High Desert Author Reading Tonight

Did you happen to catch the great article in yesterday's Oregonian about Ellen Waterston and her new collection of essays, Where the Crooked River Rises? We're so excited that Ellen will be reading at the store tonight at 7 from her new book, published by Oregon State University Press. The essays in this new book reveal the blessings and challenges of decades spent as a rancher and town resident in a place that has been, and remains, her touchstone and crucible. The high desert is Ellen's teacher, and she describes its lessons with grace and care, inviting readers to look at their own lives through a lens of wide-open spaces, sagebrush and juniper, pumice and rabbit brush.

Ellen began her writing career while at Harvard University as a stringer for Time magazine, a New Englander who married and moved to the ranching West. She has written two collections of poetry, Between Desert Seasons and I Am Madagascar, both of which won recognition from WILLA, Women in Letters & Literary Arts.

In 2003, her memoir Then There Was No Mountain was selected by The Oregonian as one of the top ten books of the year and was a finalist for Foreward Book-of-the-Year.

In June 2010, her poem "Designed to Fly" was read by Garrison Keillor on "Writer's Almanac." She is the 2008 winner of the Oregon Quarterly Essay Competition, the 2007 recipient of the national Obsidian Prize in Poetry awarded by the High Desert Journal and in 2007 was named an Honorary Distinguished Professor of Humane Letters by Oregon State University/Cascades Campus for her accomplishments in the literary arts.


Ellen is the founder and president of the Writing Ranch, offering workshops and retreats for emerging writers and the founder and director of The Nature of Words, an annual literary event that brings nationally recognized authors and poets for four days of readings, panel discussions, and workshops to Bend the first weekend of November.

She received her Bachelor's degree from Harvard University and her Master's degree from the University of Madagascar. She ranched in Oregon's high desert before moving to Bend, where she currently lives.

We hope you can join us tonight, in our cozy, warm little store.