2003 Jack Straw Writers Program

Elizabeth Austen is a Seattle-based poet, performer, teacher and radio commentator. She served as the Washington State poet laureate for 2014-16. She is the author of Every Dress a Decision (Blue Begonia Press, 2011) and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Goes Alone (Floating Bridge Press, 2010) and Where Currents Meet. Her poems have appeared online on The Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily, and in journals including the Los Angeles Review and the Seattle Review, and anthologies including Poets Against the War, Weathered Pages and In the Telling.

She is a dynamic performer of her own and others’ poems, and has been featured at the Skagit River Poetry Festival, Richard Hugo House Literary Series, Bumbershoot and elsewhere.

For more than 15 years, Elizabeth has produced literary programming for KUOW 94.9 public radio, one of Seattle’s NPR affiliates, introducing recordings of Pacific Northwest literary events and interviewing local and national poets.

Jack Straw Writers Program 2003

Originally from the U.K., Sharon M. Carter retired from a career in healthcare. A fortunate recipient of a Hedgebrook residency, her poems have been published online and in many journals, including Pontoon, Raven Chronicles, Wild Roof Journal, Quartet, and One Art. Her book Quiver was published by Tebot Bach in 2002.

2024 Jack Straw Alumni Poetry Series:

Drawing from her background as a physician, Sharon Carter’s poems reflect her understanding of the body and its relationships. Whether she writes about mist unwinding like homespun in India, cicadas at a paleolithic cave or “a honey bee who believes your mouth an orchid,” her voice is precise and honest.

Aasgard Pass
Alpine Lakes Wilderness
For V.B.

Stars puncture an indigo night.
Our footsteps clatter in couplets

over granite boulders—glittering
hornblende fused with quartz.

At the pass our plumed breath rises
into icescape, the moon, a milky-white

cataract in sky’s retina. My axe fractures
a frozen lake. Cracks radiate, probe

the black veneer like the blight
on your mammogram. The shock

of cold water! I carve a smooth clean
circle, fill steel pans. We pitch tent,

unfurl sleeping bags, our spines pressed
to the earth as we pivot toward morning.

2003 Writers Program

Jeff Crandall received a BA in Creative Writing with an emphasis on poetry from the University of Washington in Seattle. His poetry has been published in journals across the country, including The Seattle Review, Cutbank, Cream City Review, and The Southern Poetry Review. In 1996 his
manuscript Clear Cut was a finalist in the prestigious National Poetry Series. In 1999 he won a King County Arts Commission Special Projects award for his first book of poems, The Grief Pool, published by Firestorm Press. He volunteers his time as an editor and president of the board for Floating Bridge Press in Seattle, which he helped found in 1994. He makes his living as an artist combining poetic text with glass.

2003 Writers Program

Cora Goss-Grubbs is a writer learning how to be a mother. Her poems, stories, and essays have been published both locally and nationally. She is a Hedgebrook fellow and co-founder of Redmond Association of Spokenword. Currently she is seeking publishers for her two young adult novels. She lives in Woodinville with her family.

2003 Writers Program

James Gurley is a poet living in Seattle. He was the winner of the 2002 T.S. Eliot Prize for his first book of poetry, Human Cartography, published by Truman State University Press. He has also published two chapbooks of poetry, and his poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including Indiana Review, Poetry Northwest, and Willow Springs. He is the recipient of various writing grants, most recently a 2001 literary fellowship from the Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission.

2003 Writers Program

Kathryn Hunt is a writer and filmmaker. She makes her home in Port Townsend, Wash. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Sun, Open Spaces, CutBank, Crab Creek Review, Pacific Northwest, and Seattle. Her poetry manuscript The Botany Lesson was selected as a finalist in the 2001 Floating Bridge Press chapbook contest. She is at work on a collection of personal essays entitled The Province of Leaves, an investigation of the world of natural facts and human meanings.

2003 Writers Program

Michael Hureaux writes some decent poetry, short stories, and essays now and then. He student-taught in NYC for some years and graduated from Goddard College. He is currently working on a jazz opera with composer Christopher Plumridge.

2003 Writers Program

Ted McMahon has lived and worked in the Northwest since 1972. He currently practices pediatrics half-time in the Seattle neighborhood of Ballard, and devotes the other half to writing. His poetry has appeared in The Seattle Review, Convolvulus, Manzanita Quarterly, and The Journal of the American Medical Association. In 1999 he received the Carlin Aden Award for formal verse from the Washington Poets Association. McMahon’s chapbook, First Fire, was published in 1996. He is a co-editor of Floating Bridge Press, publishing the work of Washington State poets. His full-length collection, The Uses of Imperfection, is currently in search of a publisher.

2003 Writers Program

Nu Quang, born and raised in Vietnam, is a playwright/author. She earned an MFA from Western Michigan University in 1992. Her plays were designated as finalists at numerous playwriting competitions. In 2000 she won a GAP Award and the Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship in Theatre for her dark comedy The Philanthropist, which was selected for the Second Annual FringeACT Festival of New Original Work 2003. She received Seattle Arts Commission’s 2002 Seattle Artists Program for Literary Arts to work on her memoir.

2003 Writers Program

Joannie Kervran Stangeland is a poet and editor. Her chapbook Weathered Steps was published in 2002 by Rose Alley Press. A Steady Longing for Flight won the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award in 1995. Her work has also appeared in Rattapallax, Fine Madness, Crab Creek Review, and other publications. Joannie lives with her family in Seattle.

2003 Writers Program

Ron Starr lives and writes in Seattle. He is an editor at Floating Bridge Press. His poems have appeared in Crab Creek Review, WordWrights, StringTown, Chrysanthemum, and other journals. His work also appeared in the Northwest Concrete and Visual Poetry Exhibition 2002. His current interests include prose poems and procedural methods of writing.

2003 Writers Program

Cody Walker lives in Seattle, where he teaches English at the University of Washington and poetry at Washington Middle School. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Shenandoah, The Cream City Review, The Madison Review, The Cortland Review, and Poetry Motel. He received an MFA degree from the University of Arkansas, and he served for five years as the theater and restaurant critic for The Olympian. His dog appeared in the May 5, 1997, issue of People.

2003 Writers Program