Ross's Postcard Companion

Who they are

The only confident match is a public LinkedIn profile for Alyssa "Bunny" San Mateo, based in Seattle (relocated from San Diego, CA), self-described as an "advocate of well-being" with self-listed creative skills in writing, editing, ghostwriting, illustration, logo design, and graphic design. The name and city match the PPF list, but no published poems, chapbooks, readings, or other public literary presence could be confidently tied to her. Treat her as a creatively-inclined participant without a public poetry footprint.

Where the postcard lands

The 300 block of NE 40th St sits right on the seam between Seattle's University District and Wallingford, a few blocks north of Lake Union and the ship-canal water. It's a neighborhood of old wood-frame houses and student apartments under big street trees, with the University Bridge's steel drawspan nearby and the Burke-Gilman Trail running along the water — cyclists, crew shells on Portage Bay, seaplanes taking off from Lake Union. Gas Works Park, with its rusted refinery towers on a grassy headland, is a short walk west; the University of Washington's cherry trees and Husky Stadium are just east. The climate is classic Seattle: long gray drizzle October–May, then luminous dry summers when Mount Rainier floats on the southern horizon.

Poem seeds

the University Bridge opening for a sailboat mast; crew shells and seaplanes sharing Portage Bay at dawn; Gas Works Park's rusted towers against a July-blue Lake Union; a "bunny" name in a city famous for its feral rabbits at Woodland Park.

Who they are

Rachel Houghton is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College in Gadsden, Alabama, and a faculty editor of the college's Cardinal Arts Journal. She holds an A.S. from Gadsden State and a B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (M.A. 2022); she began writing seriously during her undergraduate years. Her poetry was selected for The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume X: Alabama (Texas Review Press), and she has said her poem "Burn" was the first where she realized she could mix fiction with poetry.

Published work

• Poems in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume X: Alabama
• Poetry in Aura (UAB literary journal) and the Vulcan Historical Review
• Fiction in The Great Lakes Review
• Faculty editor, Cardinal Arts Journal (Gadsden State)

Where the postcard lands

Gadsden (pop. ~33,000) is an old river-and-steel town in the Appalachian foothills of northeast Alabama, strung along the wide, slow Coosa River at the foot of Lookout Mountain's southern tip. The 35904 zip covers East Gadsden, across the Coosa from downtown, toward Hokes Bluff. The town's signature landmark is Noccalula Falls, a 90-foot waterfall pouring off Lookout Mountain, named for a Cherokee legend; downtown keeps a broad, brick, early-1900s main street (Broad Street) from its Goodyear-and-steel heyday. Summers are long, humid, and loud with cicadas; the surrounding ridges are green hardwood, kudzu-draped in July.

Poem seeds

the Coosa River sliding brown and patient under the Broad Street bridge; Noccalula Falls' mist off Lookout Mountain; a community-college classroom where an anthology poet teaches freshman English.

Who they are

No confident public literary presence found. Searches for "Laura Younger" with poet/poetry/postcard/writer/Virginia terms returned no results that could be confidently tied to a Laura Younger of Alexandria, VA. She may write privately or under another name; say nothing biographical beyond her participation in the Fest.

Where the postcard lands

1225 Martha Custis Dr is in Parkfairfax, a leafy 1940s garden-apartment community in Alexandria's West End, built to house wartime Washington and now a National Register historic district — low red-brick colonial buildings scattered among rolling lawns, azaleas, and mature oaks and dogwoods. Street names (Martha Custis Drive itself) echo the Washington-family history that saturates Alexandria. Both Eisenhower and Nixon lived in Parkfairfax before their presidencies. It sits between Shirlington's restaurant row and the ridge above Four Mile Run creek, ten minutes from the Potomac waterfront of Old Town Alexandria with its cobblestones, colonial rowhouses, and gulls. Washington's mid-Atlantic seasons run the full range: cherry-blossom springs, thick humid summers, crisp copper Octobers.

Poem seeds

dogwoods and brick garden courts named for Martha Custis; Four Mile Run running high after a summer thunderstorm; Old Town's cobblestones and Potomac gulls a short drive east.

Who they are

Caren Stuart is a widely awarded North Carolina poet, artist, and craftsperson (sole proprietor of "convoluted notions," her design/craft business), long active in the North Carolina Poetry Society — including helping run its contests. Her bios place her "in wild Chatham County," directly adjacent to her Sanford mailing address. Her poems have appeared in the Kakalak and Heron Clan anthologies, journals including Shot Glass Journal, Redheaded Stepchild, and Main Street Rag, and the NC Poetry Society's Pinesong award collections; she also writes flash fiction.

Published work

• Poems in Kakalak 2020, Heron Clan VIII, Shot Glass Journal, Redheaded Stepchild, Main Street Rag, Pinesong (NCPS award anthologies)
• Awards: NCPS Poet Laureate Award finalist (2004, 2007, 2009); NCPS Poetry of Courage Award 1st place (2001, 2008); NCPS Lyman Haiku Award 1st place (2006); Katherine Kennedy McIntyre Light Verse Award 1st place (2024); Flyleaf Books 2nd Thursday Poetry Contest runner-up (2017); Lee County Centennial Art & Literature Contest honorable mention (2007)
• Fiction in moonShine review (2020) and the Flash Fiction for Flash Memory anthology

Where the postcard lands

Sanford (pop. ~30,000) sits in Lee County in North Carolina's Sandhills, right where the rolling clay Piedmont gives way to sandy longleaf-pine country. It calls itself the "Brick Capital of the USA" — the local clay once fired a huge share of America's bricks — and the Deep River winds along the county's edge on its way to join the Cape Fear. Caren's own bios point north into "wild Chatham County": pine and hardwood backroads, small farms, pottery country (Jugtown and the Seagrove potters are nearby). Summers are hot and resin-scented under the longleaf pines; the region is famous for wildflowers, whip-poor-wills, and red clay that stains everything it touches.

Poem seeds

red Carolina clay fired into brick; longleaf pine straw and whip-poor-wills at dusk; a craftsperson's hands moving between poem and handmade object ("convoluted notions").

Who they are

Ruth Hill is a prolific, much-awarded Canadian poet. Her published bios say she was born and raised in upstate New York, traveled North America extensively, and spent five years living entirely off the grid sailing the west coast of British Columbia — working along the way as a lighthouse (light station) keeper, a logging appraiser, and a certified design engineer. Over 330 of her works have won awards or been published in the US, UK, Canada, Israel, and Australia. This is almost certainly the same Ruth Hill on the PPF list (a BC poet with a General Delivery address in a small island harbour village fits her off-grid coastal life exactly), though no public source was found stating "Salt Spring Island" outright — the poet should not assert island-specific biography as fact.

