SEQUIM — Patrick Loafman, whose next poetry collection is titled A Freckle Shaped Like California, will share poems, prose and music during the Writers on the Spit reading Friday.
The public is invited to this, the next episode in the Fourth Friday Readings series, at Rainshadow Coffee Roasting Co., 157 W. Cedar St. Admission is free, and listeners are urged to come around 6 p.m. for the reading to start at 6:30 p.m.
Loafman, also a wildlife biologist and gardener who lives in Joyce, recently published a novel, Somewhere Upriver, on Event Horizon Press.
It’s the story of Douglas Mortimer, a graduate student pursuing a lifelong dream of becoming a great scientist.
When he hires an eccentric old herpetologist as a research assistant, things get strange.
The book “is full of salamanders and frogs and the crazy herpetologists that chase after them,” Loafman has said.
And all of this is set nearby: in the Queets rain forest, Forks, Port Townsend and the University of Washington.
Loafman’s own specialty, as a field biologist working in Olympic National Park, is herpetology, aka the study of amphibians and reptiles.
Copies of Somewhere Upriver are available at Oven Spoonful and at local bookstores or by emailing ploafman@tfon.com.
Loafman edits an online poetry journal, the Dandelion Farm Review, and has had his work published in two chapbooks and more than 20 journals.
On Friday night, he’ll read as well as play his kora, a 21-string harp-lute that looks like a gourd banjo crossed with a suspension bridge.
After Loafman’s set, as always with Fourth Friday Readings, comes an open-mic period. Poets and other writers are invited to put their names in to be drawn for five-minute readings.
For guidelines, email Fourth Friday Readings coordinator Ruth Marcus at Rmarcus@olypen.com.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
