Northwest Poets' Concord--April 24, 25

Newport’s Hallmark Inn and Resort is the site for this year’s
Northwest Poets’ Concord, April 24 and 25, sponsored by The Eastern
Oregon University Foundation and the College of Arts and Sciences, and
The City of Newport. The Concord, named for the concept of “hearts
together,” investigates the many forms and concerns of contemporary
poetry and celebrates the power of poetry in a troubled world.

The Concord kicks off at 2 p.m. on Friday, April 24, with a Book Fair.
Participants will be available to sign and sell recent books and for
open conversation. The Book Fair is followed at 5 p.m. by the keynote
presentation by poet Barbara Drake, who will speak on “The Northwest
Regional Anthology.” These two events are free and open to the
public.

Concurrent sessions begin at 9 a.m. on Saturday and run through 6
p.m., culminating in Young Poets Under 18. Cost for the public is $7
for the morning session and $8 for the afternoon session, or $15 all
day, including refreshments. Those who wish to enroll for 2 college
credits in connection with the Concord should do so by contacting
Eastern Oregon University and looking at Engl. 422. An Open Mic
beginning at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 25, at the Champagne Patio in
Newport closes the Concord.

The full program can be viewed at
http://www.eou.edu/engwrite/NWPoetsConcord.html Participants include
the following:

Shaindel Beers’ poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared
in numerous
journals and anthologies. She is currently a professor of English at
Blue Mountain
Community College in Pendleton, Oregon, in Eastern Oregon’s high
desert and also serves as Poetry Editor of “Contrary”
(www.contrarymagazine.com). Her first collection of poetry, A Brief
History of Time, was released by Salt Publishing in 2009. She is
working on her second collection, The Children's War.

Eleanor Berry grew up in southern New England, later lived for several
years in Canada and nearly two decades in the upper midwest, before
moving to western Oregon in 1994. As a poet, she was first published
in Canada, in an anthology of The New Canadian Poets and in a national
magazine, The Canadian Forum. Some years later, she read at the
Midwest Poetry Festival and had poems published in the Wisconsin
Poets’ Calendar and in regional magazines. Now that she has lived in
western Oregon for 14 years, poems of hers have appeared in a magazine
of poetry of place, with a focus on the northwest, and a book of her
poems has been published by a small press devoted exclusively to
Oregon poets.

Virginia Corrie-Cozart grew up on a farm on the southern
Oregon coast. She later taught music in the Salem Public School,
retiring in 1990. Her book, "A Mutable Place" was published by
Traprock Books in 2003.

Caleb Crossman, a recent English graduate from Corban College, is
currently finishing his first novel. His poetry has earned him enough
rejection letters to paper a large room. His depression is purely
artistic.

Joan Dobbie is the child of Jewish holocaust survivors, a teacher of
hatha yoga, the mother of two wonderful human beings, grandmother of
five sweet little children, an elder companion, an oral historian, a
creator of websites, a claysculptor, and, a poet. She has been
writing poetry since about 1975, steadily since around 1983. She has a
1988 M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon. Her
poetry has been quite widely published in anthologies and small press
publications. In the last few years, she received an honorable mention
for my sestina, "Remembering", OSPA Fall Conference, 2005. “How I
Came to Be on Earth” appeared in DONA NOBIS PACEM (Grant Us Peace), in
April of 2006. “Ash,” received a second place in OSPA’s Fall 2006
Contest in the "dueling judges" category. "Thank God for the
Holidays” was featured on a Holiday card published by Chuck Eyers,
December 2006. "Love Poem With My Grandparents in Mind" and "Alton
Baker Park, August 2005", appear in an anthology called LOVE AFTER
SEVENTY, Wising Up Press, Decator, Georgia. The book will be available
at the Poets Concord in Newport this April. In 2008 her poem "Bill is
a Hunter" took first honorable Mention in the OSPA Fall Conference,
2008. She took part in a benefit for the Maria Luisa Ortiz Women's
Clinic in Mulukuku, Nicaragua, on Sunday, November 16, 2008, reading
her new poem, "My Name is Florcita," which has been was printed on a
large poster and distributed at the benefit. Some copies will go to
the clinic for them to distribute if they'd like. Also, her poem "In
Honor of the Circumstances,” which she will be reading at the Poet’s
Concord, was published by Chuck Eyers, as a holiday card. Poetry
Immersion classes , which she has been conducting since 1986, are
continuing at Emerald Park, River Road, Oregon. (541-688-4052).

