Meet Oregon’s Poet Laureate, Ellen Waterston

Wednesday, March 19
5:00-6:00pm
Fishtrap – 107 W. Main St., Enterprise
Free Admission

Oregon’s Poet Laureate is coming to town. Ellen Waterston is a long time friend of Fishtrap, an accomplished award-winning writer, educator, and supporter of creative writing and writers in Oregon. Fishtrap will open its doors on Wednesday, March 19 for a casual hour to meet and visit with Ellen. Enjoy light snacks and maybe hear a poem or two. This event is free admission and open to the public. This is the first of three days of events that Ellen Waterston will attend including school visits, a presentation at the Josephy Center for Arts and Culture, and a poetry workshop at Fishtrap on Friday morning, March 21. 

Ellen Waterston was named Oregon Poet Laureate in August 2024 for a two-year term. Also in 2024, Ellen received the Stewart H. Holbrook Award and the Soapstone Bread and Roses Award. Ellen’s newest book, titled We Could Die Doing This, a collection of essays. Her third nonfiction title released in 2020 is, Walking the High Desert, Encounters with Rural America along the Oregon Desert Trail.

Ellen is also the author of a collection of essays, Where the Crooked River Rises, Oregon State University Press; a memoir, Then There Was No Mountain, Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group; and four poetry titles: Hotel Domilocos, Moonglade Press, Between Desert Seasons, Wordcraft of Oregon and I Am Madagascar, Ice River Press. Her fourth poetry title and verse novel, Vía Láctea, A Woman of a Certain Age Walks the Camino, published by Atelier 6000, she subsequently converted to a libretto. It premiered as a full-length opera and is slated for a second staging.

Her award-winning essays and poems have been featured in many journals and anthologies. Poetry awards include the WILLA Award in Poetry for two of her collections and the Obsidian Prize for Poetry. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships, grants and residencies. She was awarded an honorary Ph.D. by Oregon State University Cascades for her accomplishments as an author and poet and her promotion of the literary arts.

As a literary arts advocate, she is the founder of the Writing Ranch which offers workshops and retreats for established and emerging writers. She was the founder and, for over a decade, the executive director of The Nature of Words, a literary arts nonprofit featuring an annual literary festival in Bend, Oregon and creative writing workshops in regional schools, social welfare programs, and at its literary arts center’s Storefront Project. She subsequently founded the Waterston Desert Writing Prize which, in 2020, was adopted by the High Desert Museum. This Prize annually recognizes a nonfiction book proposal that examines the role of deserts in the human narrative. Waterston is on the faculty of OSU Cascades MFA Low Residency program.