I’m back from a family trip to Orcas Island. Waiting for the ferry in Anacortes, we spotted skittering kingfishers and a great blue heron in flight–its path strangely loping. Then, in Orcas, there were the requisite cows, sheep, and horses; a buck crunching on dead leaves; and sweet doe eating dandelions. We went to the old strawberry barreling plant in the hamlet of Olga, where there are no longer any strawberry fields. And M & I baked our bones in a sauna that may have been close to 200° F. How refreshing!
Now I’m in back-to-school mode. A few tidbits of note:
- On Sunday, September 18, I’m teaching a free one-day class on contemporary fairy tales at the Capitol Hill branch of the Seattle Public Library.
- On Saturday, October 22, I will be one of 40+ featured artists at Artist Trust’s 30th Birthday Party. Tickets are $25 and proceeds support this amazing organization and all the hard work it does in Washington State. I have felt their impact profoundly as a recipient of their inaugural Gar LaSalle Storyteller Award. But they have been a helpful resource for me long before that; I attended a number of their grant writing workshops and compiled some of my notes in a post here.
- Finally, I’m pleased to be offering one-on-one writing coaching via Hugo House’s new manuscript consultation program. You can learn all about here.
In other news, I have a few pieces forthcoming–a collage essay about a fruit (in the meantime here’s a post I wrote about nectarines), a short story inspired by my recent trip to the Netherlands, and two short-short fairy tales. I’ll be sure to post links to these pieces as they become available.

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Tags: Anacortes, Artist Trust, bucks, dandelions, does, fairy tales, fiction, fruits and veggies, Gar LaSalle Storytelling Award, herons, Hugo House, kingfishers, manuscript consultation, nectarines, Netherlands, Orcas Island, psychogeography, Richard Hugo House, Seattle, seattle public library, strawberries, travel, writing