2001 Jack Straw Writers Program

Kathleen Alcalá is the author of a short story collection, three novels set in 19th Century Mexico and the Southwest, and a collection of essays based on family history. Her work has received the Western States Book Award, the Governor’s Writers Award, and a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Award. She received her second Artist Trust Fellowship in 2008, and was honored by the national Latino writers group, Con Tinta, at the Associated Writing Programs Conference in 2014. She has been designated an Island Treasure in the Arts on Bainbridge Island.

Kathleen’s latest book is The Deepest Roots: Finding Food and Community on a Pacific Northwest Island, by the University of Washington Press. In it, she explores our relationship with food and the land through research and numerous interviews with the people who bring us our food on Bainbridge Island.

Kathleen has a B.A. in Linguistics from Stanford University, an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of New Orleans. Kathleen has a great affinity for the story-telling techniques of magic realism and science fiction, and has been both a student and instructor in the Clarion West Science Fiction Workshop.

Kathleen was a faculty member at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts on Whidbey Island from 2008 to 2016. She continues to lecture and teach workshops in creative writing.

2012 Writers Program

2001 Writers Program

Poet, performer, educator, literary activist.  MFA in Writing & Poetics from Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.  In 1996, co-founded the Northwest SPokenword LAB (SPLAB), a non-profit literary arts center in Auburn, WA and acted as Executive Director until Fall of 1998.  Currently Executive Director of Eleventh Hour Productions, non-profit producer of literary arts events. In 1999 won Washington Poets Association Award for Performance Poetry.  Book of poetry, traffic, (1997 from It Plays in Peoria Press).  Spokenword CD, All Over the Road, (2000 En Theos Productions).  Collaborative experimental writing project (the 3:15 Experiment) to be released in 2001 by Owl Press.

2001 Writers Program

Ann Hursey’s first poem, Wetland, rode the bus in 1997. Today, as a Writing the Land poet, she speaks for oak prairies, salt marshes, and riparian restoration. Her poems celebrate the resilience of our planet’s diversity during climate change. Her work appears online and in print journals as well as anthologies.

2024 Jack Straw Alumni Poetry Series:

“Field Notes to Maya Lin’s Confluence Project Landscapes is a reflective and expansive melding of prose and poetry. Thoughtfully considered elements of the historical record and ruminations of the author’s positionality and history appear in intriguing and insightful patterns alongside constellations of precise imagery.”
-Laura Da’

Site 05: Listening Circle, Chief Timothy Park, Clarkson, WA (p.43, excerpt)

Insects jump and sail
into the air between chirps
of unseen birds

Slight breeze cools us down
Low stone benches perfect
to sit, listen, heed

Its timeless message
Of river, land and people—
Nez Perce – Niimiipuu

At the Listening Circle, I read the words Lin transcribed from the Nez Perce Blessing Ceremony. These instructions are carved into the lowest of the benches shaped in arcs, three rows on one side and three on the other, like ripples on water. These long stone benches, half face north, half face south.

Women sit facing north
Men sit facing south
Elders sit facing west
And NO ONE IS TO WALK  BEHIND THEM
The east is left open to greet the new day

I orient myself to the sun and . . .and listen to what this place has to say.

Below deep blue skies
feel the pulse of this island’s
heartbeat pumping.

2001 Writers Program

Stephanie Kallos was born in Idaho and grew up in Nebraska. Before coming out of the closet as a writer, she had a varied work history which included many years as a musician and a long career in the theater as an actress and teacher of voice, speech, and dialects. Her short fiction has received two Raymond Carver Awards and a Pushcart Prize nomination. Her first novel, Broken for You, was published in 2004; it was chosen by Sue Monk Kidd as a “Today Show” book club selection, and received the Washington State and PNBA Book Awards. Her second novel, Sing Them Home, was published in 2009; a Pacific NW Independent Booksellers bestseller, it was selected for Iowa’s “All Iowa Reads” program and named by Entertainment Weekly as one of the 10 Best Books of 2009. Her third novel, Language Arts, was published in 2015.