Barbara Drake was born in Abilene, Kansas, moved to Oregon with her
parents as a small child, and grew up in the coastal lumber town of
Coos Bay. She earned her B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from the University
of Oregon, subsequently lived in Michigan for sixteen years and taught
at Michigan State University before returning to Oregon in 1983 to
teach at Linfield College. Recently retired, she is now Linfield
Professor of English Emerita. Some publications: Peace at Heart: an
Oregon Country Life (memoir); Writing Poetry (college textbook); and
several collections of poetry including What We Say to Strangers, Love
at the Egyptian Theatre, and Small Favors. Her work appears in
various anthologies, most recently, Cadence of Hooves (Yarroway Press)
and Citadel of the Spirit (Nestucca Spit Press). She and her husband,
William Beckman, live on a small farm in Yamhill County where they
raise sheep and wine grapes and enjoy introducing their grandchildren
to country life.

Sandra (Fischer) Ellston is a Shakespeare scholar and t’ai chi
instructor whose poetry has appeared in “hipfish,” “The Oregonian,”
“The Pregnant Moon Review,” “13th Moon,” and “Thresholds,” among
others. A native Oregonian, she is recipient of an Oregon Literary
Arts Fellowship and awards for several of her poems. Her work on
Shakespeare, especially “Hearing Ophelia,” is often reprinted. Author
of Econolingua, she has been named Woman of Vision and Courage by EOU
and Teacher of the Year in the SUNY system. Organizer and host of the
Northwest Poets’ Concord, she is Professor of English and Writing at
Eastern Oregon University, where she also served as Dean of the
College of Arts and Sciences. Her poetry manuscript, Cosmic Outlaw,
is looking for a press.

Michael Hanner and Toni Van Deusen have been friends and writing
partners for about eight years. Each has been published in a number of
literary journals and has published numerous chapbooks. Most recently,
both have poems in volume 7 of MARGIE. They have been life partners
since September 2007 and enjoy travel, food (he cooks, she eats), and
writing.

Jill Hardin, born to musician parents in Eugene, Oregon, wandered the
East Coast, England, and France in the sixties, before returning to
the Great Northwest. Using her BA in Music as musician, teacher, and
piano tuner, while raising her two daughters, she sang professionally
with the Seattle Opera Company. She later wrote and performed “Muse
and Mask” for Seattle Fringe Theatre Festival, and recorded “Rough
Cuts,” some favorite ballads of the 30’s and 40’s. She has written
poetry most her adult life, with emphasis on songwriting in the
earlier years. She fondly remembers being mentored by her brother Tim
during the earliest of those years. Since the late eighties, she has
become more interested in the purity of the word alone as art,
expressing Truth, Gratitude, and ‘all the in-betweens’. She now lives
happily in Florence, on the Oregon Coast. No More to Need is her
premiere publication.

David Hargreaves' poems have appeared in Partisan Review and Poem, and
he contributes regularly to the Oxford Encyclopedia of World
Languages. He is a professor of linguistics at Western Oregon
University.

Ruth F. Harrison, retired professor of medieval literature, is an
award-winning poet living near Waldport, on the central Oregon coast.
She has judged in a host of contests, including those sponsored by
OSPA, NFSPS, Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg, Chapparal Poets, and the Ina
Coolbrith Circle. Her recent work appears in Tiger's Eye, Edgz, The
Lyric, Kestrel, Fireweed, Harp Strings, Chiron Review, Poets' Forum,
and the Oregon bridges anthology; and online in packratnest and Lewis
Turco's blog. Her poems have won many awards in recent Formalist,
NFSPS, and OSPA contests.
Henry Hughes’ poems and essays appear in Antioch Review, Carolina
Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, Northwest Review, Poetry
Northwest, Criticism and Harvard Review. His first collection of
poetry, Men Holding Eggs received the 2004 Oregon Book Award. Hughes'
new collection, Moist Meridian, will be published this spring by
Mammoth Books. He teaches writing and literature at Western Oregon
University.