Published work

• 330+ poems awarded or published internationally
• "Words Become Me" — 1st prize, Heart Poetry Journal / Nostalgia Press (2013); honorable mention, New Millennium Writings (2015)
• "Cast in Bronze" — Rose & Thorn Journal (2012), PoetryMagazine.com (2015)
• "Harbor of Rainbows" — City Works Journal, San Diego (2017)
• Featured poet, Poetry Kit "Caught in the Net" #176 (Sept 2018)

Where the postcard lands

Salt Spring Island is the largest and most populous of BC's southern Gulf Islands, floating in the Salish Sea between Vancouver Island and the mainland — reachable only by ferry or floatplane. Ganges, where General Delivery mail lands, is its harbour village: a working dock of sailboats and fish boats, a famous Saturday market of farmers and artisans, and a long-standing reputation as an artists' and back-to-the-landers' colony. The island is all arbutus trees peeling red bark over rocky shoreline, sheep pastures, lavender and vineyard smallholdings, and the summit of Mount Maxwell looking down over Fulford Harbour. It lies in the Olympic rainshadow, so summers are dry, golden, and mild; winters are green and wet. Orcas and seals pass through the channels, and the whole rhythm of life runs on ferry schedules and tides.

Poem seeds

a General Delivery address — mail waiting at a harbour post office; arbutus bark peeling red over saltwater; the lighthouse keeper's discipline of tending a light through coastal dark; Ganges' Saturday market stalls under summer sun.

Who they are

No confident public literary presence found. Searches for "Cyndi Wilson" as a poet/writer in Bellingham, in the Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest records, in Poetry Postcard Fest anthologies (56 Days of August), and in Northwest poetry directories turned up no result that can be confidently tied to this person. Bellingham/Whatcom County has a very active poetry scene (Boynton contest, Whatcom Poetry Series, Bellingham Review), so she may well participate locally without an indexed online presence. Several unrelated people share similar names (a B-52s musician, a historical-nonfiction author); none match.

Where the postcard lands

Bellingham (pop. ~95,000) sits on Bellingham Bay at the northern reach of the Salish Sea, ninety minutes north of Seattle and a short drive from the Canadian border — a former lumber-and-cannery town turned college town (Western Washington University), gateway to the San Juan Islands and the North Cascades. The 98229 zip is the city's southeast side, wrapped around Lake Whatcom and Whatcom Falls Park, where Whatcom Creek drops through a mossy sandstone gorge under a WPA-era stone bridge on its way to the bay. From the hills here you can see Mount Baker's glaciered cone to the east and, on clear evenings, the bay silvering to the west. It rains softly much of the year; Douglas fir, cedar, madrona with its peeling cinnamon bark, kayaks and herons on the lake.

Poem seeds

Whatcom Falls pouring through its sandstone gorge after rain; madrona bark peeling like old paint above Lake Whatcom; Mount Baker floating white over the bay at dusk.

Who they are

No confident public literary presence found. Searches for "Deborah Stone" as a poet/writer/artist in Shelton, Mason County, Olympia, and the wider Puget Sound, and in Poetry Postcard Fest materials, returned no match that can be confidently tied to this person. The name is very common (a well-known policy scholar, a Psychology Today elder-care writer, a Minneapolis poet named Debra Stone — none of them her). She likely keeps a low or offline profile.

Where the postcard lands

Shelton (pop. ~11,000) is the county seat and only incorporated city of Mason County, tucked at the head of Hammersley Inlet and Oakland Bay — the skinny, winding southwestern-most finger of Puget Sound. It is a working timber town, self-styled "Christmastown, U.S.A." for the millions of Christmas trees the county ships each year, and one of the oyster capitals of the country: Taylor Shellfish and generations of oyster farmers work the tideflats nearby, and the town throws an annual OysterFest. Downtown keeps a red logging-railroad caboose and mill-town bones; beyond it the land is second-growth Douglas fir, clearcuts and regrowth, with the Olympic Mountains rising to the northwest and Hood Canal over the ridge. SE Sunrise Drive is on the rural fringe east of town — the country of gravel shoulders, salal, woodsmoke, and tideflats that smell of salt and cedar at low water.

Poem seeds

oyster shell middens gleaming on the Oakland Bay tideflats at low tide; rows of young Christmas trees on a logged-over hillside; the log-truck downshifting past salal and fir on a gravel-shouldered road.

Who they are

Yes — this is almost certainly Julia Morris Paul, Manchester, Connecticut's first Poet Laureate (named 2014, served to 2019). Vernon is the town directly adjacent to Manchester, and she is a regular at the "Poetry Rocks" reading-and-open-mic series held in Vernon; her published bios say she resides and practices as an elder law attorney in Manchester (bios may predate a move to Vernon). She leads the long-running Riverwood Poetry Series in Hartford (board president) and serves on the boards of the Connecticut Poetry Society and the Connecticut Coalition of Poets Laureate. Her poetry is known for "giving voice to the unspeakable" — family history, addiction (a chapbook confronts her son's opiate addiction), kitchens and detox centers, homes and homeless camps of the heart.

Published work

• Shook (Grayson Books) — full-length collection
• Table with Burning Candle (Cornerstone Press) — full-length collection
• Staring Down the Tracks (2020, chapbook) — on her son's struggle with opiate addiction
• Poems widely published in journals and anthologies (e.g., Mud Season Review, which also ran a feature interview with her, 2021)

Where the postcard lands

Vernon (pop. ~30,000) is a Tolland County suburb about twelve miles east of Hartford, where the Connecticut River valley starts folding into the hills of eastern Connecticut. Its heart is Rockville, a remarkably intact Victorian mill village: brick and brownstone woolen mills stacked along the Hockanum River, which drops fast enough through town that it once turned every loom in sight. The Hop River rail-trail runs through on the old railbed under maple and oak; Valley Falls Park has a swimming pond below a wooded ridge, and the Bolton Lakes lie just east. It is classic southern New England — stone walls in the woods, blazing October foliage, white steeples, humid summers and real snow.

Poem seeds

the Hockanum River still falling past silent brick mill windows in Rockville; a stone wall running off into second-growth New England woods; an elder-law attorney's desk and a poem about what can't be said aloud — detox centers, kitchens, the son on the tracks.

Who they are

Bhakti Watts is an end-of-life doula in south Seattle — trained by INELDA and by Living Well, Dying Well (Lewes, England), a Reiki practitioner (studying to be a Reiki Master; serves on the board of Reiki Home), and a longtime member of the Subud Greater Seattle spiritual community. She spent 16 years as an in-home caregiver before becoming a doula; her public profiles describe helping dying people make amends and let go of long-held grudges, and her dream of a Seattle doula cooperative. She is the partner of Paul E. Nelson — the Seattle poet who founded SPLAB / Cascadia Poetics Lab and co-founded the Poetry Postcard Fest itself — so she sits at the very center of PPF's home community. Her own website says she lives in south Seattle with Paul "the poet" and house rabbits Talula and Bugs.

