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PAUL E NELSON

I once attend the the Blue River Writers Gathering, a biannual gathering at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest whose purpose, according to their website, is:

to take counsel from each other and from the forest, to deepen our sense of community with other writers and with the natural world, to walk, to talk, to read aloud, to inhabit that seam between the world’s deepest need and our own sources of gladness, and find ways to sow with our works effective seeds of hope. The invited writers all have two things in common — geography and grounding. We all come from the Great Northwest, from wherever the Salmon swim, from the Yukon to the Sacramento and deep into the interior, right to the edge of the Great Basin. And we all ground our work in deep attention to the land.

This year, of course, it is via Zoom and no word yet if some of the sessions will be made available live, or later, via recordings. The list of confirmed participants (so far) is inspired:

Bill Sherwonit
Bill Yake
Carly Lettero (organizer)
Charles Finn
Marie Fuhrman
Ellen Waterston
Emma Marris
Gloria Brown
Greg Darms
Gregg Kleiner
Holly Hughes
Ian Boyden
Jeff Fearnside
Jerry Martien
John S. Farnsworth
Kim Stafford
Marybeth Holleman
Michael Paul Nelson
Paul E Nelson
Pepper Trail
Rena Priest
Saul Weisberg
Scott T. Starbuck
Shelley Stonebrook (organizer)
Tess Taylor
Tim Fox
Tom Titus

My proposal was selected for one of the 50 minute interview slots and is:

What does it Mean to be a Cascadian? In a USAmerica more culturally divided than since the Civil War, we examine the basic premise of bioregionalism especially as it relates to Cascadia. What does it mean to be Cascadian, how would that be better than what we have now and what makes that different from life in any of North America’s other bioregions? Using spontaneous writing exercises honed over 25 years of workshops, maps and sharing of discoveries, we may find that we can be more connected to where we live despite life amidst the death throes of the U.S. empire.

Of course I’ll be referring to David McCloskey’s map of the bioregion, found here. Or click the map below: