia Writers Series: Chelsea Bieker: May 29 at 10:00 a.m., PUB 258A-C

Chelsea Bieker is the author of three books, most recently the nationally bestselling novel, Madwoman, a Book of the Month club pick The New York Times calls “brilliant in its depiction of the long shadows cast by domestic violence.” Her first novel, Godshot, was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and named a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, Heartbroke won the California Book Award and was a New York Times “Best California Book of 2022.” Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Marie Claire UK, People, The Cut, Wall Street Journal, and others. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, as well as residencies from MacDowell and Tin House. Raised in Hawai’i and California, she lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children.

Fourth Annual Clark College Spring Writing Workshop: Saturday, May 31, PUB

The Clark College Writing Workshop is an annual creative writing festival. It is comprised of author readings and writing workshops and invites Clark students and the Vancouver and surrounding communities to come together to celebrate writing and practice craft. Workshop facilitators include renowned writers as well as Clark faculty.

About the Columbia Writers Series

The Columbia Writers Series has been a part of Clark College since 1988, bringing local, national and international authors to the college throughout the year. Writers who have visited Clark College through the series include Ursula Le Guin, Donald Justice, Sherman Alexie, Marvin Bell, William Stafford, Jamaica Kincaid, Gerald Stern, Carolyn Forchè, Natalie Diaz, Karen Russell, Jess Walter, Dana Spiotta, Mitchell Jackson, and many others.

Learn more at https://www.clark.edu/campus-life/arts-events/cws/ or email creativewriting@clark.edu

Photos: Clark College/Jenny Shadley

Clark College welcomes writer and poet, Paisley Rekdal, for the Winter Columbia Writers Series at 1:00 p.m. on January 30, 2015, in Gaiser Hall 213, the Ellis Dunn Community Room.

About Paisley Rekdal

Paisley Rekdal is the author of four books of nonfiction and seven books of poetry. Her most recent collection of poems, “West: A Translation,” was a commissioned project to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad. It was longlisted for the National Book Award. The collection is both a book and an online multi-media project, West: A Translation, which she will share at the event.

Her newest works of nonfiction include a book-length essay, The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam and Appropriate: A Provocation. She guest edited Best American Poetry 2020.  A pedagogy book is forthcoming: Real Toads: Imaginary Gardens: On Reading and Writing Poetry Forensically (W.W. Norton).

Her work has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Civitella Ranieri Residency, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Pushcart Prizes (2009, 2013), Narrative’s Poetry Prize, the AWP Creative Nonfiction Prize, and various state arts council awards. Her poems and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, The New Republic, Tin House, the Best American Poetry series (2012, 2013, 2017, 2018, 2019), and on National Public Radio, among others. 

She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah, where she teaches in the Creative Writing Program and directs the American West Center. She is also the creator and editor ofWest: A Translation, as well as the community web projects, Mapping Literary Utah and Mapping Salt Lake City. She has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor at both Stanford and the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program. Between 2017-2022, she served as Utah’s Poet Laureate, receiving a 2019 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. She currently serves as poetry editor for High Country News, and as co-chair of PEN America’s Utah Chapter.

Learn more here.

Next Up:

Spring Columbia Writers Series: Chelsea Bieker: May 29 at 10:00 a.m., PUB 258A-C

Chelsea Bieker is the author of three books, most recently the nationally bestselling novel, Madwoman, a Book of the Month club pick The New York Times calls “brilliant in its depiction of the long shadows cast by domestic violence.” Her first novel, Godshot, was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and named a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, Heartbroke won the California Book Award and was a New York Times “Best California Book of 2022.” Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Marie Claire UK, People, The Cut, Wall Street Journal, and others. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, as well as residencies from MacDowell and Tin House. Raised in Hawai’i and California, she lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children.

Fourth Annual Clark College Spring Writing Workshop: Saturday, May 31, PUB

The Clark College Writing Workshop is an annual creative writing festival. It is comprised of author readings and writing workshops and invites Clark students and the Vancouver and surrounding communities to come together to celebrate writing and practice craft. Workshop facilitators include renowned writers as well as Clark faculty. 

About the Columbia Writers Series 

The Columbia Writers Series has been a part of Clark College since 1988, bringing local, national and international authors to the college throughout the year. Writers who have visited Clark College through the series include Ursula Le Guin, Donald Justice, Sherman Alexie, Marvin Bell, William Stafford, Jamaica Kincaid, Gerald Stern, Carolyn Forchè, Natalie Diaz, Karen Russell, Jess Walter, Dana Spiotta, Mitchell Jackson, and many others.

