If I Could, I Would Swim the Columbia – Ruth Marie Tomlinson
Ruth Marie Tomlinson‘s project for the 2026 Jack Straw Writers Program is a long-form non-fiction manuscript that delves into the river routes from Seattle, WA to Two Dot, Montana, and imagines what it would be like to swim those paths. In her conversation with curator Claudia Castro Luna, they talk about her inspiration for the project, how the space in between two destinations can be a destination within itself, and how following these paths east can perhaps lead to healing. “You cannot go back to what it was before. . . . The hope in the rewinding of the walk, you know the reverse direction, is to see a way forward that can maybe undo damage. It can’t remake what was there, but maybe damage can be undone, or maybe looked at and reworked.”
Music by Star Gondola, produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