Published work

• Public practice website and profiles as an end-of-life doula (INELDA doula profile; Experience Magazine profile)
• Board of Directors, Reiki Home
• (Poetry publications: none found under her own name, but she is embedded in the Cascadia Poetics Lab community)

Where the postcard lands

Seward Park is a southeast Seattle neighborhood curled along the western shore of Lake Washington, named for the 300-acre park that fills the Bailey Peninsula jutting into the lake — home to the "Magnificent Forest," one of the last stands of old-growth in the city, with 250-year-old Douglas firs, nesting bald eagles, and a loop path where herons stand in the shallows. Across the water Mount Rainier hangs enormous on clear days, doubling itself in the lake. The surrounding 98118 zip code is famously one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse in the United States — Rainier Valley's mix of East African, Vietnamese, Filipino, Black, and old-Seattle households — with Kubota Garden's Japanese-style ponds and maples a little to the south. Seward Park Ave S runs the shoreline: rowers at dawn, cottonwoods, the lake flat and pewter under winter cloud.

Poem seeds

old-growth firs on the Bailey Peninsula holding eagles' nests above Lake Washington; Rainier doubled in the flat morning lake; house rabbits and a household where dying is talked about gently, with a poet in the next room.

Who they are

Very likely the Lucinda O'Halloran who is principal of Spirit Garden Design / Spirit Garden Coaching in Seattle — a landscape designer turned garden coach, a WSNLA-certified professional horticulturist who spent her career designing sustainable gardens and now teaches people one-on-one "how to see what the garden is telling you." Her public bio says she grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, helping her dad plant, build ponds, and paint fences. The name is uncommon and the Seattle match is strong, but no source explicitly ties the garden coach to poetry or the Postcard Fest, so treat details as probable rather than certain. No poetry publications found under her name.

Published work

• Spirit Garden Design / Spirit Garden Coaching (Seattle garden coaching practice; blog author on the site)

Where the postcard lands

The 1523A 30th Ave S address is in the Mount Baker / North Rainier area of southeast Seattle (98144), on the ridge between the Rainier Valley and Lake Washington, just south of the I-90 corridor and Judkins Park. It is one of Seattle's oldest streetcar neighborhoods: Olmsted-designed boulevards curve downhill through big maples and craftsman houses to Colman Park and the lake, where Mount Baker Beach faces the Cascades and, on clear days, its namesake volcano far to the north. Nearby are Franklin High School's grand 1912 facade, the Northwest African American Museum and Jimi Hendrix Park, and the new Judkins Park light-rail station on the floating-bridge line across Lake Washington. It's a leafy, historically diverse quarter — gardens spilling over parking strips, crows in the maples, the lake glinting at the foot of every east-running street.

Poem seeds

a garden coach reading a garden "like it's telling you something" — moss, aphids, the lean of a fig tree toward light; an Olmsted boulevard curving under maples down to Lake Washington; St. Paul childhood ponds and fences echoed in Seattle parking-strip gardens.

Who they are

Sue Pivetta of Vashon Island is a longtime author and teacher whose public identity is built on a 40-year career as a 9-1-1 emergency-communications trainer, consultant, and speaker — she has spoken locally (e.g., at the Vashon Senior Center, per the Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber) and has roughly 16 books listed on Goodreads, mostly training texts such as "The Exceptional Trainer" and the "911 Emergency Communications Manual." Her creative side shows in two public places: she is the author behind "Souls Play" (soulsplay.life), a reflective/spiritual book asking "how and why are we here anyway," offered free to read online; and she organizes a Memory Writers meetup listed in the Vashonites community directory. A Tacoma Arts blog post about artist Lynn Di Nino's "Flashbacks" show also credits suitcase artwork to a Sue Pivetta, plausibly the same person given the Tacoma/Vashon overlap, but I could not confirm that beyond doubt. No specifically poetry-titled publications surfaced.

Published work

• "Souls Play" (self-published book + free online flip-book at soulsplay.life)
• "The Exceptional Trainer: A No-Nonsense Guide for Trainers"
• "911 Emergency Communications Manual" (multiple editions; the standard-issue training manual genre she is best known for)
• Organizer, Memory Writers meetup, Vashon (Vashonites community)

Where the postcard lands

Vashon Island sits in the middle of Puget Sound between Seattle and Tacoma — about 11,000 people, no bridge, everything and everyone arrives by ferry. Bachelor Road is at the island's rural far south end, near the Tahlequah ferry dock where the boat crosses Dalco Passage to Point Defiance in Tacoma; listings on the road mention beach access and water views, and homes sit on wooded acreage lots. The island is known for small farms, strawberries in its history, madrona trees leaning over gravel beaches, driftwood, herons and seals, and an outsized community of artists and writers (it has its own Poet Laureate through Open Space for Arts). The climate is mild, gray-green, and salt-aired; Mount Rainier hangs over the southern water on clear days. Note: the official PPF list shows this address shared with Susan Kloetzer (#18); noting the shared address only, per the list.

Poem seeds

the dispatcher's calm voice as a lifeline down a wire at 3 a.m.; the last ferry from Tahlequah sliding across Dalco Passage with Rainier pink behind it; a "memory writers" circle — strangers reading their childhoods aloud; the Souls Play question, "how and why are we here anyway," asked from a beach of driftwood.

Who they are

No confident public literary presence found. Searches for "Susan Kloetzer" / "Sue Kloetzer" with Vashon, Washington, poet, poetry, writer, artist, and Poetry Postcard Fest turned up no results I could tie to a person at this location (the only findable Sue Kloetzers are in unrelated places and lines of work). She shares an address with Sue Pivetta (#17) on the official PPF list — noted as fact only, without speculation.

Where the postcard lands

Same south-end Vashon Island setting as #17: the quiet, wooded Tahlequah end of the island, where Bachelor Road runs near the water above Dalco Passage and the small ferry shuttles to Tacoma's Point Defiance. Vashon is a bridge-less island of about 11,000 — farm stands on the honor system, a single main highway down the island's spine, beaches of cobble and driftwood, and an arts community dense enough to support its own poet laureate. Winters are soft and gray, summers dry and golden; the Sound is always a few minutes' walk downhill. Ferries, tides, and the mountain are the island's shared clock.

Poem seeds

the honor-system farm stand cashbox; low tide smell and moon snails on a cobble beach; the foghorn conversation between the Tahlequah ferry and Dalco Passage.

