A Night of Poetry

Join us for a night of poetry with Washington's Poet Laureate, Derek Sheffield, Kevin Miller, and Allen Braden

Derek Sheffield is the 8th Poet Laureate of Washington State. Derek was born in Portland, Oregon, and grew up in Gig Harbor. The first in his family to attend college, he now lives on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range near Leavenworth, Washington, where he can often be found in the woods or along Icicle Creek. His two daughters have come to know many of the beings of their bioregion and can often be found making their own poems and paintings. You can find some of their work in Rattle.

He is the author of Not for Luck, selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and Through the Second Skin, runner-up for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award and finalist for the Washington State Book Award. He is the co-editor, with Simmons Buntin and Elizabeth Dodd, of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy and, with Elizabeth Bradfield and CMarie Fuhrman, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry. His awards include the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, the Foreword Reviews Indies Book of the Year in Nature Writing, and the James Hearst Poetry Prize judged by Li-Young Lee. Derek lives on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Central Washington and is the poetry editor of Terrain.org.

For more information, visit www.dereksheffield.com

Additional presenters:

Kevin Miller

MoonPath Press published Spring Meditation in 2022.
Miller's collection Vanish received the Wandering Aengus Press
Publication Award in 2019. 

Miller taught in the public schools of Washington State for 39 years.

Allen Braden 

Allen is the author of "A Wreath of Down" and "Drops of Blood
and Elegy in the Passive Voice." 

He teaches at Tacoma Community College and lives in Lakewood.

You may also want to visit Gig Harbor Now for a recent interview with Derek: https://www.gigharbornow.org/news/arts-entertainment/washington-state-poet-laureate-derek-sheffield-gig-harbor/

*This is a free community event but your RSVP will help us with planning refreshments. Your donations are appreciated! Thank you!