Friday, December 5 – 7:00pm
107 W. Main St. – Enterprise
Free Admission
December’s Fishtrap Fireside reading series features three longtime Fishtrap friends; Wallowa County local Larry Nall, EOU Professor Nick Neely, and former Fishtrap Youth Program Manager Whitney Tayer who now calls Baker City home.
Fishtrap Fireside is a monthly reading series designed to celebrate diverse voices from local writers and storytellers. Each month offers a fresh look at what people who live in Northeast Oregon are thinking about and writing down. Since the program launched in 2013, more than 170 writers have stepped up to the podium to share something they’ve written. With each Fishtrap Fireside event, the audience gets to enjoy a variety of storytelling from their friends and neighbors including poetry, fiction, history, humor, memoir, sci-fi fantasy, essay, travelog, food stories, comedy, and much more.
Fishtrap Fireside takes place at Fishtrap’s event space on Main Street in Enterprise. For those who can’t make it in-person, anyone anywhere can take in Fireside online at Fishtrap.org and on Fishtrap’s YouTube Channel. Admission is free although donations are always welcome. Light snacks are provided and drinks are available for purchase. An open mic takes place after the featured readings. Five spots are available to sign up for when the doors open at 6:30pm. Writers of all ages and experience are encouraged to come.
December’s Fishtrap Fireside is sponsored by Wild Carrot Herbals
More on the featured readers for December below:
Larry Nall
Larry Nall and his wife Sharon packed up 2 boys, 2 horses, a dog, and a business, and moved from Central Oregon to the old Shinn place on Hurricane Creek 35 years ago. Their forest inventory business gave them the opportunity to pack into wilderness areas in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and make a living doing work that was adventurous and just plain fun. And now, the last of the horses have been laid to rest, the hikes are more modest, and they’ve entered the realm of gray hairs who think a hike to Slick Rock is a big day.
Nick Neely
Nick Neely is the author of the essay collection Coast Range, a finalist for the John Burroughs Medal for natural history writing, and the travelogue Alta California, an LA Times Bestseller detailing his twelve-week trek from San Diego to San Francisco to retrace the first overland Spanish expedition through that territory. He is a recipient of PEN Northwest’s Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, a UC Berkeley–11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship, and an AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award. He teaches at Eastern Oregon University and directs its low-res MFA program in creative writing with a special concentration in Landscape, Ecology, and Community.
Whitney Tayer
Whitney Tayer is an avid outdoorswoman, reluctant writer, and professional job-hopper. She currently resides in Baker City, Oregon, where she splits her time between wandering the mountains, doting on her dogs, and pretending she’s not procrastinating. Once upon a time, writing was Whitney’s chosen outlet. These days, it mostly induces a healthy dose of existential dread, which makes her participation in this reading an act of either courage or denial— possibly both. Nature has always been her muse—the quiet trail and the wide horizon serving as backdrops for her reflections on human connection and the wild, messy beauty of being alive.