Pleasure Boat Studios Showcase Bios

Michael Daley: Michael Daley was born in Boston, and is a graduate of UMass with an MFA from the University of Washington. He’s worked as a laborer, taxi driver, waiter, tree-planter, editor, Poet-in-the-schools, and high school English teacher. The author of three books of poems, a book of essays and several chapbooks, his work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Hudson Review, Ploughshares, Manoa, Alaskan Quarterly Review, Nebraska Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry East, Raven Chronicles, Seattle Review, and on Garrison Keilor’s Writer’s Almanac. In 2001 he received a Fulbright grant to live in Hungary for a year. Twice the National Endowment of the Humanities has awarded his work, as has the Seattle Arts Commission, Bumbershoot, and the Fessenden Foundation. He received a grant from Artists Trust to produce the book MOONLIGHT IN THE REDEMPTIVE FOREST’s accompanying CD, “Frankie the Milkman’s Song & Other Poems.” For more on Michael Daley: https://www.pw.org/content/michael_daley

John Delaney: John Delaney recently retired after 35 years in the Dept. of Rare Books and Special Collections of Princeton University Library, where he was head of manuscripts processing and then, for the last 15 years, curator of historic maps. He has written a number of works on cartography, including Strait Through: Magellan to Cook and the Pacific; First X, Then Y, Now Z: An Introduction to Landmark Thematic Maps; and Nova Caesarea: A Cartographic Record of the Garden State, 1666-1888. These have extensive website versions. He has written poems for most of his life, and, in the 1970s, he attended the Writing Program of Syracuse University, where his mentors were poets W. D. Snodgrass and Philip Booth. No doubt, in subtle ways, they have bookended his approach to poems. John has traveled widely, preferring remote, natural settings, and is addicted to kayaking and hiking.

Ed Harkness: To his everlasting regret, Edward Harkness did not see Elvis when the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll visited Seattle during the World’s Fair in 1962. Other than that, Harkness is a happy husband to Linda, father to Ned and Devin, and grandfather to Clio and Hilde. Having retired after a 30+ year career as a writing teacher at Shoreline Community College, he now devotes his time to other pleasures: gardening, cycling, visiting the kids and, now and then, making poems. He is the author of two other full-length poetry collections, Saying the Necessary and Beautiful Passing Lives, both from Pleasure Boat Studio. His most recent chapbook, Ice Children, was published by Split Lip Press in 2014. Two poems in this collection, “Tying a Tie” and “Airborne,” won the Terrain.org annual poetry prize for 2017. He lives in Shoreline, Washington, about a mile from the north Seattle home where he grew up, and where his mother, Doris Harkness, whose art works grace the covers of this book, still lives. http://harkness01.wixsite.com/harkness

Alicia Hokanson is the author of Phosphorus (1984) and Mapping the Distance (1989). Both books are collections of the author’s poems. Carolyn Kizer, a fellow poet, describes Hokanson’s work as possessing ‘not only a high level of craftsmanship but a real intellectual and moral elegance.’ A copy of Mapping the Distance is available in the local authors collection of the Bainbridge Public Library. Hokanson is also a contributor to Works of Heart (2006), a book which profiles community building through the arts.

Saul Weisberg: Saul Weisberg is a poet, naturalist, educator and executive director of North Cascades Institute a conservation organization that connects people, nature and community by teaching at the convergence of natural and cultural history, science, humanities and the arts. Saul worked throughout the Northwest as a wilderness climbing ranger, field biologist, commercial fisherman and fire lookout before starting the Institute in 1986. Saul is adjunct faculty at Huxley College of the Environment and has served on the board of directors of the Natural History Network, the Environmental Education Association of Washington, and the Association of Nature Center Administrators. He is author of North Cascades: The Story Behind the Scenery and From the Mountains to the Sea: A Guide to the Skagit River Watershed. He lives with his wife Shelley in Bellingham, Washington.