Join in contemplating and celebrating all things words -- their origins, power, color, meaning, and musicality, their evolution and life span; their exotic configuration into languages. What do the modifications, abuses, and losses signal about our capacity for relationship to place and one another?

Award-winning poet and author Ellen Waterston has dedicated herself to writing and advocating for the literary arts in the high desert region of Oregon, all the while continuing to write poetry and nonfiction works that have evolved into essential reading about Oregon and the West. She has published four poetry and five literary nonfiction titles, including We Could Die Doing This (2024) and Walking the High Desert (2020). She is the founder of the Writing Ranch and of the annual Waterston Desert Writing Prize. In 2024 Waterston received Soapstone's Bread and Roses Award and Literary Arts Stewart H. Holbrook Award, and was named the eleventh Poet Laureate of Oregon. She is currently completing a fifth collection of poetry.