On Tuesday, September 4, WordFest will be meeting at the new Grounds For Opportunity Cafe, 413 S. Pacific Avenue, in Kelso, 6:00-8:00 PM.

Poet Janice Haupt will be reading a series of poems about persons who have been important in her life.

Fred Hudgin will read a short story about a father who finds out his son has been killed in Afghanistan.

Kelley Jácquez will be reading an excerpt from her forthcoming book Holding Woman and Other Stories of Acceptable Madness, soon to be released by Bilingual Press, Tempe, AZ.

For those who wish to enjoy a meal with the readings, GFO’s Chef Keven Robinson will be offering a buffet of Apricot Chicken, Beef Rib Roast in Burgundy Mushroom Sauce, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Orzo Pilaf, Glazed Carrots, Tossed Salad, and Pineapple Upside Down Cake for $10 per person, which includes soda, coffee, and tea. Espresso drinks will be available at regular menu prices.

Grounds for Opportunity, or GFO, is the newest social enterprise of Lower Columbia Community Action Program (CAP). A full service cafe open to the public, it is also a training kitchen, preparing people to work in the local restaurant industry. And finally, GFO is CAP’s central kitchen where Meals on Wheels and Senior Community Lunches are prepared daily.

WordFest resumes its monthly gatherings on Tuesday, September 4th, 6:00-8:00 pm, at Grounds for Opportunity Cafe, 413 South Pacific Avenue in Kelso (across the street from the train station.)

Good reading! (and writing!)

On Tuesday, July 3, WordFest will be meeting at the Backstage Cafe, 216 S. Pacific Avenue, in Kelso.

Orla Parkinson and Scott Coombs live in the wilds of county Leitrim in the northwest of Ireland with their three children. Leitrim is well known in Ireland for its arts community and Orla and Scott are both active in local writers groups. Orla, who works as a librarian in a local village on the border with Northern Ireland, will read from a selection of her poems, short stories, and from a play she is currently working on. Scott works in Dublin for an Information Technology consultancy and will read from a collection of short stories he is preparing. He also enjoys letterpress printing and runs the Barking Angels Press in his spare time.

In the second hour, Longview attorney David Rorden will read from a novel he is writing about a jury trial for an involuntary mental commitment case. Set in Longview and Stevenson in Skamania County, the story centers on a high profile case involving a bearded young man wearing a white robe  who sits in the lotus position on the I-5 freeway. His attorney soon learns that his client’s bizarre behavior was designed to put the state’s system of forced mental health treatment on trial. The novel draws on Rorden’s experiences as Cowlitz County’s contracted public defender in ITA (Involuntary Treatment Act) hearings.

In honor of Independence Day, WordFest regular Mary Lyons will read from her writings on patriotic themes, and people are invited to participate in the open mic period following Mary’s’ reading, sharing their own patriotic reflections in prose or verse (10 minute limit.)

On Tuesday, June 5, WordFest will be meeting at the Electric Bean coffee shop, 946 Washington Way (Washington Way and 10^th Avenue) in Longview, 6:00 to 8:00 pm.

Mike Strom will be reading several poems, excerpts from his book of short stories, Spice: American Adventures, and also a short segment from his novel Wildwood. Both books are available in Kindle format on amazon.com. Paperback copies of Spice will be available for purchase and signing at the reading.

Mike graduated from RA Long High School in 1966 and Western Washington University in 1994. Following the life of an artist, he picked apples, renovated houses, lived in hippie communes, served in the US Navy, was a commercial fisherman,  owned several art galleries and wrote  for a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Baltimore Sun, San Diego Union, Longview Daily News, Audubon Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Pacific Fishing, and Fisherman’s News. In 2011, he returned to Longview, where he transformed an old family rental into an “art house” and began producing Pacific NW Artist Series, a series of art interviews conducted by Erica Rodman, presently being aired on KLTV.

Dan Roberts will be reading from his medical thriller, VRSA SYNDROME (At 4:15 on a Friday morning in August, Rick Caldwell takes the phone call every physician dreads. His friend Lindsey Dawson is having a grand mal seizure. In searching for the cause, he learns that Lindsey holds a key he doesn’t want to discover.)

Dan is a retired physician, who moved to Kalama six years ago. He was on the editorial board of Western Journal of Medicine for 10 years, and for several years was on the publication committee for American Academy of Family Physicians, which publishes American Family Physician, a nationally distributed journal of Family Medicine. Over the years, he has had narrative nonfiction pieces published in Medical Economics, and in 2010, a short memoir of his was published in The Healing Muse, a health care related literary journal.

Robin Weitzen will read from a novel she is currently working on, titled My Mission: San Gabriel. Set in California, the story is about a young man torn between a promise to his dead mother and secrets from his family’s past.

Robin has been teaching writing and directing writing programs for more than 20 years at Tulane University, the Institute of Reading Development in Marin County, California, and at the University of Phoenix, where she is currently a faculty member in the colleges of Humanities and Communications. She is in a doctoral studies program at Tulane University, with an emphasis on literary history from 1485 to 1815.

Following the presentations, there will be an open mic period (10 minute limit.)

On Tuesday, May 1, WordFest will be meeting at the Electric Bean coffee shop, 946 Washington Way (Washington Way and 10^th Avenue) in Longview.

Carolyn Caines will be reading from her novel, Passage to Love, an Ellis Island Story. The novel is based on the lives of her Finnish grandparents who came to America more than a hundred years ago. The story begins in the village of Puolanka, Finland, where young men and women are pulling up roots and following the lure of land and a new life in America. Among them are the headstrong Reeta, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a landowning family, and Thomas, the son of a tenant farmer. Social class restrictions doom their relationship from the start.

Carolyn is a third-generation resident of SW Washington and taught in both public and private schools for thirty years. She began writing during her college years at Seattle Pacific University, publishing a dozen short stories. She has had more than 125 poems published in devozine, Evangel, The Salal Review, and various other magazines and journals. Since 1998, she has written Poems For You, a weekly e-mailing.

Both her novel and her volume of poetry, In the Noiseless Night, poems about childhood in the ‘50s, will be available for purchase and autographing at WordFest.

Former prosecuting attorney and retired judge C.C. Bridgewater will be reading from his unpublished novel, entitled The Hook.  A crime mystery situated in SW Washington, it involves kidnapping, murder, and the use of mysticism in discovering the murderer and the location of the victim.

During the second hour, there will be an open mic period (10 minute limit.)

WordFest is a monthly gathering of readers and writers who meet the first Tuesday of each month, 6:00-8:00 pm. The events are free and open to the public.