This event will be rescheduled at a later date.

Join Washington State Poet Laureate, Claudia Castro Luna, for an afternoon of poetry inspired by the Columbia River. Castro Luna will be joined by current Oregon Poet Laureate Kim Stafford, former Oregon Poet Laureate Elizabeth Woody and local poet Tyrone Ross Thompson. This reading is part of Castro Luna’s Statewide project One River, Many Voices which is designed to explore a sense of place, of ecology, of history, and to celebrate the power of words and stories to define ourselves and our communities. Event starts with a reception at 3 p.m., followed by readings at 3:30 p.m. Free with museum admission. (No one will be turned away for lack of funds.)

Claudia Castro Luna is Washington’s State Poet Laureate (2018 – 2021) and served as Seattle’s inaugural Civic Poet (2015-2017). She is the author the collection Killing Marías (Two Sylvias) finalist for the WA State Book Award 2018, the chapbook This City (Floating Bridge) and One River, a Thousand Voices forthcoming from Chin Music Press. Born in El Salvador she came to the United States in 1981. She has an MA in Urban Planning, a teaching certificate and an MFA in Poetry. Her non-fiction has most recently appeared in the anthology This is the Place (Seal Press) Living in English and Spanish, Claudia writes and teaches in Seattle where she gardens and keeps chickens with her husband and their three children.

Kim Stafford is founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College, and author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft and 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared, and his new poetry collection Wild Honey, Tough Salt (Red Hen Press 2019). He has taught writing in dozens of schools and community centers, and in Scotland, Italy, and Bhutan. He served as Oregon’s poet laureate from 2018-2020.

Elizabeth Woody (Navajo/Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama) has published poetry, short fiction, essays, and is a visual artist. She has three books of poetry and numerous short fiction and essays in anthologies. She served as Oregon Poet Laureate from 2016-2018. She presently serves as Executive Director of The Museum At Warm Springs.

Tyrone Ross Thompson is Wyampum Nez Perce of the Columbia River. He is the grandson of Moses Jerome Thompson who was the son of Henry “Pi-usha” Thompson and his father was Tommy “Kuni” Thompson. He hosts an open mic on the Yakama Indian Reservation. The intent is to create a platform and increase community support for artists by using this medium for self-healing and creating space for us and the generations ahead of our time.