Poet, new author reading at Word Fest

At the next WordFest on January 12, Linda Eddleston will read from her memoir, My Three Friends, which tells the story of four young girls living in the Oregon suburbs of the 1950s. She describes their choices, successes, trials, tragedies and their enduring friendship framed by the decades they grow up in.

Eddleston is a retired elementary and special education teacher living in Longview. Her work has been published in The Children’s Ministry Magazine, That Holiday Feeling anthology and in The Daily News. She has written travel journals, poetry and family stories. My Three Friends is her first book.

Karen Bonaudi, a long-time board member of the Washington Poets Association, will read a selection of “new and used poems with a look at what happens off the page.”

Bonaudi has led poetry workshops and taught adult creative writing classes, and has been a member of a performance troupe. Her poetry has appeared in the Bellingham Review, South Dakota Review, Pontoon 2, The Far Field, Snow Monkey, and WPA’s Cascade Journal. Her chapbook Editing a Vapor Trail was published by Pudding House Press. A former Longview resident, she now lives in Renton where she edits http://www.sirensrock.com and publishes books by other writers.

Lilly Brock will read from a work of historical fiction that she is currently writing. The story concerns a family in the 1850s, migrating by paddle wheel steamship from New York to the rugged Pacific Northwest where men outnumbered women 20 to one. The story gives an intimate view of what such journeys and settling into a rugged territory were like.

Now retired, Brock and her husband moved from Olympia to live next to the Columbia River which, she notes, is “the perfect place to pursue her long awaited writing journey.” They have planted an orchard and an organic garden, and she wrote and published Food Gift Recipes from Nature’s Bounty.

There will be an open mic period following the presentations.

The monthly gathering of readers and writers meet the second Tuesday of each month, 6-8 p.m., at Cassava, 1333 Broadway in Longview. The events are free and open to the public. Cassava offers a dinner menu for those who wish to enjoy a meal with the readings, as well as local wines and brews.