Monday August 12th  7:00 to 8:00 pm

Rachel Barton is a poet, writing coach, and founding editor of Willawaw Journal. She also serves as an associate editor for Cloudbank Books. Her collection, This is the Lightness, was published by The Poetry Box in 2022. Her chapbook, Happiness Comes, was published by dancing girl press in 2018.  Barton’s recent publications include Across the Margins, SALT, SLEET, Cirque, and the Oregon English Journal. She is at home in the PNW, but also has roots in Alaska, West Virginia, and Indiana. For more information about the author, go to rachelbartonwriter.com.

The poems in Jacob’s Ladder are not so much steps to Heaven as they are portals going deeper into the daily. “What am I supposed to see today?” they ask, which at turns will require hanging out with the dead, dreaming of houses ablaze, or, more frequently, re-considering chores, garden, relationships—while not forgetting clouds, moss, rain. The poems aim to live closer to one’s life. They are ready to walk through the next door. –Richard Robbins, Oratory of All Souls

Louise Cary Barden, a 2023 New Women’s Voices semi-finalist, has won the Lois Cranston Prize (Calyx Journal), Oregon Poetry Association award, the Harperprints chapbook competition, and others. Her poems recently appeared in such journals as Timberline, humana obscura, Willawaw and Cathexis Northwest. Her work is imbued with the imagery of nature as narrated by a self-described tree-hugger whose career indecisiveness led her from college English instruction to advertising and editorial copywriting, and marketing management. After living from Maine to Wyoming, she spent 40 years in North Carolina before retiring to Oregon, where she is still trying to learn to love the rain