Who they are

Yes — this is the Charlene Neely of Nebraska poetry circles. She is a Lincoln-raised poet, long active in the Nebraska Writers Guild (co-chair of its State Fair booth), Lincoln Chaparral Poets, and the Write Stuff group, who presented poetry programs in Nebraska schools for over 15 years; a 2022 Kearney Hub profile ("Lincoln based Charlene Neely knows poetry can change lives") describes her fondness for formal repetition — pantoums especially. Delightfully on-point for PPF: she has mailed "silly postcard poems" to her grandchildren since the 1990s (a teacher once invited her to class as "a real, live poet" because of them) and is a documented Poetry Postcard Fest participant, commenting on Cascadia Poetics Lab fest posts as recently as 2024. Her bio lists a working life as cook, waitress, reporter, paste-up artist, Avon lady, and small-press runner. The profile says Lincoln; the PPF list places her in Seward, 25 miles west — consistent with a move, and Seward's own bookstore (Chapters Books & Gifts) promotes Nebraska authors like her, but I did not find an explicit "lives in Seward" statement.

Published work

• "The Lights of Lincoln" (poems and photographs, Infusionmedia, 2016)
• "The Corn Fairy's Wigs & Other Poems" (2020)
• Co-editor (with Gerry Cox), "The Guide to More Nebraska Authors"
• Anthologies: "Nebraska Presence: An Anthology of Poetry," "Voices from the Plains," "Misbehaving Nebraskans"; a winning poem in Persimmon Tree's Central States contest (2012); micro-chapbooks at Origami Poems Project

Where the postcard lands

Seward, Nebraska (pop. ~7,700) is the Seward County seat, a courthouse-square town on the prairie about 25 miles west of Lincoln, ringed by corn and soybean fields under a very big sky. It is officially "Nebraska's Fourth of July City" — designated by the governor in 1973 and by Congress in 1979 — and every July 4 nearly 40,000 visitors pour into this small town for the state's biggest Independence Day celebration (the poet will be writing to her right in the fest's opening weeks, just after the town's famous holiday). Concordia University, a Lutheran college, anchors one edge of town; Plum Creek and the Big Blue River thread the area, and Chapters Books & Gifts on the square champions Nebraska authors. Manor Drive W is on the town's quiet residential west side. Summers are hot, cicada-loud, and thunderstorm-prone; winters bring hard prairie wind.

Poem seeds

the Corn Fairy's wigs — corn silk as hair; a pantoum's repeating lines like postcards arriving every other week; a courthouse square still hung with bunting the week after 40,000 visitors leave; grain trucks and fireflies on the edge of town.

Who they are

No confident public literary presence found. Searches on "Barb Craig-Schniepp," "Barbara Schniepp," "Barb Schniepp," and Schniepp + Corpus Christi + poet/poetry/writer produced nothing attributable to this person; the distinctive surname mostly surfaces unrelated Schniepps in California. (Her name appears in an out-of-state family obituary, which is private family context and outside scope.) She may simply be a fest participant without an online poetry footprint — common in PPF.

Where the postcard lands

The 78404 zip is Corpus Christi's old midtown — the Del Mar / Lindale Park area near the Six Points intersection, a neighborhood of one-story 1940s–50s bungalows on small lots, palm trees and live oaks, less than a mile from Ray High School and Del Mar College. It sits just inland from the bayfront: Cole Park and the seawall on Corpus Christi Bay are minutes away, with windsurfers, the arc of the Harbor Bridge downtown, and shrimp boats and tankers on the horizon. Corpus Christi (~317,000 people) calls itself the "Sparkling City by the Sea" and is one of the windiest cities in the U.S. — a constant, salty Gulf breeze — with hot, humid summers softened by that onshore wind, grackles in the parking-lot palms, and pelicans cruising the seawall.

Poem seeds

the steady Gulf wind that never stops combing the palms; pelicans gliding the seawall at Cole Park; a 1950s bungalow porch a mile from the bay, grackles arguing in the live oaks.

Who they are

Same person as the University of New Mexico Press editor — confirmed: her current Hugo House (Seattle) instructor bio describes Elise M. McHugh as "a writer, teacher, and editor based in Washington State" who is senior acquisitions editor for the University of New Mexico Press, which squares with the Lakewood, WA address. At UNM Press she has worked over two decades in roles including in-house poetry editor and managing editor, and now acquires poetry, fiction, memoir, literary criticism, and art books, with a stated passion for the American West and US–Mexico border. She holds an MA in creative writing from the University of New Mexico (BA, Hamline University), has published poetry and nonfiction in venues including New Mexico Magazine and ABQ InPrint, and teaches publishing classes (query letters, book proposals, contract basics) through Hugo House. Kirkus Reviews has profiled her, and she's cited in writing-world guides (e.g., Jane Friedman's blog) on university-press publishing.

Published work

• Senior acquisitions editor, University of New Mexico Press (poetry, fiction, memoir, art; formerly in-house poetry editor)
• Poetry and nonfiction in New Mexico Magazine, ABQ InPrint, and other venues
• Teaching: Hugo House publishing classes ("Publishing Fundamentals: Pathways for Your Book," "Book Contract Basics")
• Q&A profile in Kirkus Reviews on university-press acquiring

Where the postcard lands

Lakewood (pop. ~63,000) is just southwest of Tacoma in Pierce County, and Washington Boulevard SW runs through its old "Lakes District" — the address is a few blocks from Gravelly Lake, a spring-fed, gravel-bottomed lake that was once summer-estate country for Tacoma's wealthy and is still the city's leafiest quarter. Lakewold Gardens, a historic 10-acre estate garden of rhododendrons, ancient firs, and a Thomas Church-designed pool, is on the lake's shore nearby; American Lake and the wide meadows of Fort Steilacoom Park are minutes away, and Joint Base Lewis-McChord hums to the south. The setting is classic south Puget Sound: tall Douglas firs, soft maritime gray for much of the year, and Mount Rainier enormous on the southeastern horizon on clear days.

Poem seeds

a poetry editor's desk pointed at Rainier — New Mexico border light remembered under Puget Sound gray; Gravelly Lake's spring-fed clarity behind old estate hedges; rhododendrons blazing at Lakewold under hundred-year firs; the slush pile as a mailbag of strangers' voices (she reads poets for a living, now she gets poems by postcard).

Who they are

No confident public literary presence found. "Nancy Doyle" is a very common name; searches turned up a fine artist in West Grove, PA, a financial-literacy author, and a UK psychologist — none tied to San Jose or to poetry. No match surfaced in Poetry Center San José / Cæsura contexts or Poetry Postcard Fest pages. Safest to treat her simply as a fellow PPF participant writing from San Jose.

Where the postcard lands

She lives in the Rose Garden / Shasta Hanchett Park district of San Jose, one of the city's oldest and leafiest neighborhoods, just northwest of downtown off The Alameda. The area is named for the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden, five and a half acres of several thousand rose bushes a short walk from Garden Drive; the streets around it are lined with 1920s–30s bungalows, Spanish Revival houses, and mature sycamores and palms. San Jose is a city of about a million on the flat floor of the Santa Clara Valley — before it became Silicon Valley it was the "Valley of Heart's Delight," blanketed in plum and apricot orchards. The Santa Cruz Mountains rise hazy-blue to the west and the Diablo Range (Mount Hamilton and its white observatory domes) to the east; the climate is Mediterranean — dry golden summers, green winters.

