Finishing Line Press Reading at Multnomah County Library

5 Poets. 2 Hours. Finishing Line Press Reading at Multnomah County Library

Multnomah County Library, US Bank Room, 801 SW 10th Ave, Portland, OR 
 
Description Five renowned local poets and community builders, all of whom have chapbooks published through Finishing Line Press, are coming together for a single event at the Multnomah County Library on Wednesday, February 1.
Representing varied styles, voices, and ages, the poets ...(Don Colburn, David Hedges, Joseph A. Soldati, Leah Stenson, and John Sibley Williams) will be creating a Finishing Line Press “Best of” reading to launch their latest books.
Please join us in celebrating their releases and work!
Don Colburn is a freelance journalist and poet in Portland. He has published three collections of poems, most recently a chapbook titled Because You Might Not Remember. A longtime newspaper reporter for The Washington Post and The Oregonian, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing, he has an MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College. His first two books, Another Way to Begin and As If Gravity Were a Theory, won national poetry manuscript contests. His poems have appeared in anthologies and many magazines, including Alaska Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest and Southern Poetry Review. His many writing honors include the Discovery/The Nation Award, the Finishing Line Press Prize, the Duckabush Prize for Poetry and a recent fellowship at The MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. He is a board member of Friends of William Stafford. Web site: www.doncolburn.net

David Hedges free-lanced for 11 of his 33 years in journalism, public relations, advertising and politics. He is the author of Petty Frogs on the Potomac, political satire in verse (1997), and five poetry chapbooks: The Wild Bunch (1998), Brother Joe (2000), Steens Mountain Sunrise: Poems of the Northern Great Basin (2004), Selected Sonnets (2006), and A Funny Thing Happpened on My Way to a Geology Degree (2011). Poems have appeared in Able Muse, The Christian Science Monitor, Light Quarterly, Measure, Poet Lore, and Poetry. He was president of the Oregon Poetry Association and edited the prize-poem anthology, Verseweavers, for 12 years. He is on the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission board, and was on the Portland Poetry Festival board. He received the Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award for outstanding contributions to Oregon's literary life at the 2003 Oregon Book Awards. Web site: http://www.david.hedges.name/

Joseph A. Soldati is the author of a scholarly book, Configurations of Faust (1980), a poetry collection, Making My Name (1990), and is co-editor, with Eduardo González-Viaña, of a bilingual volume of poems by Peruvian and Oregonian poets entitled O Poetry! ¡Oh Poesía! Poems of Oregon and Peru (1997). He is a former Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Friends of William Stafford, and continues to be a member of that organization. Joseph holds degrees from Oglethorpe University (B.A.), the University of California at Santa Barbara (M.A.), and Washington State University (Ph.D.). Now retired, he is Professor Emeritus of English at Western Oregon University. Honors and awards for teaching and scholarship include two Fulbright Fellowships--lecturing in Egypt, 1983-84, and in Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa, 1989-90. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his two cats, Roxanne and Tramp.

Leah Stenson is a published poet, workshop leader, Board Member of Friends of William Stafford, and coordinator and host of the prestigious Studios reading series in Portland. She has previously acted as Assistant Editor at Hawthorne Books and Managing Director of the Oregon Peace Institute, and she recently received the Ambassador of Peace Award from the SGI-USA. She is also Regional Editor of the upcoming Ooligan Press anthology The Pacific Poetry Project. Her chapbooks include East/West (William Stafford Institute at Lewis and Clark College, 2005) and Heavenly Body (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Publications include Oregon Literary Review, Colere, Northwest Women’s Journal, The Oregonian, Verseweavers, Lalitamba, and San Diego Poetry Annual.
Website: www.leahstenson.com

John Sibley Williams is the author of six chapbooks, winner of the HEART Poetry Award, and finalist for the Pushcart, Rumi, and The Pinch Poetry Prizes. He has served as Acquisitions Manager of Ooligan Press and Publicist for various presses, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing and MA in Book Publishing. Some of his over 200 previous or upcoming publications include: Bryant Literary Review, The Chaffin Journal, The Evansville Review, RHINO, Rosebud, Ellipsis, Flint Hills Review, and Poetry Quarterly. His websites: www.johnsibleywilliams.wordpress.com and www.TheArtOfRaining.com. 


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