Women Authoring Change - Literary Landscapes

I have to admit, I wasn't ready to go away for the weekend. I was tired, fighting a flu bug. The first draft of my next children's book manuscript is due soon, quarterly reports are due for my telecommuting job, the yard and house need work, my marketing "to do" list grows every day, and on and on. I'm sure you can relate.

But the moment Joseph and I reached Whidbey Island, I began to relax. The second largest saltwater island in the continental United States, Whidbey Island lies in Puget Sound between the Olympic and Cascade Mountain ranges.

My worries sloughed away in Langley - a bucolic, waterfront village facing north and east on the 60-mile long finger of the island. Time slows in Langley, population 1063. Shop owners sometimes close up during the day, leaving cryptic notes in their windows: "LEFT," "BACK SOON," "GONE" or "WHALES." "WHALES" means everyone is down at the beach, watching the migrating gray whales.

The town empties in the evening, and there's no grocery store open after 8:00pm. The Clyde Theater, which shows a new movie every three days or so, features one evening screening per day. A reliable, local source tells me that island residents have been known to pass around wine and trays of Brie cheese and crackers in the theater.

We spent Saturday with our good friends, Wayne Ude and Marian Blue, who are both wonderful writers, editors and teachers. They run Blue & Ude Writer's Services on the Island. We hiked, chatted, visited their lovely house in the woods, and met their family of rescued animals.

In the evening, I participated in an amazing reading event at Hedgebrook, an esteemed retreat for Women Writers. The other readers, Wendy Call, Susan Rich, and Lana Hechtman Ayers, inspired me beyond words.

Wendy Call is currently writer in residence at Richard Hugo House, Seattle's literary center. Wendy co-edited TELLING TRUE STORIES: A Nonfiction Writers' Guide from the Neiman Foundation at Harvard University. She read a moving, personal piece about a beloved family member who has passed way. By the end, we were all crying.

Susan Rich read a lovely series of poems from her books, Cures Include Travel and The Cartographer's Tongue. Winner of the PEN USA Literary Award for Poetry, Susan has been a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, West Africa, an electoral supervisor in Bosnia, and a human rights trainer in Gaza.

Lana Hechtman Ayers read from her wonderful new poetry collection, Dance From Inside My Bones, which has been nominated for the National Book Award. An award-winning poet and Pushcart-prize nominee, Lana has an MA in Counseling Psychology and hopes to return to school to study astrophysics!

Gitana Garofalo, the highly competent Director of Alumnae Relations for Hedgebrook, hosted the reading, making the evening a success for all of us.

I feel honored to have met such talented, accomplished women. I returned home feeling energized and inspired. And I don't think I'm catching the flu, after all.