1997 Jack Straw Writers Program

Joan Fiset’s work has been widely published in periodicals including Poetry Northwest, The Seattle Review, Calyx, Ploughshares, Negative Capability, and The Crab Creek Review. Namesake, a book of prose vignettes about her mother who suffered from mental illness, was released from Blue Begonia Press in 2015. Now the Day Is Over, a book of prose vignettes about her father, was published by Blue Begonia in 1997 and received the King County Publication Award. How It Was with Scotland, a collaboration with visual artist, Noah Saterstrom, was published in 2019 by Ravenna Press. How It Looks Away from Here, a book of poetry in collaboration with photographer Sabrina Roberts, was published by Ravenna Press in September of 2020. Minor Chord, a book of poems in response to collages by visual artist, Liz Gamberg, will be published by Ravenna Press in 2023.

1997 Writers Program

Noel Franklin’s poetry appears in Rain City Review, Son of Slam!, and two self-published chapbooks, Gone Girl and Theo. She has read at numerous events including the Poetry Slam Nationals, the Jesse Bernstein Memorial Reading, and Home Alive benefits, and continues to read in lots of local series. She is also an organizer of the Poetry Circus, a festival of the spoken word taking place at CoCa May 30-June 1, 1997.

1997 Writers Program

Paul Haas’s work has been published in Literal Latte. He was a local organizer of Writers Harvest, the national fundraising effort on behalf of programs to end hunger.

1997 Writers Program

Amy Halloran’s work has appeared in The Stranger, Women’s Work, and BUST. One of her non-books was included in an exhibit she co-curated, This Is Not a Book at Summer Song Gallery.

1997 Writers Program

Paul Hunter is the author of several poetry collections, including Stubble Field (Silverfish Review Press, 2012), Ripening (Silverfish Review Press, 2006), and Breaking Ground (Silverfish Review Press, 2005), which received the 2005 Washington State Book Award. Of his work, Washington state poet laureate Samuel Green writes, “Wise and generous, when there’s labor to be done, these are the poems that show up with a worn tool belt, packing their own lunch.” Hunter directs Wood Works Press and lives in Seattle, Washington.

1997 Writers Program

Alma Johnson’s work has been published in The Seattle Review, where it was a runner-up for the Nelson Bentley Award in 1994, and, in German, in Padagogische Rundschau. She has performed at the Writers in Performance Series sponsored by the Seattle Writers Association and received a 1997 Artist Grant from Seattle Arts Commission.

1997 Writers Program

Eula Little has read at various venues in Seattle, including the Fremont Fair and the SPICE series.

1997 Writers Program

John McFarland’s short fiction has appeared in a wide variety of periodicals including: Ararat, Caliban, and Seniority, and the anthologies A Loving Testimony and The Book Club Book. He has contributed arts criticism to The Seattle Weekly, Lights, and Pacific Northwest Magazine, and is author of The Exploding Frog and Other Stories from Aesop.

1997 Writers Program

Kate Miller’s work has been published many places, including the anthology The Persistent Desire (Alyson) and on Seattle Metro buses. She sells books at Red and Black Books and is a former resident of Hedgebrook cottages.

1997 Writers Program

Donna Miscolta is the author of three books of fiction: When the de la Cruz Family Danced, Hola and Goodbye: Una Familia in Stories, and Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories. Donna was born in San Diego and grew up in National City, California. She received a bachelor’s degree in zoology from San Diego State and later received master’s degrees in education and public administration from the University of Washington. During the thirty years that she worked as a project manager in local government, she took classes and workshops in fiction writing. She lives in Seattle. Donna was a Jack Straw Writer in 1997, and the curator of the 2009 Jack Straw Writers Program.

2012 Artist Support Program: Produce audio excerpts from her novel When the de la Cruz Family Danced.

2009 Writers Program (Curator)

1997 Writers Program

Nancy Redwine’s most recent publications are included in the anthology The New Fuck You (Semiotexte, 1995) and the Fremont Fair chapbook (LD Books). In 1996 she read at the Rendezvous Reading Series and Red and Black Books.

1997 Writers Program

Growing up poor and black on the South Side of Chicago, where he lived for 25 years, Riz Rollins sang in the Operation Breadbasket choir as a boy and regularly got to hear Reverend Jesse Jackson teach and preach. During this time Riz’s powers of observation, energy cultivation and discernment began to take form.

Riz went on to study religion and psychology in college. This is where he learned to pull energy from the sky and stars. Riz’s ability to draw power from the universe is the central component to his luminescent and sonic discombobulation.

Riz started deejaying at KEXP and writing for The Stranger because “someone asked” and he said yes. “That’s the ticket,” he says: “Being asked and saying yes. I stopped saying no. I shed all my inhibitions that way.” Saying yes allowed the world’s energy to pulse through him; his ability to work with it fuels him.

Jack Straw Writers Program 1997

Stokley Towles tells stories.  Venues showing his work have ranged from the sidewalk of the corner of 151^st and 8^th Ave SW in Burien where story plaques tell a 10,000 year history of that block, to the University of Washington where for two years he acted as a professor and gave lectures to students in a construction trailer.  Over the past ten years his press, Cling Peaches Publications, has produced more than a dozen titles, such as It’s my body and I want it back and An Archaeology of Manhood: a dig into the male mind.  Currently he teaches at Colorado College, Antioch University, and Seattle Arts and Lectures’ Writers in the Schools Program.

2002 Writers Program (curator)

Artist Support Program 1999

1997 Writers Program

George R. Wolfe is the founder of both The LaLa Times, dubbed “The Onion for L.A.,” and LA River Expeditions, a group that advocates for endangered rivers. His activist work has been featured in The New York Times, PBS, BBC, and in the documentary Rock the Boat: Saving America’s Wildest River. Wolfe’s first novel, Blake’s Bible, was selected for the Jack Straw Writers Series, and several exhibitions. Into the River of Angels is Wolfe’s second novel. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, dog, and cat.

1997 Writers Program