Stephanie lives with her family in a north Seattle neighborhood which has no sidewalks and looks very much like a small town. Sightings of men in kilts are common. Happily distracting her from writing are numerous unfinished knitting projects, a doe-eyed Labrador named Mr. Nick Tumnus, an extremely vocal tabby cat named Sydney Australia, and her raucous family of men. Stephanie is a proud member of Seattle7Writers and its offshoot band, The Rejections. She is currently at work on a short story collection and her fourth novel.

2013 Writers Program (Curator)

2001 Writers Program

Mercedes Lawry’s most recent book is Vestiges from Kelsay Books. She’s published three chapbooks and poems in journals such as Nimrod and Alaska Quarterly Review. Her book Small Measures is forthcoming from ELJ Editions, Ltd. in 2024. She’s also published short fiction and stories and poems for children.

2024 Jack Straw Alumni Poetry Series:

“I have always loved Mercedes Lawry’s poetry, and there are so many vivid and intense moments in this new collection of poems. I keep going back to certain images (‘My own hand, palm up, like an empty saucer’) as I reflect on her startling and exquisite use of language. This is an inventive and haunting collection that explores human loss and loneliness in the not-always-safe shelter of the natural world.”
–Tina Nunnally

The Lyric and the Lie

In every language, the story begins here.
We play multiple characters,
our voices high and low.  Our blue tears
carve a river on which we travel deep
into a makeshift forest rimmed
with the haughty calls of birds.
We sleep between the pages, dissolving
time and distance, storm and lament.

2001 Writers Program

Jared Leising is the author of the chapbook The Widows and Orphans of Winesburg, Ohio. His poems have appeared in various Washington publications such as Pontoon, Crab Creek Review, Stringtown, as well as on Metro Buses and local radio. Jared was selected as a Jack Straw Writer in 2001 and curated the Jack Straw Writers Program in 2010. He has worked as a writer-in-residence for Ballard and Nathan Hale High Schools, been a nominee for Seattle Poet Populist, and before moving to Seattle, he received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Houston. Currently, he teaches English at Cascadia Community College.

2010 Writers Program (curator)

2001 Writers Program

John Mifsud was born on the Mediterranean Island of Malta. He is published in several anthologies by and about men including, New Men, New Minds: Breaking Male Tradition by Crossing Press and Boyhood: Growing Up Male – A Multicultural Anthology by University of Wisconsin Press. John also scripts and directs original, autobiographical theatre with at-risk youth and is the Producer/Director/Screenwriter for SPEAKING FOR OURSELVES: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Youth, a national award-winning PBS documentary highlighting the self-determination of many young Seattlites by associating a name and face with their challenges and courage. John is currently completing a memoir about his family in Malta surviving Nazi aggression during World War II. It is entitled, All Clear.

2001 Writers Program

Paul Everett Nelson is a poet, father, teacher and broadcaster. Founder of the non-profit Global Voices Radio and co-founder of the Northwest SPokenword LAB (SPLAB!) – Paul has published three chap books, two CDs – Twisting Runes and A Time Before Slaughter, a book of essays: Organic Poetry: North American Field Poetics (VDM, Verlag, Germany, 2008) and an epic poem re-enacting Auburn history, also entitled A Time Before Slaughter (Apprentice House, 2009). A professional broadcaster From 1980 to 2006, he’s interviewed hundreds of authors, poets, activists and whole-system theorists for a syndicated public affairs radio program.

Paul has performed his poetry in numerous venues in the Pacific Northwest and his hometown of Chicago and has conducted over 400 writing and performance workshops throughout the Puget Sound region solo and through the SPLAB!-on-the-Road workshop troupe and at venues like the Richard Hugo House. He has lectured on Open Form in American Poetry (and other subjects) at high schools and community colleges and earned his M.A. in Organic Poetry, through Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.

