Community Programs

Streaming link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TQm2hhHKwU

This is a partnered event with a Book for all Seasons and the Wenatchee River Institute.

Doors open at 6:30pm for a community social with beer and wine available for purchase. The presentation will start at 7:00pm.

Why do we need time on the trail? What stories do we cherish about walking in the wild and why? Join four women writers and hikers from around the Pacific Northwest who contributed to the anthology Stories from the Trail: Field Notes from Moving Through the Wild as they share experiences out on the trail, hiking as a lifestyle choice, and reflections that bring to light how time moving through the natural world has added to our lives—and thus their contributions to the world—for good. As mothers, as trail workers, as long-time residents of the North Cascades, these writers celebrate and interrogate hiking as so much more than sport or recreation.

About the Presenters:

After fifteen years on backcountry trail crews in the North Cascades, Ana Maria Spagna (she/her) turned to writing. Her nine award-winning books explore wilderness, work, community, and history. She is the author most recently of Pushed: Miners, a Merchant and (Maybe) a Massacre, an investigation of violence against Chinese miners in the Inland Northwest. Her other books include Reclaimers, stories of elder women reclaiming sacred land and water, Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus, winner of the River Teeth literary nonfiction prize, and three essay collections, Uplake, Potluck , and Now Go Home. She has also written a novel for young people, The Luckiest Scar on Earth, about a 14 year-old snowboarder and her activist father and a chapbook of poetry, Mile Marker Six. Ana Maria’s work has been recognized by the Society for Environmental Journalists, the Nautilus Book Awards, and as a four-time finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She lives with her wife, Laurie, in Stehekin, and teaches at Wenatchee Valley College.

Abby Braithwaite (she/her) lives in Ridgefield, Washington, where she writes from a converted shipping container in the woods overlooking the family farm, with the soundscape of sandhill cranes, coyotes and freight trains keeping her company as she writes. Her essays on parenting, escape, and disability can be found around the web, as well as in the print anthologies Places Like Home (2021, from the Lit Kit Collective) and Stories from the Trail (2024, from Homebound Publications). She has two self-published chapbooks of poems and tiny essays, Contained (2019) and A Portrait of the Artist as a Crone Tree (2022). She is a volunteer facilitator with Write Around Portland, and the initiator/director of the Plas Newydd Farm Arts Initiative. She shares her home with her husband, two teenagers two cats, and a dog.

Iris Graville (she/her) has lived in Washington State for four decades-plus, after childhood and early adulthood in Chicago and small towns in Southern Illinois and Indiana. A long-time Quaker, an environmental and anti-racism activist, and a retired nurse, Iris believes everyone has a story to tell. She’s the author of two collections of profiles—Hands at Work and BOUNTY: Lopez Island Farmers, Food, and Community. Her memoir, Hiking Naked, and an essay collection, Writer in a Life Vest, each received Nautilus Awards. In 2018, Iris was named the first “Writer-in-Residence” for the Washington State Ferries. Sometimes you’ll still find her writing on the Interisland ferry as the vessel courses among the San Juan Islands.

Claire Thompson (she/her) has been a seasonal trail worker for over a decade, first in Colorado and, since 2016, on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, out of Leavenworth and Entiat. She teaches English at Wenatchee Valley College, has a masters in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana, and is currently pursuing an MFA in Nature Writing from Western Colorado University. She has published work in High Country News, Terrain, Parabola, Out There Outdoors, and elsewhere. Claire likes to write about disturbance ecology, human-land relationships, and the impacts of cultural and climatic change on outdoor labor.