Northwest Voices event to feature author Joe Wilkins

Lower Columbia College has announced that Joe Wilkins will be featured at the April 26 Northwest Voices event in Longview. First, Wilkins will conduct a writing workshop from 3:30-5:00 p.m. in Main 145 on the Lower Columbia College campus. From 7:00-8:00 p.m., he will hold a reading at the Longview Public Library. Both events are free and open to the public.

Joe Wilkins is the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers: Growing up on the Big Dry, winner of a 2014 GLCA New Writers Award—an honor that has previously recognized early work by the likes of Richard Ford, Louise Erdrich, and Alice Munro—and two previous books of poetry, Notes from the Journey Westward and Killing the Murnion Dogs. His third full-length collection, When We Were Birds, was selected by Billy Collins for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize Series and was recently named a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. A Pushcart Prize winner and National Magazine Award finalist, Wilkins has published essays, poems, and stories in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, Ecotone, The Sun, Orion, and Slate. Of Wilkins’s work, the Indiana Review writes, “The most striking component of it is its awareness of ‘the whole world.’ What is ordinary becomes transcendent. In places derelict and seemingly unexceptional, Wilkins compels us to recognize what is worth salvage, worth praise.” Wilkins lives with his wife, son, and daughter in western Oregon, where he directs the creative writing program at Linfield College.

For more information about the event contact Hiedi Bauer, Chair, Department of Language and Literature at 360-442-2630 or hbauer@lowercolumbia.edu.