We are delighted to host author and poet Ellen Waterston, who was recently named the 11th Poet Laureate of Oregon by Governor Tina Kotek. Ellen will present from her forthcoming book, We Could Die Doing This: Dispatches on Ageing from Oregon’s Outback, along with poems from her books of poetry Via Lactea: A Woman of a Certain Age Walks the Camino, Hotel Domilocos, and Between Desert Seasons.
About We Could Die Doing This:
A card-carrying member of the over-the-hill gang, award winning high desert author and Oregon’s eleventh Poet Laureate, Ellen Waterston, engages the reader in a rollicking conversation about ageing in We Could Die Doing This: Dispatches on Ageing from Oregon’s Outback, her latest and fourth nonfiction title. These lyrical short takes range from sacred to profane, sassy to compassionate, as Waterston addresses everything from green burial to sex to after seventy. As poet and memoirist Judith Barrington says of this collection of short essays, “Most of us, whether of that ‘certain age’ or simply approaching it, need to listen to [Waterston’s] thoughts on the joyful possibilities of ‘the third act’; [Waterston} believes that ‘this phase of life is as rich, complex and dynamic as any before it.’ Caryl and Jay Casbon, authors of Side by Side, had this to say about We Could Die Doing This, “You can bank on wickedly fresh language, original perspectives, and a rich mix of politics, nature, and dangerous opinions. After reading an essay, you will think about it. You will want to read it again.”
Author Bio:
Award winning author and poet Ellen Waterston has published four poetry and four literary nonfiction titles, including, most recently, We Could Die Doing This (2024) and Walking the High Desert (2020). She is founder of the Writing Ranch which, since 2000, has conducted workshops for established and emerging writers, and of the annual Waterston Desert Writing Prize, established in 2015 and adopted in 2019 as a program of the High Desert Museum. In 2024 she was appointed to a two year term as the eleventh Oregon Poet Laureate and awarded both the Literary Arts of Portland’s Stewart H. Holbrook and Soapstone Bread and Roses awards recognizing her work as an author and advocate for the literary arts. Based in central Oregon, she serves on the guest faculty of OSU-Cascades’ MFA in Creative Writing. Ellen is completing a fifth collection of poetry.
“Inspired by the example of the Poets Laureate who have preceded me, I am eager to share my love of poetry, place and the power of the written word with Oregon’s diverse audiences,” said Waterston, “and to kindling creativity and community as I go.”