2004 Jack Straw Writers Program

Janée J. Baugher holds a B.S. in Anatomy/Physiology and Chemistry from Boston University and an M.F.A. in Poetry from Eastern Washington University in Cheney. She has read at ArtsEdge and Bumbershoot, and her poems have appeared in Rattle, Ekphrasis, Art Access, Synapse, and elsewhere. During the academic year, she teaches Writing Poetry at the UW’s Experimental College and freelances as a book reviewer and editor. Her summers are spent in Michigan teaching Poetry and Fiction at Interlochen Center for the Arts. A dance based on her poem, “Ballet of the Woodpeckers,” will be presented at the University of Cincinnati in May 2004. Janée’s first collection of ekphrastic poems, Coordinates of Yes, is available through interlibrary loan from EWU. The poems included in Volume 8 of the Jack Straw Writers Anthology have been excerpted from her second collection, Distinguishing Dusk from Dawn.

2004 Writers Program

Elliott Bronstein, writer of short stories, grew up in the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. After college he traveled extensively in Europe and South America, before settling in Seattle in 1980. He is a longtime board member of Red Sky Poetry Theatre.

2004 Writers Program

Kathryn Christman has written both short stories and two novels. Her work has been published in Redbook, Cimarron Review, Primavera, Gulf Stream Magazine, Iowa Woman, and The Mississippi Review. Her recent collection of inter-related stories, The Fifty-Centavo Gringo, was a 2002 finalist in The Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Currently, she is at work on a new novel.

2004 Writers Program

Richard Denner was born in 1941 in Santa Clara, California. Street poet of the ’60s, he was the Poet of the Berkeley Barb. Self-exiled to the Alaskan outback, he graduated from U. of A. in Fairbanks, and in a wilderness cabin began printing chapbooks on a handpress with worn fonts of type; thirty years later, there are over one hundred titles in his backlists. Cowpoke, treeplanter on the slopes of Mt. St. Helens after the blast, longtime proprietor of Four Winds Bookstore and Cafe in Ellensburg, Washingtion, Denner is presently living near Sebastopol, California, and still reading his poems in coffeehouses.

2004 Writers Program

Don Kentop was born and raised in New York City, graduated from New York University and has a Masters Degree in the teaching of history from Columbia University. Don has returned to writing poetry after many years in business and as a certified chemical dependency counselor. Once a lyricist, and still a member of ASCAP, he is also a stone carver. Don has appeared at the Frye Art Museum with Poets West. Rose Alley Press published On Paper Wings, a collection of his work, in the spring of 2004. Don lives in Ballard with his wife Carol.

2004 Writers Program

Michael Kloss is a twenty-three year old part time college student of philosophy, classic art, literature and the Simpsons; he finds himself the most unlikely character to be found with pen and pad on the Board of Red Sky Poetry Theatre. He would write even if no one paid attention but loves that people do and tries to be as simple and plain spoken as he can in his work.

2004 Writers Program

Ezra Mark is a signifying practice, as specific yet as general as the words “alone” and “bread.” He is a dedicated walker and is given to negotiating the field of language in a similar manner. A co-founder of the Subtext Reading Series, he is the author of Intention, Narthex, and Two.

2004 Writers Program

Martin Marriott is a surrealist who votes for the unconscious, the unreal, the unfettered human imagination, the release of energy. Martin says, “I believe in Truth and Beauty and Love. I believe that we are capable of overthrowing capitalism.”

2004 Writers Program

John Olson is the author of Free Stream Velocity (2003), a collection of prose poems, and Echo Regime (2000) a collection of poetry, both from Black Square Editions; Eggs & Mirrors (1999), a chapbook of vignettes & prose poems published by local printer Paul Hunter at Woodworks Press; and Logo Lagoon (1999), a collection of prose poems, from Paper Brain Press in San Diego. His essays, articles, literary criticism, poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals, including New American Writing, Talisman, Sulfur, First Intensity, American Letters & Commentary, the American Book Review, Denver Quarterly, 3rd Bed, 5 Trope, Bird Dog, Monkey Puzzle, Raven Chronicles, the Seattle Weekly, and The Stranger. “Dylan Goes Magenta,” an essay on Bob Dylan’s Tarantula, appears online at Titanic Operas. His essay “Inebriate Of Air” appears in the anthology Writing On Air, from M.I.T. Press.

2004 Writers Program

Roberta Olson is the author of the chapbook All These Fair and Flagrant Things, published by etherdome press in Oakland, CA. Her poetry has also appeared in numerous publications including Talisman, Untitled, Facture, Bird Dog, and Monkey Puzzle. Her work has been anthologized in Cross Cut Anthology and Steaming Light, a Raven Chronicles supplementary issue. In March 2004 she has been invited to appear in “The Imaginal in the Present and the Future: a Weekend of Surrealism,” at Beyond Baroque in Los Angeles.

2004 Writers Program

James Reed is a poet living in Seattle with a long standing involvement in the arts beginning as a teacher and performer on classic guitar. For the last many years he has worked in the design field doing residential architecture and designing and fabricating contemporary furniture emphasizing the use of mixed materials. In addition to writing poetry, he is currently building a house for himself, his mate and their two cats. His recent work has appeared in BirdDog and Organization and Environment.

2004 Writers Program

Clemens Starck sailed off the West Coast as a merchant seaman in the late ’60s. He has worked at many jobs, but mostly as a carpenter and construction foreman in San Francisco, British Columbia, and in Oregon where he lives now. His first book of poems, Journeyman’s Wages, received the 1996 Oregon Book Award as well as the William Stafford Memorial Poetry Award from the Pacific Nothwest Booksellers Association. His most recent collection, Traveling Incognito, is a letterpress chapbook from Woodworks in Seattle.

2004 Writers Program

Stephen Thomas was born and raised in Auburn, Washington. He studied at St. Edward’s Seminary, Marquette University, Cornell and the University of Washington. He has worked in a wide variety of trades: farming, road work, carpentry, restaurants, advertising, and most recently teaching. His Cabaret Hegel was, briefly, a hotbed of performance art in the mid-’80s. His poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Exquisite Corpse, The Temple, The Seattle Times, The Seattle Weekly, West Branch, and many other publications.

2004 Writers Program

Irene Wanner, a member of the Northwest Independent Editors Guild, teaches fiction writing at Richard Hugo House, Field’s End, and Western Washington University. On editorial staff of The Seattle Review, she also reviews books for The Seattle Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Orion. Her natural history essay, “Looking for Snowies,” appeared in the November/December 2003 Bird Watcher’s Digest.

2004 Writers Program