Poem seeds

the municipal rose garden in full July bloom a block or two from her door; orchard ghosts under the tech-city grid ("Valley of Heart's Delight"); Lick Observatory's white domes on Mount Hamilton catching evening light across the valley.

Who they are

No confident public literary presence found. Searches for the name with poet/poetry/postcard/Oceanside qualifiers returned only unrelated people (a Bridget Robinson painter, a "Bridgette Tales" blogger with no Roberson/Oceanside connection, a San Marcos painting contractor). Nothing could be confidently tied to this person. Treat her as a fellow PPF participant writing from coastal Oceanside.

Where the postcard lands

Oceanside is the northernmost beach city of San Diego County, about 175,000 people where the San Luis Rey River meets the Pacific. ZIP 92054 is the coastal, older side of town — her street sits in the hills just inland of South Oceanside, a few minutes from the water. The town's icon is the Oceanside Pier, one of the longest wooden piers on the West Coast (nearly 2,000 feet), stretching out over surfers waiting in the lineup; there's a small-craft harbor, the California Surf Museum, and the 1798 Mission San Luis Rey inland. Summer mornings often start under a gray marine layer that burns off to bright, mild afternoons; Camp Pendleton's open coastal hills bound the city to the north, so the beach town ends in wild land rather than more sprawl.

Poem seeds

the long wooden pier at dusk, waves combing under its pilings; morning marine layer burning off to hard blue; surfboards, salt fog, and the street name itself — Tropicana.

Who they are

Houston-area poet, confirmed as a Poetry Postcard Fest regular — PPF co-founder Paul Nelson published an interview with her on the fest's own site in 2020. Born and raised in Houston; BA in English literature, MA in education; a bilingual elementary school teacher. She is past president and recording secretary of Gulf Coast Poets, and a member of the Poetry Society of Texas, the Academy of American Poets, and the Writers' League of Texas; she was a featured poet in Friendswood Public Library's "Off the Page" series (2015) and is a member/supporter of Houston's Public Poetry organization.

Published work

• Poems in di-vêrsé-city (Austin International Poetry Festival anthology), Boundless, the Houston Poetry Fest anthology, The Bayou Review, Harbinger Asylum, Illya's Honey, The Red River Review, and The Texas Poetry Calendar
• Featured Gulf Coast poet, Friendswood Public Library "Off the Page" series (poems "Scales" and "Ten Minutes")
• PPF participant interview, Poetry Postcard Fest site (2020)

Where the postcard lands

Katy sits on the flat Gulf Coastal prairie about 25 miles west of downtown Houston along I-10; ZIP 77449 is the fast-growing suburban belt east of old Katy proper, one of the most populous ZIP codes in the country. The town's name comes from the MKT ("Katy") railroad, and its heritage is rice — old rice dryers and silos still stand near the historic downtown, and the Katy Prairie to the northwest was once famous wintering ground for clouds of geese. The land is table-flat under enormous humid skies; summer is thick, green, and thunderstorm-prone, and the whole region lives with hurricane season. It's a landscape of new rooftops and retention ponds laid over old prairie grass.

Poem seeds

rice silos beside the old Katy railroad line; geese over the Katy Prairie in a huge flat sky; a bilingual classroom's two languages sharing one page — like a postcard's front and back.

Who they are

Muriel Karr is a published poet living in Santa Clara, CA — distinctive name plus repeated Santa Clara County context (her work appears on the Santa Clara County Poet Laureate blog's "Poetry on the Move" project, which put poems on county buses/light rail). Per her Poets & Writers directory listing she was born in Lowell, Massachusetts; BA from Reed College (French), MA in French literature from Indiana University; she taught French and German at universities in Indiana and Maine (former acting head of foreign languages at UMaine Farmington), with Fulbright and Woodrow Wilson fellowships. Her poetry has been appearing in journals since at least the early 1990s.

Published work

• Toward Dawn (Bellowing Ark Press, 2002)
• Shape of Pear (Bellowing Ark Press, 1996)
• Membrane, chapbook (BGS Press, 1994)
• "Who Wouldn't Want This Gift," Birmingham Poetry Review (1992); poems in qarrtsiluni; featured on the Santa Clara County Poet Laureate blog (Poetry on the Move)

Where the postcard lands

Santa Clara is a city of about 130,000 in the middle of Silicon Valley, on the flat southern rim of San Francisco Bay. Her neighborhood (95051) is classic mid-century Santa Clara: modest one-story ranch houses on quiet grid streets, built in the 1950s–60s directly on top of what had been apricot and cherry orchards — the "Valley of Heart's Delight." The 1777 Mission Santa Clara de Asís still stands at the heart of Santa Clara University, its adobe and roses a few minutes away, while Nvidia's and Intel's campuses and Levi's Stadium mark the city's present tense. The Santa Cruz Mountains make a soft western horizon; the climate is gentle and Mediterranean, jasmine and lemon trees in winter, dry gold hills in summer.

Poem seeds

apricot orchards sleeping under the ranch-house grid; the pear of her book title, Shape of Pear — fruit as form; a poem riding a county bus ("Poetry on the Move") through Silicon Valley traffic; mission bells and server farms in the same square mile.

Who they are

Tucson poet, writer, and librarian — a distinctive name with abundant, consistent public presence. She self-describes as a poet, librarian, mariachi aficionado, former farmworker, and canyon-and-mountain hiker and hiking leader; her writing is "steeped in the essence and wonder of the Sonoran Southwest." She is a longtime member of Tucson poetry communities including POG (Poetry in Action), has been featured by the Pima County Public Library (photographed with her haiku), has contributed to TucsonSentinel.com, and is affiliated with the University of Arizona's Center for Digital Society and Data Studies.

Published work

• Collectives of Poets (Chax Press, Tucson) — an abecedarian of imaginary "collectives, even multitudes, of poets"
• Poems in Tiny Seed, Claw and Blossom, Plants & Poetry Journal, RockPaperPoem, and Harpy Hybrid Review
• Haiku featured by Pima County Public Library; pieces in TucsonSentinel.com

Where the postcard lands

Tucson (the address is a PO box, so city-level only) lies in a Sonoran Desert basin at about 2,400 feet, ringed by mountain ranges — the Santa Catalinas rising nearly 7,000 feet straight off the city's north edge, with the Rincons, Santa Ritas, and the saguaro-studded Tucson Mountains completing the circle. Saguaro National Park brackets the city east and west with forests of giant cactus. In July and August the summer monsoon arrives: towering afternoon thunderheads, the smell of creosote after rain, arroyos briefly running with water — postcard-writing season is monsoon season there. Tucson is about half a million people (a million metro), a UNESCO City of Gastronomy with deep Mexican-American roots and a strong mariachi tradition — which happens to be one of her own loves.