Marilyn Johnston grew up in the South, but has spent her adult years
in the Pacific Northwest. She received a Robert Penn Warren Award
from the New England Writers, the Donna J. Stone National Literary
Award, and is a recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship for
Writers, a Fishtrap Foundation Fellowship, and the Barbara Deming
Memorial Fund for Women Writers and Artists. Her work has appeared in
many literary journals, including “CALYX,” “Poetry International
2004,” “Caffeine Destiny,” “Clackamas Literary Review,” and over a
dozen anthologies. A collection of poems about her family’s recovery
from the Vietnam War, Red Dust Rising, was published by the Habit of
Rainy Nights Press (2004), and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
She is the founder of the Mid-Valley Veterans Writing Group and is
currently volunteering to assist women who served in the military in
Iraq and Afghanistan to tell their stories. Marilyn is the Human
Rights Specialist for the City of Salem.

Matt Love lives in South Beach on the Oregon Coast and is founder of
Nestucca Spit Press He’s the author/editor of the Beaver State Trilogy
and Citadel of the Spirit: Oregon’s Sesquicentennial Anthology. Love
writes the Lost Northwest Books column for the Oregonian and is a
regular contributor to the Bear Deluxe and Oregon Coast Today
magazines. He teaches English and journalism at Newport High School
and is President of Writers on the Edge, a Newport-based literary arts
organization.

Paula Lowden's chapbook from Traprock Books is This Narrow Place We
Navigate. Paula, a lifelong Oregon resident, is a massage therapist in
Portland. Her work has appeared in The Oregonian and Verseweavers, the
publication of the Oregon State Poetry Association.

Dorothy Blackcrow Mack has a BA from Oberlin, an MA from Yale, and a
PhD from Michigan. She dropped out of academia and married a Lakota
sundance leader and moved to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South
Dakota to raise the sacred buffalo herd. There she lived in a one-room
log cabin with no running water and joined an ancient oral traditional
culture. She now lives in a small house on the Oregon coast where, she
says, she writes full time, studies the ocean, and watches the sky.
Dr. Mack teaches at Oregon Coast Community College.

Joan Maiers teaches writing and literature at Marylhurst University
near Portland, where she offered the first college level class to
study the work of William Stafford. She also conducts workshops for
the Oregon Writing Festival (grades 9-12) and local retirement
centers. She has presented her poetry at national and regional
conferences [Enduring Spirit of Women, Omaha; Gender Symposia at
Lewis&Clark College, Portland; Napa Writers' Conference, CA. She
affiliates with the Oregon State Poetry Association, Friends of
William Stafford and served on the Portland Poetry Festival board.
Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appears in
“Calyx,” “Oregon English Journal,” “Sojourners,” “Windfall,”
“Bellingham Review,” “Seattle Times,” “Oregonian,” as well as various
anthologies and collections. She is preparing her manuscript, Specific
Gravity, for publication.

Jim McCobb is a former Methodist minister and retired lawyer who began
writing poetry six years ago. Some of his poems have been published
in The Oregonian and in The Oregon State Bar Bulletin. His teachers
and exemplars include Ann Staley, Kim Stafford, and Paulann Petersen.
On Caldera’s Edge is his first publication of a collection and
includes work focused on his romance with Three Sisters Wilderness.

David Memmott has published four books of poetry, a novel and a story
collection. Recent work has been published by “Strange Horizons,”
“High Desert Journal,” “Windfall,”and in the anthologies Deer Drink
the Moon: Poems of Oregon, Salt: An Oregon Coastal Poetry Anthology,
Writers on the Job: Tales of the Non-Writing Life, and The Alchemy of
Stars: An Anthology of Rhysling Award Winners. He has an interview as
well as a review of his postcyberpunk novel, Primetime, in the on-line
arts magazine, “Perigee,” #20 (May 2008) www.perigee-arts.com Paul Di
Filippo, in his review for Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, wrote that
Primetime is "philosophic sf at its best." Memmott is a Fishtrap
Fellow and has received three Oregon Literary Fellowships from
Literary Arts, Inc., most recently in 2006. Along with Erik Muller, he
organized the East/West Poet Gatherings in Madras (2004) and La Grande
(2006). He is the editor and publisher of Wordcraft of Oregon and
lives with his wife, Sue, in La Grande, Oregon.

