Retired judge and short story writer Ed Putka hosts the March WordFest next Tuesday, March 12, 6:00 pm, at the Cassava Coffeehouse, 1333 Broadway in Longview.

Throughout the centuries, grief and personal loss have found expression and healing through prose and poetry. Two local writers will be sharing their unique personal experiences of this universal human condition.

Beverlee Ruhland has lived in Clatskanie for the last 40 years where she raised a family and enjoyed many adventures with Howard, her husband of 50 years. When he died in 2015, Beverlee fell into bouts of deep depression. Possessing a Masters degree in biology, she had worked as an environmental manager for various firms, where her writing was technical and scientific. With Howard’s death, her writing turned inward, and she began keeping a “grief journal,” writing out her grief through memoirs and poetry (“Or what passes for poetry to me,” she says.) Sharing from these writings is a further step in her healing,

Diane Searing’s husband, Jan, passed away unexpectedly 11 months ago. “Suddenly, my life was thrown on a whole new course,” she says. “I have spent much of this last year writing about this new journey alone.” Diane has been writing since childhood. Her articles have been published in the Oregonian, Women’s World Magazine, and Sisters International Magazine.  Jan had encouraged her to fulfill her dream of going to college and pursuing her writing. She graduated from Linfield College in 1999, and continued with post graduate courses in Expressive Arts Theory at Marylhurst University. Diane is hoping her writing will become a book helpful for others who “are walking this difficult path, trying to cope through this transition.”

Turning from grief and sadness to humor and mystery, PJ Peterson will read from her first novel, Blind Fish Don’t Talk, where physician Julia Fairchild has gotten away for a vacation on the beautiful island of St. Maarten. However, her plans for a week of sun, sand, reading, and scuba-diving are interrupted by the accidental death of an experienced scuba diver.  But was it an accident? Julia’s determination to learn the truth leads her on a dangerous path where she finds more questions than answers.

PJ has been preparing for this second career as a writer since childhood.  A voracious reader throughout her life, she penned winning entries for the medical journal Medical Economics, while practicing in her primary career as an Internal Medicine specialist, including “Don’t dismiss patients’ near-death experiences,” and “The patient who gave me flowers—every day for years.”

PJ is now writing her second novel (working title: “Rembrandt Rides a Bike”) where Dr. Julia Fairchild returns in a fun romp along the Rhine River. PJ also enjoys writing short stories, especially for her great-nieces and -nephews, tailoring each story to the child, and always ending with a life lesson.  Someday she will publish those stories for other children.

There will be an open mic period following the presentations.

The monthly gathering of readers and writers meets the second Tuesday of each month, 6:00-8:00 PM, at Cassava. The events are free and open to the public.

Cassava offers a dinner menu for those who wish to enjoy a meal with the readings, as well as local wines and brews.

For more information, contact Alan Rose at www. Alan-rose.com.

Two new novels explore different moments in history at WordFest next Tuesday, February 12, 6:00 pm, at the Cassava Coffeehouse, 1333 Broadway in Longview.

One of the more recent books published by Portland’s Forest Avenue Press, Julia Stoops’ Parts Per Million is a tale of civic activism, loss and transformation during the buildup to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Three Portland media activists are working to save the world—one radio show at a time—when an Irish photographer with an expired visa and a messy past, disrupts their lives. As the scrappy crew takes to the streets, reporting on anti-war protests and the explosive political climate, they uncover the biggest scoop of their careers, involving corrupt war technology research at a prominent Oregon university.

Julia Stoops was born in Samoa, growing up in Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Washington, D.C., and has lived in Portland since 1994. Parts per Million, shaped by her experiences in community radio journalism and anti-war activism, was shortlisted for the PEN Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. A visual artist as well as a writer, Julia is a recipient of Oregon Arts Commission Fellowships for visual arts and literature, and was a resident at the Ucross Foundation in 2016. Her current activist work is in the digital privacy movement.