2001 Writers Program

Eric G. Parsons is a poet and writer of fiction. His poetry has appeared in Shots and Arnazella.  He is the founder of a poetry group for Black men called I Am The Darker Brother. Collaborating with photographer Anne Keeney, Parsons co-created Black Voices: speaking—images and words of the lives of Blackpeople. The exhibit has been displayed at Café Septieme, a restaurant/gallery in Seattle, and is currently housed at BLMF, a literary salon, also in Seattle. Parsons participated in the Seattle City Council’s Culture, Arts and Parks’ Poet Laureate Series.  He’s been Featured Poet with the Red Sky Poetry Theater ~ the oldest continuous poetry open mike program on the West Coast, and has also been featured on Valley Voices, a radio program broadcast from Saginaw State Valley University in Michigan that gives voice to the works of poets throughout the country.  Parsons is a founding member of The Orange Room Collective, a group of five Seattle-based poets, comprising an array of literary voices and talents.

2001 Writers Program

Peter Pereira is a family physician in South Seattle, and a founding editor of Floating Bridge Press. His poetry has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including The Nation, Poetry East, North Dakota Quarterly, Willow Springs, and Seattle Review. He won a 1997 “Discovery”/The Nation award, and was a finalist in the 1998 National Poetry Series.  His first chapbook, The Lost Twin, was recently produced by Grey Spider Press of Sedro-Wooley Washington.

2001 Writers Program

Judith Roche (1941-2019) was a 2001 Jack Straw Writer and curated the 2008 Writers Program, and collaborated with Jack Straw on many other projects and programs over the years. The following remembrance, by Paul Nelson, was published in the South Seattle Emerald.

“Roche published four books of original poetry, including Myrrh: My Life as a Screamer, of which poet Sharon Doubiago said: ‘When one realizes how profoundly Myrrh comes from the practice on all levels, how successfully she pulls off one of the riskiest of endeavors . . . one begins to grasp . . . a highly original, courageous, mature, beautiful singularity of Voice, Theme, Sound, Image… making up a brilliant whole.’ Her book Wisdom of the Body, was an American Book Award winner, and she published widely in various journals and magazines. Roche also had poems installed on several Seattle area public art projects and taught poetry at Seattle U., Cornish College and the Richard Hugo House.

“The Literary Arts Director for Bumbershoot between 1986 and 2005, she was the recipient of the Golden Umbrella Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts in September 2007. The award announcement said: ‘Judith served One Reel for 20 years as Director of the Literary Arts Program… where just a few highlights of her tenure were co-editing First Fish, First People (winner of the American Book Award in 1998), editing Bumbershoot’s annual literary magazine Ergo! from 1985-1994 and coordinating the publication of Edgewalking on the Western Rim (1994). Judith’s support of local writers and artists is unparalleled.’

“Other Golden Umbrella Award winners were Ernestine Anderson, Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight, Ursula K. LeGuin, Tom Robbins and George Tsutakawa, to give you a sense of her artistic company.

“Friend and poet Margareta Waterman said one of her favorite lines of Judith was: ‘I believe in all of the gods; I just don’t like some of them.’”

2008 Writers Program

2001 Writers Program

Since graduating from the University of Washington with a BA in Multicultural Studies, Rosaia Shepard has worked as an entertainment consultant, movie critic, actor, and writer. Ms. Shepard worked on the sets of several movies including Boys on the Side and Desert Bloom. In June of 2000 she earned the Certificate in Screenwriting from the University of Washington. Hartfield High, her first screenplay, reached the quarterfinals of the Nicholl Screenwriting 2000 competition and earned finalist at the Hollywood Black Film Festival in 2001. Rosaia is writing her second screenplay, Under the Influence, a noir thriller.

2001 Writers Program

Born October 21, 1923 in Netherlands, Alie Elisabeth Wiegersma Smaalders lived through the German occupation before becoming a librarian in Amsterdam. She traveled to the United States in 1952 on a Fulbright scholarship at Carnegie Mellon and later attended UCLA. She worked as a reference librarian, studied writing and translated stories from her native Frisian and Dutch into English.

Artist Support Program 2003: Recorded The Sky was a Brilliant Blue, a collage of memoir, fiction and nonfiction stories about World War II.

2001 Writers Program

Barbara Earl Thomas is a noted painter and writer.  She has artwork in collections throughout the U.S.  In 1998-2000 she received the Seattle Arts Commission award for new creative non-fiction.  Her essays have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies.  Storm Watch: The Art of Barbara Earl Thomas was published in spring 1998 by the University of Washington Press.

2001 Writers Program