Jenny Root has work published in “Hipfish,” “To Topos: Poetry International,”
”Fireweed,” “Bellowing Ark,” and other small journals.

Lois Rosen grew up in Yonkers, New York. She's a retired ESL instructor. Her
book, Pigeons, was published by Traprock Books in 2004. She's currently studying
fiction writing in the Rainier Writing Program.

Lex Runciman was born and raised in Portland. In addition to
a BA from Santa Clara University, he's studied with poets Richard Hugo,
Madeline DeFrees at the University of Montana (MFA, 1977) and Dave Smith
at the University of Utah (Ph.D., 1981). He taught for eleven years at
Oregon State University and since 1992 at Linfield College in
McMinnville. For ten years he and his wife owned and operated Arrowood
Books, a publisher of Northwest literary titles. He has co-authored
three textbooks and published four books of poems. His book, The
Admirations, won the Oregon Book Award for poetry in 1989. He will be
reading from his new book, Starting from Anywhere, just published from
Salmon Poetry, Ireland.

Born of a Cherokee story-teller, singer father and a story-telling
Irish American mother, Eugene poet Ralph Salisbury grew up hunting and
trapping, for meat and pelts, and working on an Iowa family farm,
which had no electricity or running water but was reachable by a dirt
road. When he visited his father's mother, the only road was a
footpath along a creek. Of his book, Rainbows of Stone, Maxine Kumin
wrote: "This is a poet dedicated to keeping his heritage alive. His
book deserves a broad audience." Ralph's 9th book of poems is Blind
Pumper at the Well (Salt Publishing, 2008). Light from a Bullet Hole,
Poems New and Selected will be published by Silverfish Press, April
2009. His books of short fiction include One Indian and Two Chiefs and
The Last Rattlesnake Throw. His newest book of short fiction, The
Indian Who Bombed Berlin and Other Stories, has just appeared from
Michigan St. Univ. Press. His magazine publications include “Poetry
Northwest,” “New Yorker” and “Poetry.” His awards include a
Rockefeller Foundation Residency at the Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio,
Italy; the Chapelbrook Award; the Northwest Poetry Award; four
Fulbright professorships, to Germany and Norway; and an Amparts (USIS)
lectureship in India. He and his wife of 40 years, poet Ingrid
Wendt, divide their time between Eugene and Seal Rock, Oregon. A
professor emeritus of the University of Oregon , he is on the web at:
www.ralphsalisbury.com

Penelope Scambly Schott won the 2008 Oregon Book Award in Poetry for A
IS FOR ANNE: MISTRESS HUTCHINSON DISTURBS THE COMMONWEALTH, a verse
biography of an outspoken woman who was expelled from Boston by the
Puritan (male) authorities. Schott has published three lyric
collections and two other verse narratives. She moved to Oregon in
2001 and has been hiking for her Oregon citizenship.

Peter Sears was born in New York. He graduated from Yale University
and the Iowa Writers Workshop. He won the 1999 Peregrine Smith Poetry
Competition for his book of poems, The Brink. His first book-length
collection, Tour, was published in 1987. He has also published four
chapbooks of poetry and two teaching books, Secret Writing and Gonna
Bake Me a Rainbow Poem. His work has been published in many magazines
and literary journals, widely anthologized and included in the radio
series, The Writer’s Almanac. Sears founded and manages the Oregon
Literary Coalition and co-founded The Friends of William Stafford. He
formerly taught creative writing at Reed College and has since taught
for the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College. He is
active in the publishing company Rubberstampmadness Inc. in Corvallis
and Community of Writers in Portland. Peter Sears has a well-earned
reputation for promoting the literature of other writers, both from
his teaching and time spent with the Oregon Arts Commission.

Scot Siegel is a land use planner and poet from Lake Oswego, Oregon,
where he lives with his wife Debbie and two daughters, and serves on
the Board of Trustees for the Friends of William Stafford. Scot’s
first full-length poetry collection, Some Weather, was published by
Plain View Press in 2008. His poem, “The Zoning Officer’s Resignation
Letter,” recently received first prize from the Oregon State Poetry
Association. Scot's work appears in Open Spaces, Windfall, Acorn, The
Oregonian, The Externalist, The New Verse News, Essence (UK), High
Desert Journal, and other print and online journals. A chapbook,
"Untitled Country," is due out in 2009 from Pudding House
Publications.

