The Clark County Poets Directory
Compiled by
Clark County Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Morgan (2018-2020)
& Printed Matter Vancouver
Joann Boswell
Camas, WA
joannrenee@gmail.com
Joann Renee Boswell is a teacher, mother, photographer and poet currently living in Camas, WA with her spouse and three children. She attended George Fox University where she received a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies with an emphasis in Theatre, Music, and Writing/Literature and, later, a MAT. Before having children, Joann taught and directed high school theatre in Washington state. Joann loves rainy days filled with coffee, books, handholding, moody music and sci-fi shows. She’s been published in such places as Untold Volumes, Voices of Eve, Western Friend, and Washington Poetic Routes and has been featured on the Quaker Poets Read podcast. She has a poem forthcoming in Mothers Always Write. Her first book of poetry is expected through Fernwood Press in May 2020. Updates for publications are posted at https://www.facebook.com/jrbpoetry/and https://www.instagram.com/jrbpoetry/
Danielle Champíet
Vancouver, WA
danielle_98661@yahoo.com
Born in Portland, OR, Danielle Champíet began writing poetry in 2001 and has three chapbooks published through Barnes and Noble Press in 2018: The Fires of Passion, Gifts From The Muse and The Gilli of Wauk. The latter is a children’s story that was co-authored by her late great-grandfather, George I. Champie. She is the descendant of Tabitha Moffatt-Brown, the Mother of Oregon and co-founder of Pacific University in Forest Grove, OR. Moffat-Brown has been a source of great inspiration to her. Danielle is co-host of the Last Tuesdays poetry group at Barnes and Noble Vancouver. Interviews with authors such as A. Molotkov and Isaiah Washington and book reviews can be found on her blog. For more information and social media links, please visit http://www.a-muse9.com.
Sue Clancy
Vancouver, WA
artistclancy@hotmail.com
Sue Clancy is a professional fine artist and illustrator with a poetry writing habit. Poetry writing accidentally started one night when she wanted something funny to illustrate. While some might stage an intervention when a word-play habit gets out of hand, Sue’s illustrated poetry has actually been encouraged. Her work has been published in literary magazines like Small Po[r]tions Journal, The Tishman Review, Raven Chronicles, Vestal Review and many other publications willing to let Clancy both write and illustrate. This means that Clancy’s poem habit has become a daily occurrence: when her workday at the painting easel is done, she sits to handwrite a few lines in a notebook. If the lines make her laugh, she does an illustration too. Some examples can be found on the “illustrated shorts” page on her website. Sue is inspired by ordinary life in Vancouver, WA where she lives happily with her wife, a tabby cat and a long-haired dachshund. Sue, a member of SCBWI, regularly uses her public library card. When not painting, indulging her writing habit or reading a book Sue can often be found in the kitchen cooking a curry, or bean-and-grain bowls or a homemade pasta sauce.
Christopher Luna
Vancouver, WA
christopherjluna@gmail.com
Christopher Luna is a poet, editor, teacher, and artist from New York. Luna served as the first Poet Laureate of Clark County from 2013-2017. He has an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and is the co-founder, with Toni Lumbrazo Luna, of Printed Matter Vancouver, an editing service and small press for Northwest writers. Luna has hosted the popular Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic in Vancouver, WA since 2004. His books include Brutal Glints of Moonlight, and The Flame Is Ours: The Letters of Stan Brakhage and Michael McClure 1961-1978. Flowstone Press published his first full-length collection of poetry, entitled Message from the Vessel in a Dream, in November 2018. In 2019 Uttered Chaos Press in Eugene, OR will release a revised and expanded edition of Christopher’s Ghost Town, USA, a decade-long investigative poem about Vancouver, WA.
Toni Lumbrazo Luna
Vancouver, WA
printedmattervancouver@gmail.com
Toni is a poet, editor, publisher, and visual artist living in Vancouver, WA. Her career has included social work, college teaching and administration, grant writing, life and career coaching, and nonprofit consulting. She is the author of two books of poetry: Jesus Is A Gas and Wind Wing. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals including VoiceCatcher (editions 3 and 4), The Poeming Pigeon, OutwardLink, and Perceptions. She was the Co-Editor for the final print edition of VoiceCatcher. Toni’s writing includes short fiction, essay, news articles, book reviews, and technical documents. Toni facilitates writing and personal development workshops. Toni is the co-founder of Printed Matter Vancouver, an editing service and small press imprint that publishes the poetry of Pacific Northwest writers. She co-hosts the Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic with Christopher Luna, who founded the series in 2004. Toni has been writing poetry since she was ten years old and she is still in love with it!
Don Messerschmidt
Vancouver, WA
dmesserschmidt@gmail.com
Don Messerschmidt is a Cultural Anthropologist (PhD, Oregon 1974) and writer of adventure travel, biography, memoir, and poetry. Much of his poetry is influenced by extensive travels in the Himalayas, and he is impressed by the Critical Realism of the famed Nepalese poet, Bhupi Sherchan. After growing up in Alaska, he joined the Peace Corps in 1963 and was posted to Nepal where he subsequently lived and worked many years as a rural development adviser and university lecturer, writing prose and poetry the side. He has also taught anthropology in several universities, including Washington State University (Pullman) where he earned tenure in the 1980s. He is now “retired” (do writers retire?) to Vancouver with his wife Kareen (a Vancouver local). Don visits Asia annually, leading tours to Nepal and Bhutan and conducting research for his books, magazine articles, essays, and poems. He has published several poems, essays about poets and their writings, two biographies, and several ethnographic studies in both the popular and academic press, internationally. A few of his essays have appeared in American literary journals, and he has received literary awards for two of his books. Don is an associate at EditWithUs.com, a contributing reviewer for PortlandBookReview.com, and a frequent contributor to ECS Nepal magazine (Kathmandu) in print and online at ecs.com.np. He blogs at ‘Himalayan Snows’ (dmesserschmidt.blogspot.com).
