Gold Passes for the Cascadia Poetry Festival are on sale now at Brown Paper Tickets. The fest is a tribute to Sam Hamill, who died on April 14, 2018, and will start on the 76th anniversary of his birth, May 9, 2019. The festival schedule is here: http://cascadiapoetryfestival.org/cpf-anacortes-2019/ and includes three Sunday workshops, two of which are FREE to the first Gold Pass holders that register. The third is being facilitated by Sam’s close friend Steve Kuusisto:
9am Sunday: Stephen Kuusisto, (bio below) author of “Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poets Journey” will guide poets and prose writers on the techniques that help us write with clarity and honesty about animals. The aim is to avoid anthropomorphism and instead find ways to write with the real animal in mind. Cost $50. Limit 20 participants.
Workshop 2, 9-12N Sunday: Writing in the Woods. Tim McNulty and Bob Rose. Cost FREE to Gold Pass holders who are registered in advance. Limit 15 participants.
Workshop 3, 9-12N Sunday: Becoming Cascadian: Imagination of the Senses. Nadine Maestas and Jared Leising host a workshop on the Washington State Ferry. This two-hour generative workshop will engage your imagination through a sensory experience of Cascadia while riding the ferry to Friday Harbor and back. Participants will meet at the Anacortes terminal and purchase a ferry ticket. The workshop is open to the first 30 Gold Pass Members who register.
Stephen Kuusisto directs The Burton Blatt Institute’s Interdisciplinary Programs in disability at Syracuse University where he holds a University Professorship. He is the author of the memoirs Planet of the Blind (a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”) and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening and of the poetry collections Only Bread, Only Light,and Letters to Borges. His newest memoir, Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey is new from Simon & Schuster. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a Fulbright Scholar, he has taught at the University of Iowa, Hobart & William Smith Colleges, and The Ohio State University. Professor Kuusisto has served as an advisor to the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington DC and has appeared on numerous television and radio programs including The Oprah Winfrey Show; Dateline; All Things Considered; Morning Edition; Talk of the Nation; A & E; and Animal Planet. His essays have appeared in The New York Times; The Washington Post; Harper’s; The Reader’s Digest; and his daily blog “Planet of the Blind” is read globally by people interested in disability and contemporary culture. He is a frequent speaker in the US and abroad. His website is: www.stephenkuusisto.com
