April 15, 2026 | Abbi Duhart | News Editor
Thursday, April 30 at 4 p.m., Ellen Waterston, an Oregon poet and environmental activist, will be discussing her work in the Werner University Center Willamette Room. This event will be hosted by Write Place and Waterston will be introduced by Western President Jesse Peters.
Waterston has produced many works and was selected as the Oregon poet laureate for the second year in a row.
She is the author of several books — many surrounding the theme of Oregon’s high deserts — including “Walking the High Desert: Encounters with Rural America along the Oregon Desert Trail” and “We Could Die Doing This: Dispatches on Ageing from Oregon’s Outback.” Additionally, she has an essay collection entitled “Where the Crooked River Rises,” a memoir, “Then There Was No Mountain” and five poetry collections, the most recent being “As Far as I Can Anthem.”
Since 2000, Waterston founded and manages the Writing Ranch based in Bend, Oregon, where she conducts several writing workshops for both established and emerging writers every year and hosts the Waterston Desert Writing Prize. Her workshops often focus on the unique landscapes and cultures of central and southern Oregon.
Writers who have attended Waterston’s workshops have spoken out about her gift for leadership, her humor and her ability to inspire writers beyond their limits to generate original, unique material.
“Nothing compares to gathering and bonding with a group of writers, the heady experience of feeling you are with your people, your tribe, and together are supporting one another’s writing process and goals,” Waterston said.
Waterston has received numerous awards for her work, such as a WILLA Literary Award in both nonfiction and poetry and the Obsidian Prize in poetry. She has also had many of her poems and essays appear in various journals and anthologies.
Demonstrating how the high desert is often her muse, an excerpt from “Walking the High Desert: Encounters with Rural America along the Oregon Desert Trail” reads, “The enduring fascination of the high desert, and the reason its survival as a wild place is within reach, may well lie in the fact that this vast open can’t quite be named.”
Writing Down the Baja is another annual writing workshop that Waterston hosts, taking place in Todos Santos, Mexico, at the only desert in the world surrounded by two seas. This workshop includes a week of writing that explores the “intersection of poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction” and encourages “experimentation with language, format and genre.”
Write Place also hosts the Loie Bunse Prize for Nature Writing at Western, for which the winners for this year were just announced. Malia Vican won first place with her personal narrative “Winter at Home” and Sadie Latimer won second place with her poem “McDowell Creek Falls County Park.”
Write Place is dedicated to supporting the relationship between humans and the natural world through literary and artistic works, and believes that the natural world is under threat with humans having an obligation to help. The first step to this recovery is an awareness and appreciation for something that exists. Abby Phillips Metzger from the board of directors explained, “Pay attention to how you feel. You begin to hear the land and learn its scars. Pay attention, and things beneath you become visible.”
Write Place concurs with N. Scott Normaday, who said, “If you believe in the power of words, you can bring about physical changes in the universe.”
Contact the author at howlnews@wou.edu