Learn more at https://www.clark.edu/campus-life/arts-events/cws/ or email creativewriting@clark.edu

Clark College hosted award-winning author Kaveh Akbar on October 3 to a near-capacity audience of about 100 people. With nearly every seat full (and some attendees standing), Akbar read from his novel Martyr! and answered questions posed by the audience.

The first Columbia Writers Series event of the academic year attracted multiple creative writing classes, the Addiction Counseling Education Students Club (ACES), Clark’s Vice President of Instruction Dr. Terry Brown, and Clark librarians with a pop-up check-out cart featuring works by Akbar as well as past CWS speakers.

Akbar spoke extensively about his writing process (he called himself an ‘ox’ writer who needs to write every single day) and what drove his writing of Martyr!. Historically a poet, he found himself writing a novel. He said, “I tried to tell the story in lyric poetry. But I’m not a good enough poet to do that. I recognized I needed to learn a new skill.” He started with the idea of Orkideh — a performance artist at the center of the book — and the other characters evolved from their narrative need to exist along with Orkideh.

In Martyr!, Cyrus, who is a recovering alcoholic, becomes obsessed with having a meaningful death and decides to write a book about martyrs. When he sees that Orkideh, who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, is living out the rest of her life in an art museum, he undertakes a journey to visit her. The book explores the tension and commiseration between their two perspectives on death, along with multi-layered ideas on family, love, grief, and so much more.

Akbar shared the relationship between writing and addiction recovery. He said that doing the work of recovery involves a kind of honest self-analysis that is also key to writing honest work. “If you’re really doing the recovery work… it means you’re taking a searching and fearless look at your own life. It means that you’re rigorously accounting in ways that are not ethically infantilized, that are not rhetorically hygienic… you have a leg up.”

While writing is his profession, he shared that recovery, and working in recovery groups to help others in recovery, is the central mission that drives him. “The work of my life, the actual what I do with my life, is working in my recovery community.”

Though the poet has become a novelist, Akbar still writes love poems for his spouse and knows he will continue writing poems for the rest of his life. He believes his poems don’t have to be published to be meaningful.

When asked about how he creates his characters, he replied, “I wanted my characters to feel like the people I know.”

Kaveh Akbar is an acclaimed poet, novelist, and editor, whose works appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, and Best American Poetry. He is the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf and Pilgrim Bell, with Martyr!, his debut novel, recently becoming a New York Times bestseller and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year. His writing delves into themes of empire, immigration, addiction, and the healing power of art.

The Columbia Writers Series hosted Akbar along with the college’s Addiction Counseling (ACES) Club.

Next Up:

Winter Columbia Writers Series: Paisley Rekdal, January 30, 2025, at 1 p.m., GHL 213. Rekdal is the author of four books of nonfiction, and seven books of poetry, most recently, West: A Translation, which won the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her work has received the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, and various state arts council awards. The former Utah poet laureate, she teaches at the University of Utah where she directs the American West Center.

Spring Columbia Writers Series: Chelsea Bieker, May 29 at 10 a.m., PUB 258A-C Bieker is the author of three books, most recently the nationally bestselling novel, Madwoman, a Book of the Month club pick the New York Times calls “brilliant in its depiction of the long shadows cast by domestic violence.” Her first novel, Godshot, was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and named a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, Heartbroke won the California Book Award and was a New York Times “Best California Book of 2022.” Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Marie Claire UK, People, The Cut, Wall Street Journal, and others. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, as well as residencies from MacDowell and Tin House. Raised in Hawai’i and California, she lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children.

Photos: Clark College/Jenny Shadley
View more photos from the event on Flickr: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBLiuf

Andrew Leland quoted Georgina Kleege’s Sight Unseen to explain his own relationship to his work: “Writing this book made me blind.”

Authors Andrew Leland and Justin Taylor discussed Leland’s new memoir, The Country of the Blind, at the Spring Columbia Writers’ event. It was attended by Clark creative writing students, students from the nearby Washington State School for the Blind, and staff from Cannell Library and Disability Support Services (DSS).  

Leland’s book shares his experience of slowly losing his sight due to a degenerative eye disease, Retinitis Pigmentos (RP).  More than a description of his life, his memoir explores history, disability justice, and what it means to identify as blind.

With emotion, Leland said a blind reader described his memoir as “the story of our people.” Leland added, “it’s incredibly moving for me that it might have value.”

Writing the book helped Leland process his recently accepted identity as a blind person. At the beginning of his journey, “blindness did not feel like a word connected to me.” As he wrote, he evolved from using third person to describe the blind community (they) to using the first-person plural (we).