Linda Varsell Smith is a Corvallis poet and novelist who has published
four books of poetry and twelve fantasy novels for children. Editor
at Calyx Books, she has taught creative writing and literary
publication, which produced college literary magazine The Eloquent
Umbrella and children's literature at Linn-Benton Community College.
She was Oregon State Poetry Association President for ten years on the
board for twenty and Vice-President of Portland branch and National
member of PEN Women. She is a member of Poetic License (performance
and critique group) and Marys Peak Poets as well as several other
writing groups and coordinator for DaVinci Days Poetry Slam and
Linn-Benton Community College's writing workshops Fooling Around With
Words. She received the Corvallis 2007 Patron of the Arts award with
husband Court Smith and the "Guiding Light" award for OSPA service
from National Poetry Societies. She is sponsor of two youth writing
contests, a poetry judge who collects miniatures and angels. She has
three grandchildren.

Tim Sproul hails from Newport, Oregon, the Friendliest! He graduated
from Newport High, received a B.A. in Journalism and an MFA in
Creative Writing from the University of Oregon. He has published
poems in “Rattle,” “Zone 3,” “Spoon River Poetry Review,” “Rain,” and
the “Talking River Review.” He recently received a Zone 3 Poetry
Award for “Feeling the Train, Finding You.” He now lives in
Milwaukie, Oregon, works in the advertising business and laments the
disappearance of the nylon tavern windbreaker. He is currently
working on a novel.

Pamela Steele‘s Paper Bird was nominated for an Oregon Book Award.
Frank X Walker, author of Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, said of
the poems in Steele's book: "They get under the skin and instruct us
how to squeeze our eyes tight and still see real beauty in the world.
An important collection of love letters to everything that bleeds."
Steele earned an MFA from Spalding University in Louisville, Ky. in
2004 and is a Fishtrap fellow, a recipient of the Kentucky Writers
Coalition's Jim Wayne Miller Prize and the James Scarbrough Memorial
Poetry Award. In the summer of 2007, Steele was awarded a Jentel
Artists Residency, which allowed her to spend and entire month in a
studio on a working cattle ranch in Wyoming, where she began a new
book of poems. Her work has been published in Rattapallax, Rosebud,
The Louisville Review, and most recently, High Desert Journal. She
lives in Hermiston and is currently participating in a year-long novel
writing workshop sponsored by Fishtrap, Inc.

Colette Tennant is an English professor at Corban College in Salem,
Oregon where she lives with her husband, her teenage son, a teenage
exchange student, and four cats. Her poems have been published in “Dos
Passos Review,” “Southern Poetry Review,” “Global City Review”
“Natural Bridge,” etc. Her manuscript Commotion of Wings is currently
in submission. Colette's book Reading the Gothic in Margaret Atwood's
Novels was published in December, 2003.

Kelly Terwilliger grew up on the southern Oregon coast, and many of
her poems reflect the influences of shorelines and tides. Her poems
have appeared in many journals such as “The Potomac Review,” “The
Atlanta Review,” “Cider Press Review,” and “The Comstock Review.” She
now lives in Eugene with her husband and two sons where she writes and
works in public schools as a professional oral storyteller.

Ingrid Wendt is the author of five books of poems and two anthologies,
including From Here We Speak: An Anthology of Oregon Poetry (Oregon
State University Press, 1993). Her teaching guide Starting With Little
Things: A Guide to Poetry Writing in the Classroom is in its 6th
printing. Ingrid's poems have appeared in the HarperCollins No More
Masks! An Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Women Poets. Winner
of the Carolyn Kizer Award and the D. H. Lawrence Fellowship, Ingrid
has been a three-time Fulbright professor to Germany, a guest lecturer
at teacher-training institutes throughout the United States and at
several international universities, a poet-in-the-schools, and on the
faculty of the MFA program of Antioch University Los Angeles. She and
her husband of 40 years, writer Ralph Salisbury, divide their time
between Eugene and Seal Rock, Oregon. A pianist by training, she also
sings second alto with the Oregon Coast Chorale (when in residence at
Seal Rock), and with the Eugene-based Motet Singers, a woman's a
cappella ensemble of 10. You may find her on the web at
www.ingridwendt.com.
Listen and order CDs at http://www.singers.com/choral/motetsingers.html.

