The final WordFest event of the year will take place on Tuesday, November 12, 6:00-8:00 pm, at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 1428 22nd Avenue in Longview.
Retired judge and WordFest favorite Ed Putka will be reading the latest addition from his Cleveland stories, humorous tales about growing up in his Polish neighborhood in Ohio. In “The Redemption of Sister Mary Motts,” Ed offers his take on how nun’s get their nun names.
Craig Allen Heath will be reading the first chapter from his new Eden Ridge mystery series, Killing Buddhas. When the famous guru Branden Frank dies while visiting Eden Ridge, the great man’s legend begins to unravel. He helped millions find happiness and inspired Alan Wright’s ministry, but his private life holds secrets that will shake Alan’s admiration and complicate the truth of how Frank died. Did his aging and troubled heart give out, or was he killed? One man had threatened to kill him in front of a hundred witnesses. Another confesses to the murder, but police question his claim. A local woman is suspected, but her story throws the investigation into a tailspin. Alan and The Little Red Hens race to untangle the many knotted threads and find the truth.
Craig decided he wanted to be a novelist at age fourteen. He achieved that goal fifty years later, in 2022, by publishing Where You Will Die. He is now working on the third in the series, Reason Not the Need.
Elisa Carlsen grew up in Humboldt County, Nevada. A queer, outsider poet and artist, her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Trumpeter, Cirque, Argentum, Brushfire, Nevada Arts Council, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere. Elisa is a Poetry Editor at New American Press and the author of Cormorant (Unsolicited Press 2023). Her poems have won awards from the Writer’s Guild of Astoria and the Oregon Poetry Association and she has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize.
Elisa will read from Cormorant, a collection of short poems with a brief essay about her experience helping the Army Corps of Engineers develop the Double-Crested Cormorant Wildlife Management Plan. Prepared under the umbrella of federal salmon recovery efforts on the Columbia River, the plan resulted in a large culling of the birds with zero benefits to threatened salmon. Elisa dedicated her book to Sharnelle Fee, Founder of the Wildlife Center of the North Coast, who passed away from what many believed to be heartbreak over the killing of the birds. Proceeds from the book’s sale will be donated to the Wildlife Center.
Eric Fair-Layman, aka Papasquatch, (presumably the one on the left) is a Portland poet and spoken-word artist. The styles of his poems vary from humorous and edgy to mournful laments, often with biting social commentary in the subtext. By day, he is a bookkeeper and licensed massage therapist, and has two teenagers that he raises, full time. By night, he puts his significant science and math education to work by writing poems. You can find him on Instagram at Papa_Squatch2229.
An open mic will follow the presentations.
The monthly gathering of readers and writers meets the second Tuesday of each month, 6:00-8:00 PM, in the fellowship hall of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. The events are free and open to the public.