Poem seeds

creosote smell after the first monsoon rain; saguaros holding their arms up on the Tucson Mountains at sunset; a librarian-hiker reading the Catalinas like stacked spines; trumpet-and-violin mariachi drifting from a plaza.

Who they are

No confident public literary presence found. Searches for "Elias McKinley" with Bega, NSW, far south coast, poet, poem, writer, and postcard terms surfaced only unrelated people (a Washington-state high school athlete, a Florida obituary, actors/musicians named Eli/Elijah McKinley, an 1859 genealogy record). None can be tied to Bega, NSW. He may simply have no web presence under this name — many PPF participants don't.

Where the postcard lands

Bega is a dairy town of roughly 5,000–6,000 people in the Bega Valley on the far south coast of New South Wales — Yuin country, about six hours' drive south of Sydney. It is the home of Bega Cheese, and the town sits in a bowl of rolling, intensely green dairy pasture where the Bega and Brogo rivers meet, with the forested hump of Mumbulla Mountain (Biamanga, a sacred Yuin site) rising to the north and the Brown Mountain escarpment climbing toward the Snowy Mountains to the west. The Pacific is only about 15–20 minutes east at Tathra, on what the tourist maps call the Sapphire Coast — so the town lives between surf beach and mountain forest. Millowine Lane is on the town's semi-rural edge: paddocks, cattle, big skies. The climate is mild and coastal; morning valley fog over dairy flats is a signature sight, and note the seasons are flipped — July there is mid-winter, with frosty bright mornings.

Poem seeds

(place only) morning fog lying in the Bega River valley over dairy pasture; the smell of a cheese-factory town ringed by green hills; winter light in July — an upside-down season from a Northern-Hemisphere sender; Mumbulla Mountain holding the northern skyline.

Who they are

A Whatcom County, Washington poet active in the Bellingham-area poetry community (Everson is in Whatcom County, and the contest she has won and judged is open only to Whatcom County residents, which is what ties the name to this person — though the name is common, so treat as probable rather than certain). She won a Walk Award in the 2020 Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest and served as a judge for the 2025 Boynton contest. She is a member of Wildhaven Writers, a decade-old Bellingham women's writing group, and is a co-author of the group's book "Women's Bodies, Women's Words" (with Nancy Canyon and others), a collection of personal essays and poetry written in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade; the group gave a public reading from it at the FireHouse Arts & Events Center in Fairhaven in October 2024.

Published work

• "Women's Bodies, Women's Words" (Wildhaven Writers anthology, co-author; ISBN 9798988619406)
• Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest — Walk Award winner, 2020
• Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest — judge, 2025

Where the postcard lands

Everson is a small city of under 3,000 people on the Nooksack River in northern Whatcom County, Washington — flat, fertile floodplain farm country between Bellingham and the Canadian border, which is only a few miles north. This is berry country: raspberry and blueberry fields, dairy farms, corn, with the white volcanic cone of Mount Baker (Koma Kulshan) dominating the southeastern sky on clear days. Ten Mile Road runs through open rural land south of town toward Bellingham — barns, pasture, drainage ditches, long straight roads. The Nooksack regularly floods in the fall rains (a 2021 flood inundated Everson itself), so the river's moods are part of local life. The climate is maritime Pacific Northwest: gray drizzle much of the year, luminous long summer evenings.

Poem seeds

Mount Baker floating over raspberry rows; the Nooksack rising in November rain; a decade of women reading their lives aloud in a Fairhaven firehouse; contest-winning poems posted on plaques for walkers (the Boynton "Walk Award" puts poems on public display).

Who they are

No confident public literary presence found. There is a Denice Breaux with an artist shop on Redbubble whose work — photographic prints and posters such as "Corn and Grapevines, Mendocino," several hollyhock studies ("Very Pink Hollyhock," "Antique Hollyhocks"), "Dancers' Legs," "Hands Open Toward the Sun," and "Somewhere in The Midst of Reality" — is Northern-California-flavored (Mendocino agricultural imagery), which fits a Sebastopol/Sonoma County resident, but the Redbubble profile itself does not state a location, so this is a plausible-not-proven match. No poetry publications, readings, or literary roles under this name were found.

Published work

• Redbubble print portfolio (photography/art): nature, flowers, dance imagery, NorCal agricultural scenes — if the same person

Where the postcard lands

Sebastopol is a small, artsy town of about 7,500 in western Sonoma County, California, about an hour north of San Francisco. It was once the Gravenstein apple capital of the world — the highway into town is still called the Gravenstein Highway and an Apple Blossom Festival survives — though vineyards have replaced most orchards. High Street is right in the walkable old downtown, near the plaza. The town's signature quirk is Patrick Amiot's whimsical junk-art sculptures lining Florence Avenue, and The Barlow, a former apple cannery turned arts-and-food district. To the east lies the Laguna de Santa Rosa, a great wetland full of egrets and winter waterfowl; to the west, redwood country and then the Pacific about 20 miles away, whose fog slides inland on summer evenings and burns off by late morning.

Poem seeds

Gravenstein apples in a town that traded orchards for vineyards; coastal fog fingering inland over the Laguna at dusk; junk-metal dogs and rocket ships on Florence Avenue; very pink hollyhocks against a picket fence (her own recurring image, if the Redbubble artist is her).

Who they are

The distinctive surname points to one strong candidate: a Heidi Denkers who is a NeuroDynamic Breathwork facilitator and staff member at Breathwork Online, holds a master's degree in psychology with an emphasis in expressive arts therapy, and is publicly described in her team bio as "a published poet, an artist" who works with mandalas, journals, music, and dance; she leads a monthly expressive-arts integration session. This fits a PPF participant well. Caveat: a LinkedIn profile for a Heidi Denkers places her in Renton, Washington, not Lima, Ohio, and no source found ties the breathwork facilitator to Lima — so either the profile is stale, or this is a different Heidi Denkers. No specific poetry publications under her name were found. Treat the breathwork/expressive-arts identity as probable but unconfirmed for the Lima address.

Published work

• Team bio describes her as a published poet and artist (specific publications not found)
• Monthly expressive-arts / creative integration sessions at Breathwork Online

Where the postcard lands

Lima is a small industrial city of about 35,000 in Allen County, west-central Ohio, set on the flat, glaciated farm plain roughly halfway between Dayton and Toledo on I-75 — corn and soybean horizons in every direction. Its history is boom-flavored: an 1885 oil strike, then the Lima Locomotive Works, which built the famous Shay logging locomotives; a large refinery still runs on the edge of town, and the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center there builds the Army's Abrams tanks. The Ottawa River — locally nicknamed Hog Creek — winds through town. The 45805 zip is Lima's quieter west side, residential streets near the University of Northwestern Ohio; Friar Lane is a modest suburban lane. Seasons are strong here: humid green summers, gray flat-light winters, dramatic Midwest thunderstorm skies.