The book covers some of the history of innovation driven by blind people. The first typewriters, audiobooks, and LP records were adaptations designed for blind accessibility. Adaptations can become their own form of art as blind people experiment with how to communicate information within the world’s inaccessible design. As Leland put it, “Alt text is poetry.”

An early form of Optical Character Recognition was the Kurzweil Reading Machine, which scanned print books and turned them into computer-spoken words. The inventor designed it for blind people, working closely with the National Federation of the Blind.

When Xerox purchased the machine, the company laid off the blind sales staff. The technology then became a foundation for the internet, which today remains largely inaccessible to the blind. Only 2% of home pages are fully accessible to screen readers.

Leland said, “Often, after it [the technology designed for accessibility] gets coopted into the mainstream, the accessibility falls away.”

According to Leland, information access is one of the biggest barriers affecting blind people. The disability justice movement seeks to change barriers to access for blind people and for all those experiencing disabilities — including multiple disabilities. Key to the movement is understanding how experiences of disability intersect with other identities such as race, class, and gender.

He shared his own experience of diving into disability justice, and how his views started out as naive but became more complex as he talked with more people. “My privilege is intact and will continue to be intact as a blind person… to be a blind person of color is a radically different experience.”

He advised college students to be unafraid to engage with the disability justice movement even if their knowledge is incomplete. “It’s an important first step to be like, ‘I think it’s like this’ and then you take the tires off.”

Leland also shared his advice on writing. He advocates for a regular writing practice — even if you’re not writing with a goal of being published — to prepare you to write when you have something important to say.

“The butt-in-chair principle I think is really important,” Leland said and added “don’t be a hermit… it’s important to be sharing your work with readers.”

Find books by Andrew Leland and Justin Taylor at Clark’s Cannell Library or local independent bookstores.

About Andrew Leland

Andrew Leland’s debut book, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight, about the world of blindness (and figuring out his place in it), was published in July 2023 by Penguin Press. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other outlets. From 2013-2019, he hosted and produced The Organist, an arts and culture podcast, for KCRW; he has also produced pieces for Radiolab and 99 Percent Invisible. He has been an editor at The Believer since 2003. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and son.

About Justin Taylor

Justin Taylor is the author of the novel Reboot, the memoir Riding with the Ghost, the novel The Gospel of Anarchy, and two collections of short fiction: Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever and Flings. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Bomb, and Bookforum, among other publications. He has taught writing at the graduate and undergraduate levels in programs all over the country, including Columbia University, N.Y.U., the University of Southern Mississippi, and the University of Montana. He is a contributing writer to the Washington Post’s Book World and the Director of the Sewanee School of Letters. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

About the Columbia Writers Series

The Columbia Writers Series has been a part of Clark College since 1988, bringing local, national and international authors to the college throughout the year. Writers who have visited Clark College through the series include Ursula Le Guin, Donald Justice, Sherman Alexie, Marvin Bell, William Stafford, Jamaica Kincaid, Gerald Stern, Carolyn Forchè, Natalie Diaz, Karen Russell, Jess Walter, Dana Spiotta, Mitchell Jackson, and many others.

Next up: Learn more about the Creative Writing Festival

Photo: Clark College/Carly Rae Zent

The college community and the public are invited to the Columbia Writers Series kick off its 2023-24 season with Sindya Bhanoo, recipient of the 2023 Oregon Book Award for Fiction. The free event begins at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 19 in PUB 258 A-B. 

Bhanoo is the author of the story collection Seeking Fortune Elsewhere. She is the 2023 winner of the Oregon Book Award for fiction, the New American Voices Award and an O. Henry Prize.  

Seeking Fortune Elsewhere was a finalist for the Pen/Bingham Award and longlisted for both the Story Prize and the ALA’s Carnegie Medal for Excellence.  

A longtime newspaper reporter, Sindya has worked for The New York Times and The Washington Post. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon and teaches creative writing at Oregon State University. 

The Columbia Writers Series was launched at Clark College in 1988, bringing local, national and international authors to the college and the region. 

Other events featured during the 2023-24 series are: 

• Tuesday, Feb. 13 at 11 a.m.: Anis Mojgani, the tenth Poet Laureate of Oregon. A national and international poetry slam champion, his work has appeared on HBO, NPR and in The New York Times. He is the author of six books of poetry, the opera libretto Sanctuaries, a forthcoming children’s picture book and his latest collection, The Tigers, They Let Me.  

• Monday, April 29 at 11 a.m.: Andrew Leland. His debut book, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight, about the world of blindness and figuring out his place in it, was published in July 2023 by Penguin Press. His writing has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and The San Francisco Chronicle, and more. He is a former host and producer of The Organist, an arts and culture podcast for KCRW. He also has produced segments for Radiolab and 99 Percent Invisible.  
   