WordFest regular Lilly Robbins Brock will read from Intrepid Journey: An Untamed Frontier, the first book in Lilly’s Intrepid Journey series set in the 1850s of the Pacific Northwest. When an opportunity opens up to travel to the dangerous but promising Northwest frontier, Thomas Bennett and his reluctant wife, Jane, prepare for their respective journeys. Thomas and his brothers will pave the way on a paddle wheel steamship traveling around South America, while Jane and the children are to follow twelve months later on the shorter Nicaragua route. But nothing has prepared them for the long separation and their life-changing adventures. They must rely on each other for the courage demanded by their journeys and arrival in a largely lawless, unforgiving land.

Lilly’s previous books were nonfiction, Wooden Boats and Iron Men, about men who served on PT boats in World War II, and Victory on the Home Front: While Her Husband Fought, She Built Planes ~ She was a Rosie the Riveter, focusing on strong women who served at home. Lilly’s preferred genre is historical fiction but she has also written and published Food Gifts Recipes from Nature’s Bounty, based on organic gardening.

There will be an open mic period following the presentations.

The monthly gathering of readers and writers meets the second Tuesday of each month, 6:00-8:00 PM, at Cassava. The events are free and open to the public.

Cassava offers a dinner menu for those who wish to enjoy a meal with the readings, as well as local wines and brews.

For more information, contact Alan Rose at www.alan-rose.com.

WordFest celebrates the new year’s arrival with local prose and poetry next Tuesday, January 8, 6:00 pm, at the Cassava Coffeehouse, 1333 Broadway in Longview.

David Martin will be reading from the final volume in his six-book series, The Adventures of Sugar Dog. Written for middle grade and older readers, the series is about 12-year-old Jimmy Baker and his dog who, along with Jimmy’s three friends, embark on a number of mysteries during the summer between sixth and seventh grade.  The new book, Twilight and Tomorrow,  takes place six years later when Jimmy is graduating from high school and Sugar Dog is old and growing more and more feeble. 

David’s radio voice may be familiar to many who listen to KLOG, KUKN and The Wave. In radio broadcasting for many years, he has also worked for KGON, KPAM, KXL as well as other stations in the Portland metropolitan area. A singer and songwriter as well as author, David has recently written a western under the pen name Dusty Dawkins, titled Six Feet Under.

WordFest regular Caleigh Maffett reads from her fantasy novel in progress, Artorious, Selected. Artorious is a fifteen-year-old boy marked by the Folke to contain their king of kings, Lord Aether. A year prior, he was involved in an incident regarding Aether that made him the Number One Most Wanted in Faroque. Toran Kaelpie, a bounty hunter, finds Artorious while he’s escaping local law enforcement. Sick, tired, and constantly on the run, Artorious doesn’t have time or the trust to get involved with other people. Not that it’s going to stop Toran and his sister Lillian from stepping in anyway.

Caleigh is a junior at university, planning to go into editing. She has been published in Metamorphose under her pen name and was an editor on the 2018 Salal Review, Lower Columbia College’s award winning literary and visual arts magazine.

Kaden Moeller will be reading from his poetry collection, The Color That You See, which he describes as “an act of both bereavement for my lovely San Juan dog Mara and something for my Mother to read when she got back from her three jobs.”  He describes it as “a poetic picture of the early twentieth first century, much like Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is a poetic picture of the 19th.”

Born in Kirkland, Washington, Kaden moved to South Florida at the age of five, then back to Washington, and Longview, when he was twenty eight. His first poems and short stories were published in his high school creative writing magazine, The Tail Spinner, back in Florida.

There will be an open mic period following the presentations.

The monthly gathering of readers and writers meets the second Tuesday of each month, 6:00-8:00 PM, at Cassava. The events are free and open to the public.

Cassava offers a dinner menu for those who wish to enjoy a meal with the readings, as well as local wines and brews.

For more information, contact Alan Rose at www. Alan-rose.com.