PORT ANGELES — Sheila Bender, author of A Year in the Life: Journaling for Self-Discovery and Writing and Publishing Personal Essays as well as other books, will give a free reading at Wine on the Waterfront this Tuesday night.
Anyone interested in writing as healing, poetry and literary exploration is invited to the 7 p.m. event at WoW, upstairs in The Landing mall at 115 E. Railroad Ave.
“Poetry is a spiritual endeavor. It can restore us to ourselves and to our connections with others and the world,” Bender writes.
She believes in the power of writing to heal — and knows from experience. After the death of her 25-year-old son in a snowboarding accident, Bender has said that poetry was her solace.
On Tuesday night, Bender, who lives in Port Townsend, will offer selections from her poetry collection Behind Us, the Way Grows Wider and from her memoir, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief.
The author also hosts www.writingitreal.com, an online community for writers to discuss their work, and has taught at the Centrum and Whidbey Island writers’ conferences and many other venues across the country.
Bender’s reading next week is the last of the season hosted by the local North Coast Writers group.
For more information, contact Suzann Bick at 360-797-1245 or suzannbick@yahoo.com.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.