PORT ANGELES — A night of reveling in “renewal and reawakening” is coming up Tuesday at an appropriately named place.
Renaissance, the cafe at 401 E. Front St. at Peabody Street, is the venue for the North Coast Writers’ first reading of the spring.
It’s an hour dedicated to those themes of rebirth, promised Mary-Alice Boulter, the group’s spokeswoman.
Admission to the event is free to the public, though attendees may want to purchase coffee, tea, baked treats, wine and cheese.
Those will be available at 7 p.m., and then the writers will read at 7:30 p.m.
Offering a mix of poetry and prose, new and published, are six from Port Angeles:
■ Sally Albiso is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. She has published her poems in Blood Orange Review, Cascade, Crab Creek Review and other journals.
Her chapbook, Newsworthy, published in 2009, won the Camber Press Poetry Chapbook Award, and in 2004, her poetry took first place in the Tidepools contest.
■ Mary-Alice Boulter, a writer with a background in theater performance and costuming, also has had poetry and prose in Tidepools, as well as in Viet Nam Magazine and in the anthologies The Simple Touch of Fate and The Mystery of Fate.
■ Jerry Kraft, a playwright, theater critic and poet, has authored two books of poetry, Rapids in 2004 and You Dropped Your Bible and I Saw Your Thong: Poems from the Best of Craigslist, in 2009.
He won first place in the adult poetry division of Tidepools last year and has taught memoir writing through the Olympic Peninsula YMCA.
■ Patrick Loafman is a poet and wildlife biologist who works seasonally in Olympic National Park, studying everything from owls to toads to trees, where he often gathers inspiration for his poetry and prose writing.
His profession also informs the gourd art and musical instruments he creates in a cob cabin on five-acre Dandelion Farm west of Joyce.
He won first place in the adult poetry division of Tidepools for 2011.
■ Helen Sears has taught writing workshops for Whidbey Island Writers Association and has worked as an English teacher, speech coach and columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal.
Her writings have appeared in the Peninsula Daily News, Sacramento Magazine and Dr. Bernie Siegel’s book Faith, Hope and Healing.
■ Diana Somerville, science writer for more than a dozen years at the helm of information programs for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., jokes that she “can stop any weather-related conversation dead in its tracks.”
She also is a former columnist for the Boulder Daily Camera and the Peninsula Daily News.
Her book Inside Out Down Under: Stories from a Spiritual Sabbatical, an account of her extended sojourn in Australia, won National Indie Excellence Awards for memoir and travel.
________
Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
