After eight months of literary salons, the Orcas nonprofit Artsmith will wrap up this year’s series on Monday, May 24.
“The salon has been a wonderful venue for our writers’ community to share on a really frequent basis,” volunteer Jennifer Brennock said. “Every Monday we hear new work from writers on Orcas and all over the country, so the variety is beautiful and it’s gone way beyond our mission.”
On May 17, poet Paisley Rekdal will read at the salon at Doe Bay Resort at 7 p.m. Rekdal is the author of a book of essays, “The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee,” and three books of poetry, “A Crash of Rhinos,” “Six Girls Without Pants,” and “The Invention of the Kaleidoscope.” Her hybrid photo-text memoir, “Intimate,” is forthcoming from Tupelo Press in 2011.
A noted poet, Rekdal received a Village Voice Writers on the Verge Award, an NEA Fellowship, the University of Georgia Press’ Contemporary Poetry Series Award, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and the Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review. Rekdal is coming to Orcas from Utah where she teaches literature and creative writing at University of Utah.
Jill McCabe Johnson, director of Artsmith, will also read some of her work May 17. Johnson, who has recently returned to Orcas Island from University of Nebraska where she’s been working on her PhD in creative writing, writes poetry and fiction.
“We take it for granted that writers just spontaneously birth amazing stuff,” Brennock said. “These two women are proof that when talent is honed and worked and worked again, the writing becomes surgically sharp and will resonate with you for days afterward, and their words will come to mind over your breakfast or at the grocery store when you’re just picking out apples.”
The final salon of the season will feature writer John Enders from Oregon and poet John Sangster from Lopez Island.
Enders is a writer with 30 years of journalism experience in the United States and Latin America. Enders’ reporting specializes in Latin America’s people, politics, cultures and history, and United States policies in Latin America. “The Enders Report” can be found at johnenders.com. Enders will be reading his historical fiction work at the Artsmith salon.
A poet known throughout the islands, John Sangster’s poems have appeared in online magazines, “Switched-on Gutenberg” and “Shark Reef,” in “Pontoon,” an anthology of Washington State poets, and “What Have You Lost,” poems selected by Naomi Shihab Nye. His chapbook, “Island Year,” was published in 2008. Sangster is a Fishtrap Fellow and Jack Straw Writer.
Artsmith is an Orcas Island non-profit supporting writers and visual artists. The salon is free to attend and begins at 7 p.m. at Doe Bay Resort. Local writers are invited to read 10 minutes of their own work during writers’ open mic. More information is available at www.orcasartsmith.org or 376-2025.
