The Madrona Project vol. IV, The Empty Bowl Cookbook - Nature of Writing

Location: Village Books and Paper Dreams

Address: 1200 11th Street, Bellingham, WA 98225

Date: 8 Apr

The Madrona Project: The Empty Bowl Cookbook delivers literature of sustainability. A banquet of writers and artists offers ancestral recipes to protect our habitat and food sources. Poems, prose, and art include some darn good recipes with humor and care. Some of the contributors are Tim McNulty, Sam Green, Finn Wilcox, Susan Rich, Carlos Reyes, Clemens Starck, Jeremy Voigt, Carly Goodkind, Lorna Crozier, Charles Goodrich, Jane Hirschfield, Kim Stafford, and Alice Derry.

Several of the amazing contributors will be joining us for this group reading.

Tele Aadsen spends ocean summers in Southeast Alaska, trolling for salmon aboard the F/V Nerka, and land winters in Bow, Washington, self-marketing the catch. She is the author of the memoir What Water Holds and co-author of the Working Boats Coloring Book. Her name is pronounced "Tell-ah."

Luther Allen writes poems from the flank of Sumas Mountain, Washington. He co-facilitates the SpeakEasy reading series, is co-editor of Noisy Water: Poetry from Whatcom County, Washington, and is author of a collection of 365 poems, The View from Lummi Island. His work is included in numerous journals and anthologies. He views writing as his spiritual practice.

Jane Alynn is a poet and photographic artist who is grateful to call the Skagit Valley home. She is author of Necessity of Flight (Cherry Grove, 2011), a full-length poetry collection, and a chapbook, Threads & Dust (Finishing Line Press, 2005). Her most recent award was second place in New South's 2012 Poetry Contest. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies; and those written in collaboration with visual artists have been exhibited in galleries.

Michael Daley is managing editor of The Madrona Project series, founder and former editor of Empty Bowl, and author of Reinhabited: New & Selected Poems (Dos Madres, 2022), Telemachus, a novel (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2022), and True Heresies (Cervena Barva, 2022).

Jessica Gigot is a poet, farmer, and coach. She lives on a little sheep farm in the Skagit Valley. Her second book of poems, Feeding Hour (Wandering Aengus Press, 2020) was a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Award. Jessica's writing and reviews appear in several publications, such as Orion, The New York Times, The Seattle Times, Ecotone, Terrain.org, and Poetry Northwest. She is currently a poetry editor for The Hopper. Her award-winning memoir, A Little Bit of Land, was published by Oregon State University Press in September 2022.

Georgia Johnson is a food-wrangling poet living in Skagit Valley. She writes and attempts to grow things, among them, rebels, under the guise of teaching food ways and literacy. Her chapbook, Finding Beet Seed, was published at Desert Rose Press by Clifford Burke in 2000, with beautiful artwork by Maggie Wilder. In 2017, Chuck Luckmann, the man behind Flying Trout Press, published Just Past Dew Point.

An artist, poet, and freelance writer, J.I. Kleinberg lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, and on Instagram @jikleinberg. Her chapbooks The Word for Standing Alone in a Field (Bottlecap Press), how to pronounce the wind (Paper View Books), and Desire's Authority (Ravenna Press Triple Series No. 23) were published in 2023.

Charles "Chuck" Luckmann came of age along the Sangamon River in central Illinois. Abraham Lincoln was his idol. During a long career in education, he taught at nine schools in four countries. He lives in Bellingham, Washington, with his wife, Susie; son, Noah; and in his backyard, tens of thousands of honeybees in five colonies.

William Jay Weissinger is a stone sculptor and a writer. His poetry and fiction have appeared in journals and in regional anthologies. His nonfiction articles have been published in Sail magazine and other publications. He lives on San Juan Island in the State of Washington.