About this Event
On Resilience: Stories of Climate Adaptation Across Washington’s Landscapes is a multimedia poetry and art anthology commissioned by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Organized around Washington’s nine ecoregions, the book pairs place-based descriptions with poems and artist sketches. Each pairing documents how climate change is affecting ecosystems through warming waters, shifting snowpack, increased wildfire risk, and changes in Washington’s species migrations. Poets from across Washington state and the Pacific Northwest, including Indigenous poets, visited wildlife areas to learn from the land, species, and communities from land managers. This blend of science, art, poetry, and personal observation invites readers to think about how Washington’s landscapes are changing and how grounded action can help them continue to thrive.
Derek Sheffield is the Washington State Poet Laureate, a 2026 Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow, Derek Sheffield is also the voice of Gouverneur Morris in the Netflix documentary, The American Experiment, produced by Tom Hanks. His books include Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, winner of a 2024 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, Not for Luck, selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, Through the Second Skin, runner-up for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy. A two-time finalist for the Washington State Book Award, his other awards include the Foreword Reviews Indies Book of the Year in Nature Writing and the James Hearst Poetry Prize judged by Li-Young Lee. He teaches at Wenatchee Valley College, edits poetry for Terrain.org, and can often be found in the woods along the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range near Leavenworth, Washington.
Leslie Wharton (MC) Leslie is an ecofeminist writer whose work frequently centers on resilience, community, women's voices and rebuilding after tragedy. Leslie is also the director of Whatcom County’s annual Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest.
Luther Allen lives and writes from Sumas Mountain. He has published two volumes of poetry: The View from Lummi Island and A Spiritual Thread (othermindspress).
Julian Ankney’s work centers connections between Language (Nimíipuutimt), Land (Wéetes), and Native American Indian Identity (Nimipuuwítki) or becoming who you are meant to be. Her work addresses the trauma of forced dispersal from ancestral homelands and the power of language as a tool for return and resilience.
Jessica Gigot lives and writes on a little sheep farm in the Skagit Valley. She recently co-edited the anthology Cascadia Works: Tend, Gather, Harvest, Restore which came out in September 2026.
Amelia Díaz Ettinger knows that the sleep of reason still produces monsters, and she writes to wake us up. Her bilingual ekphrastic poems on Goya's Caprichos join a body of work, four collections and two chapbooks, rooted in her Puerto Rican and Mexican heritage and her home in Summerville, Oregon.
Jon Culp’s work appears in the Manastash, Arcturus, Backstory, and Percival Review literary journals. He draws from 40-plus years of working in and around natural resources, from wildland firefighting and trail crew boss to a water conservationist and even a volunteer luge guide at the Loup.
Kathleen Byrd, a writing teacher at South Puget Sound Community College, served as the fourth poet laureate of Olympia, Washington. She holds an MFA from Western Washington University. Her poetry collection Last Resort was published by Last Word Press in 2024.
Ann Hursey’s poems have appeared on Seattle buses, in newspapers, literary journals, anthologies, as well as in artist books. Her two books are available on her website, annhursey.com. She has been a Writing the Land poet since 2023. Born in Northeast Ohio, she now calls the Pacific NW home.
Roger Gilman is emeritus Professor and Dean of the College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University. He teaches at Hugo House literary center in Seattle and engages in biological restoration and reconciliation projects with various groups around the Salish Sea and in North Cascade Wilderness areas. His poems appear in literary journals and scientific publications.
DJ Lee’s most recent book is Remote: Finding Home in the Bitterroots (OSU Press). She’s the author/editor of eight scholarly books, including The Land Speaks (Oxford). Lee is a Regents Professor of English at Washington State University, where she teaches literature and creative writing. She lives on Sumas Mountain outside Bellingham.
Feel free to reach out to Village Books and Paper Dreams at 360-671-2626 for further assistance!
Event venue & nearby stays
Village Books and Paper Dreams, 1200 11th St, Bellingham, United States
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