Poem seeds

breath as a made thing — a town that built locomotives and a woman who teaches breathing; the refinery's lights against a flat black farm-country night; mandalas and corn rows, both circles and lines; Hog Creek moving slow under a railroad bridge.

Who they are

b. elizabeth bell (the lowercase styling is her deliberate author name; she also goes by Brandy Bell) is a Portland, Oregon author with a lifelong love of ghosts and epistolary storytelling — an almost uncannily good match for a postcard fest. Her debut novel "The Disconsolate" (May 2023, Kirkus-reviewed) is an epistolary ghost story set in modern Palm Springs, in which the protagonist learns of the death of her first love, with whom she exchanged more than 800 letters. She writes online at her site Cat Over Clock ("where cats are more important than time"), lives in Portland with her husband Jeffrey, cats Artemis and Tansy, and "spirit cat" Basil, and is a volunteer writing-workshop facilitator with the nonprofit Write Around Portland, where she also shares a weekly generative writing practice with a group called the Fly-by-Nights. She is a member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association, wrote the short story "The Séance," contributed to the Truck Wine anthology, and penned the foreword to Felicia Howe's "Sybil of the Flora." In a Reader's House interview she mentions a next project: a late-19th-century epistolary novel set in Jerome, Arizona. Her bio notes an interest in her Slavic and Italian heritages.

Published work

• "The Disconsolate" (debut novel, 2023) — epistolary ghost story
• "The Séance" (short story)
• Contributor, Truck Wine anthology; foreword to "Sybil of the Flora" by Felicia Howe
• Volunteer facilitator, Write Around Portland; member, Northwest Independent Writers Association

Where the postcard lands

Her address is in Westmoreland, the heart of Portland's Sellwood-Moreland district in Southeast Portland — a streetcar-era neighborhood of Craftsman bungalows and old trees a few blocks east of the Willamette River. Westmoreland Park is close by, its old fly-casting pond restored to a natural wetland where ducks and herons wade; just beyond it lies Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge, a floodplain marsh famous for great blue herons (Portland's official bird), and the century-old Oaks Amusement Park with its wooden roller rink on the riverbank. Sellwood's antique row runs along SE 13th, and the neighborhood keeps a small-town feel — a single-screen Moreland Theater, coffee shops, the Sellwood Bridge arcing over the river. Portland weather: eight months of soft gray rain, then a green explosion of roses and cherry blossoms.

Poem seeds

800 letters between first loves — a woman who believes in mail; a spirit cat named Basil crossing a bungalow hallway; herons lifting off Oaks Bottom at dusk; ghosts and postcards as the same gesture — a voice arriving from somewhere you can't visit.

Who they are

Verified — she is exactly who the note suggests, and she was Cascadia Poetics Lab's Featured Poet in February 2026, a Poetry Postcard Fest participant since 2023. Martha Clarkson is a Kirkland, Washington writer and photographic artist. Trained in interior architecture, she spent more than two decades designing commercial workplace environments, with writing as a lifelong parallel practice — her first poem was published in seventh grade. Her poetry and fiction appear in monkeybicycle, Clackamas Literary Review, Seattle Review, Portland Review, elimae, and Nimrod, among others. She received the Washington State Poets' William Stafford prize (2005), a Pushcart nomination, "Notable Stories" listings in Best American Nonrequired Reading (2007 and 2009), and won Anderbo's 2012 short-story contest. She published the micro-chapbook "In Between" (Origami Poems Project, 2014), is a Jack Straw Cultural Center artist, and her photography — digital, film, spy camera, and Polaroid, chasing "the subtle and overlooked" — has been exhibited around the Pacific Northwest.

Published work

• Poetry/fiction in monkeybicycle, Clackamas Literary Review, Seattle Review, Portland Review, elimae, Nimrod
• "In Between" (micro-chapbook, Origami Poems Project, 2014)
• William Stafford prize, Washington Poets Association, 2005; Pushcart nomination
• Best American Nonrequired Reading "Notable Stories," 2007 and 2009; Anderbo short-story contest winner, 2012
• Creative nonfiction ("Till Death Do Us Part," SN Review); Jack Straw Cultural Center artist; exhibited photographer

Where the postcard lands

Kirkland is a city of about 95,000 on the eastern shore of Lake Washington, across the water from Seattle. Its downtown slopes to a walkable waterfront — Marina Park, small public beaches, bronze sculptures along the lakefront, sailboats on Moss Bay, and on clear days the Seattle skyline and the jagged Olympic Mountains stacked behind it across the lake. Her street is in a quiet residential pocket east of downtown near South Rose Hill, close to the Cross Kirkland Corridor, an old rail line turned gravel walking trail that cuts through the city past the Google campus; just to the south, Bridle Trails State Park keeps a square mile of tall Douglas firs and horse trails improbably intact amid the suburbs. It is classic Eastside Puget Sound country: mild, gray-green, ferns and cedars, with sudden gifts of mountain views.

Poem seeds

a spy camera and Polaroids — the overlooked detail caught sideways (her own aesthetic); the old rail corridor's gravel line through firs, trains replaced by walkers; Lake Washington holding the Olympics upside down on a still morning; workplace blueprints by day, seventh-grade first poem never outgrown.

Who they are

No confident public literary presence found. Searches for "Jeff Hopwood" combined with Bellingham, poet, poetry, poems, postcard poetry, and the local Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest / Whatcom poetry scene returned no results attributable to this person. (Search noise: the University of Michigan "Hopwood Award" for writers dominates any Hopwood + poetry query; the Jeff Hopwoods that do surface — e.g. a Minnesota business owner — are clearly other people.)

Where the postcard lands

The 98229 ZIP is Bellingham's south and east side — the quieter, wooded residential hills between Lake Padden, Whatcom Falls Park, and the long fjord-like arm of Lake Whatcom, a few minutes uphill from Bellingham Bay. Bellingham (~95,000 people) is the last real city before the Canadian border, a salt-air college town (Western Washington University) set between the San Juan Islands to the west and the white cone of Mount Baker (Kulshan) to the east — the volcano is visible from ordinary street corners on clear days. The Chuckanut sandstone cliffs and madrona trees drop straight to the water just south of town; Whatcom Creek runs through mossy gorge waterfalls right inside the city. Climate: mild, grey-green, drizzly most of the year, luminous long-daylight summers. Willowbrook Pl sits in the Samish/lake-country side of town — second-growth Douglas fir, blackberry margins, herons on the lake.