Laura Winter lives in Portland, Oregon. The western landscape with
all its hoo doos, headlands, basin and range, whitewater and rain are
the foundation from which she works. Winter’s love for improvised
music also informs how she approaches using the English language.
Improvised music structures – soundscapes and silences - create an
interesting tension between sound, words and silence in the landscape
of her imagist poetry. Winter has been widely published and her work
has been translated into German and set to music for an art song
series. Laura Winter’s poetry collections include: Coming Here to be
Alone, Mountains and Rivers Press, 2008, English and German; sleeping
leaves, Mountains and Rivers Press, 2002 (Eugene, OR); not gone / just
not here, 2001 (Portland, OR); No Gravy Baby, unnum Press, 2000
(Portland, OR); skin into dust, 26 Books, 1994 (Portland, OR);
Co-author of STONE FOG, Membrane Press, 1987 (Milwaukee, WI). Winter
has been widely published and her work has appeared in numerous
periodicals, including: A Change In Weather, Anthology of Midwest
Women Poets; High/Coo; Boom; Cream City Review; Anemone; Poetic Space;
Portland Review; Mr. Cogito; Z Miscellaneous; Perceptions; Pointed
Circle; Fireweed; Portlander, Plazm, Rain City Review, Talus And
Scree, Northwest Literary Forum, Portlandia Review Of Books,
Hummingbird ,and The Temple, The Oregonian. Her poems have been used
as liner notes for Cds and set to music by composers. She appears on
educational interactive software, Writing for Readers by Pierian
Spring Software. Winter currently publishes TAKE OUT, a bag-a-zine of
art, writing and music. Some her poetry and music projects include
work with Vinny Golia, Torsten Mueller, Garth Powell, Rob Blakeslee,
Billy Mintz, Michael Bisio.

Carolyne Wright has published eight books and chapbooks of poetry,
four collections of poetry in translation from Spanish and Bengali;
and a volume of essays. Her most recent collection, A Change of Maps
(Lost Horse Press, 2006), nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book
Awards, and finalist for the Idaho Prize and the Alice Fay di
Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, won the 2007
Independent Book Publishers Bronze Award for Poetry. Her previous
book, Seasons of Mangoes and Brainfire (Eastern Washington UP /Lynx
House Books, 2nd edition 2005), won the Blue Lynx Prize and the
American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Most recently
published is an anthology of her translations, Majestic Nights: Love
Poems of Bengali Women (White Pine, 2008). Wright spent a year in
Chile on a Fulbright Study Grant during the presidency of Salvador
Allende, and is completing an investigative memoir about her
experiences, The Road to Isla Negra, portions of which have received
the PEN/Jerard Fund and the Crossing Boundaries Awards. A visiting
professor at colleges, universities, and writers' conferences around
the country, Wright moved back to her native Seattle in 2005. She is
on the faculty of the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA Program, and also
teaches courses for the Richard Hugo House, the community literary
arts center in Seattle. She served on the Board of Directors of the
Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) for 2004-2008.

Writing forever, Jana Zvibleman is still following the words to see
where they take her. Her poems and non-fiction prose have been hung on
walls, listened to, passed around, copied, re-read, talked about,
received awards, and even published (including in Calyx’s First Ten
Years Anthology, To Topos, and even Redbook Magazine). Some of her
poetry is in broadsides and chapbooks, one of which she illustrated.
She has taught creative writing and the writing workshop process
through The Corvallis Arts Center, Corvallis High School, Linn Benton
Community College, Hampshire College in Massachusetts, and other
organizations. She serves on the presenting board of two annual
literary events in Corvallis, the Tcha Tee Man Wi Storytelling
Festival and The Magic Barrel - at which she has also emceed and been
a featured reader. Jana’s poetry also serves in her role as an
officiant/celebrant for weddings and other life-passage rituals. She
is a founding partner of an educational consulting company,
specializing in parent, administrator, and faculty understanding of
early childhood development issues. Jana’s day job is as a pubic
information officer for Oregon State University.