• TBD in May: Clark College literary week. A week of literary events both on and off campus to engage the college community and the Southwest Washington community. 

Learn more about the Columbia Writers Series at www.clark.edu/cc/cws. 

Author Cecily Wong will speak about her work on Tuesday, May 2, from 11 a.m. to noon in Penguin Union Building 258. This free public event is part of the Clark College Columbia Writers Series.  

Wong is the author of three books. Her debut novel, Diamond Head (Harper, HarperCollins), was a Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Selection, recipient of an ELLE Readers’ Prize, and voted a best debut of the 2015 Brooklyn Book Festival.  

Her latest novel, Kaleidoscope (Dutton, Penguin Random House) was published in July 2022 to rave reviews. Wong is also the co-author of The New York Times bestseller Gastro Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to Food (Workman Publishing). 

Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The LA Review of Books, Self Magazine, Bustle, Atlas Obscura, and more. She has spoken at book festivals across the country and was keynote speaker at the Hawaii Book and Music Festival.  

A graduate of Barnard College, Wong spent 13 years living in New York. She now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and daughter.  

Upcoming Writing/Literary Opportunities at Clark: 

• Clark’s Spring Writing Workshop is Saturday, May 20. It will be an in-person event featuring a variety of speakers and workshops. Learn more here.  
• The Swift: Clark College Literary Journal 
• Learn more about Columbia Writers Series at www.clark.edu/cc/cws. 
• More events are planned for the week of May 15—look for announcements about the Subtext Literary Festival.

Photo: Heather Hawksford

The Clark College Columbia Writers Series continues its 2021-2022 season with writer and critic Lincoln Michel. This event, which is free and open to the public, will be held virtually on Thursday, March 3, 10:00-11:00 a.m. The event will be held on Zoom (passcode: Clark).

Lincoln Michel’s debut novel, The Body Scout (Orbit), was named one of the ten “Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2021” by the New York Times. He’s also the author of the story collection Upright Beasts (Coffee House Press) and the co-editor of the anthologies Tiny Crimes and Tiny Nightmares (Catapult). His fiction appears or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, Granta, NOON, Lightspeed, and elsewhere. His essays and criticism appear in the New York Times, The Guardian, and Lit Hub, among others. You can find him online at lincolnmichel.com and @thelincoln.

Readers can request Lincoln Michel’s books Upright Beasts (2015) and The Body Scout (2021), among others, through Clark College Libraries or find them at Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries and Multnomah County Library.

The Columbia Writers Series was launched at Clark College in 1988, bringing local, national and international authors to the college and the region. This year’s lineup of authors will continue with award-winning poet Morgan Parker on May 12.

Individuals who need accommodation due to a disability in order to fully participate in this event should contact Clark College’s Disability Support Services (DSS) Office at 360-992-2314 or 360-991-0901 (VP). The DSS office is located in room 013 in Clark’s Penguin Union Building.

The Clark College Columbia Writers Series continues its 2019-2020 season with national award-winning writer Terese Mailhot. This event, which is free and open to the public, will be held on Monday, February 24, from 11 a.m. to noon in Penguin Union Building rooms 258 A & B on Clark College’s main campus.

Terese Mailhot is from Seabird
Island Band. Her work has appeared in Guernica,
Pacific Standard, Granta, Mother Jones, Medium, the
Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. She
is the New York Times bestselling
author of Heart Berries: A Memoir.
Her book was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for
English-Language Nonfiction, and was selected by Emma Watson as the Our Shared
Shelf Book Club Pick for March/April 2018. Heart
Berries was also listed as an NPR Best Book of the Year, a Library Journal
Best Book of the Year, a New York Public Library Best Book of the Year, a
Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year, and was one of Harper’s Bazaar‘s Best Books of 2018.
She is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award, the Electra Quinney Award for
Published Stories, a Clara Johnson Award, and she is also the recipient of the
Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature. She
teaches creative writing at Purdue University in Indiana.

The Columbia
Writers Series was launched at Clark College in 1988, bringing local, national
and international authors to the college and the region. This year’s lineup of authors will continue in the spring with
Subtext, a week-long festival beginning on May 18 and featuring a variety of
literary events.

Information
about the Columbia Writers Series is available at www.clark.edu/cc/cws.

This event is held on Clark College’s main campus at 1933 Ft. Vancouver Way. Directions and maps are available online. Individuals who need accommodation due to a disability in order to fully participate in this event should contact Clark College’s Disability Support Services (DSS) Office at 360-992-2314 or 360-991-0901 (VP). The DSS office is located in room 013 in Clark’s Penguin Union Building.