PORT ANGELES — Peninsula College will present an evening poetry reading by Kim Stafford at 7 p.m. Thursday.
The free reading, co-sponsored by The Foothills Writers Series and Studium Generale, will be in Maier Performance Hall at Peninsula College, 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
A resident of Portland, Ore., Stafford has lived in Iowa, Indiana, California and Alaska, following his parents as they taught and traveled through the West.
He is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, the director of the Northwest Writing Institute and co-director of the Documentary Studies Certificate Program at Lewis & Clark College, where he has taught since 1979.
He holds a doctorate in medieval literature from the University of Oregon and has worked as a printer, photographer, oral historian, editor and visiting writer at several colleges and schools, and offered writing workshops in Italy, Scotland and Bhutan.
His book, “Having Everything Right,” won a citation for excellence from the Western States Book Awards in 1986. Stafford has received creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Governor’s Arts Award for his contributions to Oregon’s literary culture and his work has been featured on National Public Radio.
Stafford’s “100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do” is an account of his brother’s death by suicide and the struggle of a family to understand and live beyond it.
Stafford will visit literature classes at the college during the day, sharing his thoughts on such American writers as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, and listening to students’ insights and reflections. Stafford’s personal statement for The Northwest Writing Institute emphasizes dialogue and community:
“The problems of our time are political, ecological, economic — but the solutions are cultural. How do people speak their truth? How do we listen eloquently? If communication is the fundamental alternative to violence and injustice, what is the work of each voice among us? At the Northwest Writing Institute, we answer word by word.”
For more information, email Kate Reavey at kreavey@pencol.edu.