Poem seeds

Mount Baker floating white above the rooftops; the smell of rain on cedar along Whatcom Falls; kayak wakes on Lake Whatcom at dusk.

Who they are

No confident public literary presence found for the Leah Ross in Culver City. "Leah Ross" is a common name with several public bearers — a science-fiction/steampunk romance novelist (leahrossbooks.com, 30+ self-published titles, CU Boulder journalism background, location unstated), a PoemHunter user profile with no location data, and an LA County food-systems staffer — but none can be confidently tied to this PPF participant, and no poetry-postcard or Culver City literary connection surfaced for any of them. Say so plainly on the card: she may simply be a fest participant without an online poetry footprint.

Where the postcard lands

Buckingham Pkwy is in the Fox Hills district at Culver City's southern edge — mid-rise apartments and curved parkways on the slope below the Baldwin Hills, next to the big Westfield mall and the 405. Culver City itself (~40,000 people, an independent city surrounded by Los Angeles) is the old "Heart of Screenland": MGM shot The Wizard of Oz here, and the Sony Pictures and Culver Studios lots still anchor downtown. Ballona Creek, a concrete-channeled stream with a popular bike path, runs from here about six miles down to the Pacific at Marina del Rey. The Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook stairs climb right behind the neighborhood for a view from downtown LA to the ocean. Climate: dry Mediterranean sunshine, jacarandas going purple in June, cool marine fog ("June gloom") sliding in from the coast on summer mornings.

Poem seeds

the Ballona Creek bike path running its concrete channel to the sea; jacaranda petals on parked cars; studio water towers over palm-lined streets.

Who they are

No confident public literary presence found — but she has a clear public creative identity. Liz Tourtidis of Courtenay, BC is a hairstylist with 24+ years behind the chair (her own booking site, liztourtidishairstylist.com; works out of Claude Bigler's salon) and publicly describes herself as a mixed-media artist (Instagram @liz_z_room; vendor listing on Eventeny for Courtenay arts events). The unusual surname makes the same-town match strong; no poetry publications under her name surfaced. (Note: the surname is otherwise known in the Comox Valley through an established poet named Tourtidis, but no public source links Liz's own name to published poetry, so nothing beyond her own creative work is claimed here.)

Where the postcard lands

Duncan Ave is in the walkable old downtown grid of Courtenay (~28,000 people), the hub town of the Comox Valley on the east coast of Vancouver Island. The town sits where the Puntledge and Tsolum rivers join to form the short Courtenay River, which spills into the K'ómoks Estuary — trumpeter swans winter on the mudflats by the hundreds, herons stalk the eelgrass. Looming over everything to the west is the Comox Glacier, called Queneesh ("the whale") in the K'ómoks story of the great flood; Mount Washington's ski runs are 30 minutes up the hill. The valley is old farmland and salmon rivers — a "land of plenty" between mountains and the Salish Sea, with 5th Street's small shops, galleries, and cafés a couple of blocks from the river. Mild, wet, green winters; dry bright summers.

Poem seeds

trumpeter swans on the winter estuary; the glacier-whale Queneesh above the valley; scissors and river-sound — a small downtown where the river runs behind the shops.

Who they are

A team member named Amanda McNair appears on the staff page of Poetry in Voice / Les voix de la poésie, the national Canadian charity that runs poetry recitation and writing programs in schools. Her staff bio describes a writer, editor, and educator with a BA and MA in English literature plus a master's in teaching, a decade-plus in education and nonprofits (arts & heritage education, equity-based pedagogies), editorial roles at several literary magazines and presses, and poems published in a variety of digital and print publications. The organization is bilingual and Quebec-active, which fits a Laval (Montreal-area) address, but the staff page does not state her city — so this is a probable, not certain, match to the PPF participant. No specific poem titles or magazine names could be confirmed under her byline.

Published work

• Poems in various digital and print publications (per Poetry in Voice staff bio; individual credits not confirmed)
• Editorial roles at literary magazines and presses (per same bio)

Where the postcard lands

Laval is Quebec's third-largest city (~440,000), but it doesn't feel like one: it is the whole of Île Jésus, a flat suburban island wedged between two rivers just north of Montreal — the Rivière des Prairies on the Montreal side, the Rivière des Mille Îles on the north. Duvernay is one of its leafier southeastern residential sectors, running down to the Rivière des Prairies across from Montreal's north end, all mature maples, post-war bungalows, riverside parks, and the hum of the Pie-IX bridge traffic heading into the city. Daily life is francophone-suburban — dépanneurs, hockey rinks, the autoroute — with Montreal's skyline and Mount Royal a short drive across the water. The seasons are the drama here: deep snow and minus-twenty January, ice breaking up on the rivers in April, hot humid cicada summers, hard red maples in October.

Poem seeds

ice going out on the Rivière des Prairies in April; maple shade over a numbered avenue; two rivers holding one flat island of backyards.

Who they are

Annis Cassells is a published poet, memoirist, teacher, and life coach who grew up in Detroit and now splits her time between Bakersfield, California and Coos Bay, Oregon — an exact match to the PPF address. A career teacher, she facilitates memoir-writing workshops for senior adults and poetry workshops for aspiring poets; she has been active in the Bakersfield/Kern County poetry community (Kern Poetry open mics, Writers of Kern — 2013 recipient of the California Writers Club's Jack London Award for service, and was nominated for Kern County Poet Laureate) and in Coos Bay community life (read at the town's Juneteenth ceremony; poems honored on Oregon Writer's Day via the Coos History Museum). Her blog collective "Poets on the Page" and site connectionsandconversations.com carry her ongoing work.

Published work

• You Can't Have It All: Poems (2019) — debut full collection
• What the Country Wrought: Poems (2023) — second collection
• Seven poems in ENOUGH: "Say Their Names…" (2020 social-justice anthology)
• Poems in Scarlet Leaf Review; award-winning poems "Late to Madrid" and "In This Century" (Oregon Writer's Day)

Where the postcard lands

Coos Bay (~16,000 people, twinned with North Bend) is the biggest town on the Oregon Coast and the largest natural deep-water harbor between San Francisco and Puget Sound — an old timber-and-fishing port where log ships still tie up along a boardwalk on the wide, S-curved bay. Fog is a resident; so are gulls, crabbing docks, and myrtlewood shops. Just west, Cape Arago's sandstone cliffs take the full Pacific — Shore Acres' formal gardens sit improbably on the headland above winter storm-watch waves, with sea lions hauled out on Simpson Reef below. North of town begin the Oregon Dunes, forty miles of wind-built sand. It is also famously the hometown of runner Steve Prefontaine. Cool, foggy, mild year-round; big rain in winter, seldom hot.

Poem seeds

fog lifting off the log booms in the bay; storm spray clearing the cliff-top gardens at Shore Acres; two homes on one long road — Bakersfield oil-and-orchard heat to Coos Bay fog.