News from Empty Bowl Press
July 14, 2025
Dear Empty Bowl friends,
We hope you’re enjoying long summer days wherever this finds you. We have exciting news to share about upcoming book releases, plus updates on what some of our authors are up to, so please read on:
We look forward to releasing Seattle poet Ed Harkness’s Creek Water, a collection of new and selected poems, with a launch on Saturday, September 13, at 6:30 p.m., at the Haller Lake Community Club in Shoreline (12579 Densmore Avenue N.) If you’re in the Seattle area, we hope you’ll join us to celebrate.
In his foreword to Creek Water, poet David Long writes: “Reading these poems, you’re reminded how crucial it is to be specific, to understand that, truly, something happens only once—look away and you miss it. You never find Ed hiding out in generalities. He makes us hear the names; he makes us see what he sees. What a gift.”
Together with Ann Spiers, author of Wild Cucumber, Ed will also read on Tuesday, October 14, at 6:00 p.m., at Oberto Commons in the Sinegal Center for Science and Innovation at Seattle University.
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Later this year, we’ll be launching My Heart Is Good: Treaty Rights and the Rise of a S’Klallam Fishing Community. We’re enjoying our work with Port Gamble S’Klallam elder Ron Charles and Alaska-based anthropologist Josh Wisniewski on an oral history of Ron’s life as a lens through which to view the history and effect of the landmark 1974 Boldt Decision on tribal fisheries in Washington State. Stay tuned for more about this book in the coming months.
As we mentioned in our last newsletter, we’ll be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Empty Bowl next year with the publication of Working the Land, Working the Sea, a new edition of our now-classic collection, Working the Woods, Working the Sea. We’re thrilled to have Jessica Gigot, Skagit Valley farmer and writer, and Tele Aadsen, Alaska troller, fisherpoet, and the author of What Water Holds, as coeditors. You can read an interview with the editors in a recent issue of the Salish Currents.
Submissions are open on Submittable—see the details of the call here. And please note: we’ve extended the submission deadline to October 15 to give those working the land and sea this summer more time.
Other upcoming events for Empty Bowl authors
Jerry Martien gave a lively reading from Waveshock: Ed Ricketts, the Voyage of the Grampus & Our Biopoetic Future on June 10 in Corvallis. Jerry will be joining Holly and book designer Carolyn Servid in Sitka, Alaska, for a reading on July 26 at 7 p.m. at the Yaw Chapel at the historic Sheldon Jackson College.
Kurt Hoelting will be in conversation with Stephen Posner about Kurt’s memoir Apprentice to the Wild on the Garrison Institute’s Pathways to Planetary Health Forum on July 16. You can register for the free event here; donations are encouraged. Kurt will also be giving a talk at the Port Townsend Library at 5:00 p.m. on August 7 and a reading at Finnriver Farm & Cidery in Chimacum on September 25 at 6:30 p.m. Prior to the reading, Kurt will be offering a workshop with Holly, from 2–5 p.m. You can find more details here.
Ann Spiers will read from Wild Cucumber on August 14, at 6:00 p.m., at the Ballard Library in Seattle as part of the It’s About Time reading series. Ann has several other readings coming up later this year. For details on those readings and other Empty Bowl Press author events, check the Events page on our website.
Red Pine reads from If a Mountain Lion Could Sing
In other author news, last month we helped celebrate Red Pine’s new book, If a Mountain Lion Could Sing: The Lyric Poems of Xin Qiji, from Copper Canyon Press with a gathering in Port Townsend. Rena Priest’s essay collection Positively Uncivilized won the Raven Chronicles’ Keepers of the Fire Prize for Nonfiction and was recently featured in a lively conversation with award-winning Seattle Times journalist Lynda Mapes. Andrew Schelling’s poetry collection Forests, Temples, Glacial Rivers was reviewed in Raven Chronicles by Richard Meadows—you can read the review here. Andrew Schelling and Anna Linzer, author of Season Unleashed, have poems in the timely Winter in America (Again: Poets Respond to the Election. Check here for upcoming readings from this anthology.
Anna Odessa Linzer reading from Winter In America (Again at Finnriver on July 10.)
As we begin to plan for Empty Bowl’s fiftieth anniversary in the fall of 2026, let us know if you’d like to be involved. We’d welcome your help, support, and good cheer.
Holly and John