Gwendolyn Morgan
Clark County Poet Laureate
Vancouver, WA
gwyndlynm@gmail.com
Gwendolyn Morgan learned the names of birds and wildflowers and inherited paintbrushes and boxes from her grandmothers. With an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College, and an M.Div. from San Francisco Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union, she has been a recipient of artist and writing residencies at Artsmith, Caldera, Into the Depths of Winter, and Soapstone. Crow Feathers, Red Ochre, Green Tea, her first book of poems, was a winner of the Wild Earth Poetry Prize, Hiraeth Press. Snowy Owls, Egrets and Unexpected Graces, initially published by Hiraeth Press and now Homebound Publications, is a Nautilus Gold Winner in Poetry and a Foreward Indies Book of the Year Finalist in the Nature Category. Her third book of poems is forthcoming from Homebound Publications in the Summer of 2019. Her poems have appeared in: Calyx, Kalliope, Mudfish, Tributaries: A Journal of Nature Writing, Wayfarer as well as The Cancer Poetry Project 2, and other anthologies, blogs and literary journals. She is currently serving as the Clark County Poet Laureate. Gwendolyn and Judy A. Rose, her spouse, share their home and creekside walks with Naomi, a rescued Chesapeake Retriever and Cardigan Corgi mix.
Jennifer Pratt-Walter
Vancouver, WA
Lyrica@comcast.net
Jennifer is a Clark County native of 6 decades. She grew up in Camas and got as far as Hazel Dell. Jennifer has great reverence for Nature and is a known tree-hugger and under-the-full-moon dancer. Music, poetry, photography, gardening, eclectic spirituality and horse rescue give her life meaning. She is in three bands: Celtic Muse, Celtinalia and Soittorasia. Jennifer’s work has been published in VoiceCatcher, The Poeming Pigeon, Midwest Poetry Review, Poetry Moves, and other outlets. Jennifer is married to Craig and has three grown children. She lives on a small farm in Vancouver.
Jeff J. Sargent (Nom de plume: j. j. sargent)
Vancouver, WA
jjsargent@gmail.com
Born/raised in Akron/Cleveland, Ohio with a Bachelor’s degree in writing from Kent State University, I moved to Portland, Oregon in 1997. I have been in-and-out of the writing scene in the Portland area since ’97 and mark meeting and reading with Walt Curtis as part of the Spare Room reading series in 2006 as my literary high water mark in Portland. I am a poet and non-fiction writer as well as a book scout and book collector of chapbooks and small press books from 1960-1980, with an emphasis on books authored by poets of the Western United States writing about the Western United States. For more information please visit https://poetrychapbooks1960-1980.blogspot.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/PDXBookScout/
Cristina Umpfenbach-Smyth
Ridgefield, WA
OMAVIV@msn.com
Once a staff reporter for a German travel magazine, researcher and reviewer for the German Tourist Bureau, Cristina Umpfenbach-Smyth now writes poetry and short stories. She has been published in the Desperanto Publishers Secrets series, in In The Company of Women anthology published by Edgar & Lenore’s Publishing House, and in “… and it happened under cover,” a Nightwing Publication. Cristina’s debut collection of poems, harmonies & discords, was published in 2015 by Nightwing Publication. She is featured in various e-zines including Red Fez, Guttereloquence, Fearless, and Hello Poetry. Cristina was raised and educated in Germany before living in France for a number of years. She then moved to Manhattan, where she resided in Greenwich Village. She visited Portland, OR a few years ago and decided to settle in the Pacific Northwest. She loves the mountains and the rugged shores here, and does not mind the rain, a fair trade off for the beautiful summers. Cristina translates fiction, and a variety of different genres, from German to English and vice versa.
Louise Wynn
Camas, WA
louisewynn@mindspring.com
Louise Wynn has never had warm or even mildly kind feelings toward any so-called Muse. In fact, her play, “A Clown, a Cowboy, and the Muse,” part of the 2019 Fertile Ground festival in Portland, Oregon, explores the disconnect between the writer (Louise) and the muse of idyllic poetry (Thaleia). Louise also expects her tragicomic musical, “Cloning the Colonel,” to be produced in 2019. Meanwhile, she keeps writing stories, poems, and story-poems. Her short stories, photos, and poems have appeared in publications including Salmon Creek Journal (2009 and 2011) and Ghost Town Poetry, Vol. 2, (2013). She has lived and studied literature and the sciences all over the U.S. as well as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, and now lives, happily, in Camas, Washington.
If you would like to be included in this directory, follow these submission guidelines:
From Clark County Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Morgan:
Please Join the Clark County Poets Directory
Clark County Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Morgan and Printed Matter Vancouver are collaborating on a directory of poets who reside in Clark County.
Requirements: Over 18 years of age with at least one publication of poetry (in a literary magazine, anthology, or chapbook) since 2010. Must currently reside in Clark County, WA and have a Clark County mailing address.
Please submit:
name, email (name/city to be listed)
brief biographical statement (150-200 word count or less)
a photo (head shot preferred)
link(s) to your website/blog
Please submit information directly to:
Christopher Luna and Toni Lumbrazo Luna
Printed Matter Vancouver
printedmattervancouver@gmail.com
and/or
Gwendolyn Morgan
Clark County Poet Laureate
zambra@easystreet.net
Subject Line: Clark County Poets Directory
PRINTED MATTER VANCOUVER 