Global pandemics are no fun. Along with destroying lives and livelihoods, COVID-19 has also disrupted our local literary community.
At this point (July) it is not looking like WordFest will resume for the remainder of 2020. However, you can stay in touch with the community and literary happenings through our monthly newsletter by subscribing here.
Until we can meet again face(mask) to face(mask), please stay safe and sane.
The Longview Public Library and WordFest will offer an 8-week series on writing about the COVID-19 pandemic, beginning Tuesday, May 5, 2020. Sessions will be conducted Tuesdays from 1:00-2:30 pm on the Zoom Conferencing platform.
Alan Rose, who coordinates the WordFest events, will facilitate the sessions. His newest novel, As If Death Summoned, about the AIDS epidemic, will be released in December by Amble Press, an imprint of Bywater Books.
“This is an unprecedented time in our community’s history,” said Rose. “We hope this class will provide people a way to experience it, express it, and share it in a positive and healthy way.”
All forms of writing are encouraged: nonfiction memoir and personal reflections on the pandemic, but also fiction short stories, flash fiction, poetry, science fiction and fantasy, even humor and whimsy, how ever people want to express their experience of the pandemic.
The program is open to all ages and all Cowlitz-Wahkiakum residents. People can participate by Zoom Conferencing on their laptops, PC/Mac, or tablets. The library will offer technical assistance to get people set up.
The organizers plan to publish some of the writing on the library’s website and on the WordFest webpage at www.alan-rose.com, and to hold a special WordFest event where writers read their works before the public at a future time.
All sessions are free and open to the public, but spaces are limited and pre-registration and an email address are required. You can register today by contacting Elizabeth Partridge at the Longview Public Library at her email, [email protected].
Note: WordFest gatherings have been temporarily suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the closing of Washington state’s schools and out of concern for people’s health and literary well-being, the monthly WordFest events will be suspended for the foreseeable future.
Updates and bookish news will be posted in the monthly newsletter. Click here to sign up for it.
Stay safe, healthy and well-read!
COVID-19 Notice: At the point when/if local schools are closed due to the coronavirus, we will also suspend WordFest events. I will alert the WF newsletter list. If you don’t currently receive the monthly newsletter, you can sign up for it here.
WordFest meets on Tuesday, March 10, 6:00-8:00 pm, at the Cassava Coffeehouse, 1333 Broadway in Longview.
Raised in rural Oregon in the 1960s, Jackie Shannon Hollis grew up playing “house” with baby dolls, riding horses, and tending to kittens and lambs on her family’s ranch. Other than her Aunt Lena, all of the women in Jackie’s life were mothers—of two, three, five, eight children. They cooked and baked, cleaned and washed, knitted and sewed, and they taught their daughters to do the same. Above all else, they were mothers. Jackie assumed she’d become a mother too. It’s what women did.
But in her late twenties, she found herself in love with a man who didn’t want children. She married him, certain she could be happy with a childless life. Then, only months into her marriage, she holds her sister’s baby girl and sinks deep into baby love and longing.
In her memoir This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story, (Forest Avenue Press, 2019) Jackie explores the conflict at the heart of her marriage, examining her reasons for wanting a child and her husband’s reasons for not wanting one. Together, they navigate their shared future, a journey of love that follows the path from how we are raised to who we become.
Jackie Shannon Hollis is a writer, storyteller and speaker whose work has appeared in various literary magazines, including The Sun, Rosebud, Inkwell, High Desert Journal, VoiceCatcher, Nailed, and Slice Magazine. Jackie and her husband, Bill, lead workshops on communication, conflict management, and building successful relationships. A childless woman surrounded by children (with over forty nieces and nephews and grand nieces and nephews), Jackie believes we all have an important role in supporting the children in our lives.
Elaine Cockrell will be reading from her second historical fiction novel, Broken Promises, the story of an orphaned child from the Depression through World War II and into the early 1950s. It begins in Alberta, Canada, when four-year-old Maida and her two-year-old sister Peg are sent to Eastern Oregon to live with the Ward family. Her father promises Maida he will come to get her as soon as he can find work. In the meantime, he agrees to send the Wards money for his daughters’ care. When both promises are broken, Maida and Peg are separated from each other as the young girls are given away to anyone who will take them.
A retired schoolteacher and administrator for the Kelso School District, Elaine has published a family history and written several professional articles about methods of teaching reading and writing at the middle school level.
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 immigrant experience on Tuesday, February 11, 6:00-8:00 pm, at the Cassava Coffeehouse, 1333 Broadway in Longview.
Mohammad Bader, an Arab American, Palestinian poet, will read from his 2011 collection of poetry, The Traveler.
Born in East Jerusalem, much of his poetry reflects his experience as a first generation immigrant. Mohammad majored in English at Bethlehem University and later studied counseling at Portland State University.
Many of the poems in his book The Traveler were originally written in Arabic then translated by him into English. The poems span a 25-year period of Mohammad’s life in America and examine four themes: Love Man-Woman relationships, Peace Versus War, The Immigrant and The Mother Land, and Utopia Versus Morbidity. Many of the poems are based on actual events and continuing issues, including the Palestinian Intifada, the Gulf war and later Iraq war, and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mohammad hopes and dreams for peace and justice, specifically between Israel and Palestine.
His poetry can be found at [email protected]
Craig Allen Heath will read poems from his book The End of an Ordinary Life, which won the 2017 Writer’s Digest Self-Published E-book Award in the poetry category. The contest judge wrote: “we are presented with poems of memory and loss, poems that seek to rekindle and reclaim with delicate and precise description a window that we can all see through…who can say when we reach the end? What is ordinary? – while pursuing a sense of poetic possibilities.”
He will also be reading from his unpublished novel, For Want of Scripture. He is seeking representation for it while working on the second book in the series, The Buddha on the Road.
Craig has over 40 years’ experience in technical and commercial writing. He began as a reporter/journalist in the 1980s, then moved into the growing software industry, while continuing to write poetry, short fiction and plays. He is now renewing his original life goal of becoming a novelist.
A year after losing their home to the wildfire in Paradise, California, Craig and his wife, Pat, now reside in southwest Washington where “we are rebuilding our life, falling in love with a new community, and counting our innumerable blessings.”
He publishes stories, poems and essays on Medium, and offers more information on his website, craigallenheath.com.
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.