Category: Member News

Just a 10-minute pitch –nervously anticipated–at the Willamette Writer’s Conference two summers ago turned out to be the catalyst for the publication of my book, 15 years in the making, on the neuroscience of the brain as it faces, or defies, death. The Brain at Twilight, The Neuroscience of Our Last Words and Moments was just a manuscript, but my first pitch with Natalie Kimber, a literary agent at The Rights Factory, sparked a journey that will end in just a few months when the book will be published by Columbia University Press.

Although I have been an ICU doctor for a long time, and compiled personal stories of my patients’ final moments, I was clueless about the publishing world. How remarkable to have the full and complete attention of a professional agent, with a world of expertise behind them, focusing just on you and your work. The message I’d like to give potential authors….pitch and query often and happily!! You’ll be giving someone a very personal opportunity to catch the excitement you have in your project and embark on the journey to publication that’s yours to capture!

Follow Tarvez at Website, Substack, Instagram, Linkedin & Youtube.

A book launch and an evening of poetry and reflections by several Corvallis poets is scheduled for Thursday, May 28, at the Corvallis Museum, 411 SW 2nd St, beginning with a reception at 6 p.m. The reading begins at 6:30.

Everyone is invited to a celebratory poetry reading and book launch on Thursday, May 28, at 6 p.m. at the Corvallis Museum, 411 SW 2nd Street. The reading is free and open to the public. Join in celebrating the rich recent history of poetry and literary events in Corvallis, and the publication of Voices of the Valley: An Anthology of Corvallis Poets, edited by Steven Sher and the late Michael Spring, published by Flowstone Press. Many of the 32 poets featured in the anthology will read and pay homage to poets no longer with us. Among the poets featured are Charles Goodrich, Lex Runciman, and the late Peter Sears. “Voices of the Valley” a tribute, book launch, and poetry reading.

This event celebrates an era of poetry in Corvallis from the late 1980s to the early years of this century. The reading will be from Voices of the Valley: An Anthology of Corvallis Poets, which contains poems by 32 Corvallis poets. The poets featured in the anthology include honored teachers, editors and prize-winning poets. It was edited by Steven Sher and the late Michael Spring and published by Flowstone Press. Books will be available for purchase at the event.

Steven Sher writes, “In the last years of the millennium through the first years of the current century, Corvallis saw a ‘golden age’ of local poetry. It was a time when readings, slams and themed literary gatherings filled the calendar; when poetry groups and workshops, poetry outreach and poets-in-the-schools programs, publications, and packed venues flourished; when listening to poetry was like hearing the heartbeat of Oregon’s Willamette Valley.” The reading will “pay homage to these poets and their work and offer a tribute to those no longer with us”.

Poets featured in the anthology are Chris Anderson, Sara Backer, Barbara Baldwin, Rachel Barton, David Biespiel, Dorothy Black Crow, Richard Dankleff, Greg Darling, Be Davison Herrera, Eric Wayne Dickey, George Estreich, Linda Gelbrich, Charles Goodrich, Donna Henderson, Karen Holmberg, Steve Jones, Michael Malan, Jennifer Richter, Lex Runciman, Peter Sears, Matthew Shenoda, Steven Sher, Susan Spady, Michael Spring, Ann Staley, Clem Starck, Doug Stone, Anita Sullivan, Peggy Taylor, Linda Varsell Smith, Roger Weaver and Dale Willey.

Michelle St. Romain’s debut novel, Song of Belonging, will be released April 21, 2026 by She Writes Press with distribution to the trade by Simon and Schuster. For fans of Kate Morton, Amy Harmon, and Sally Page, Song of Belonging is a multi-generational novel with hints of magical realism, about a woman learning to find her place in an uncertain world as she unravels the stories of her grandmothers in a family lineage of light and dark.

In 1934, a child’s death tears open a family and shakes the small town of Richarme, Louisiana. Recalling her grandmother’s hidden gifts that had been shut down decades earlier, Grace Paschal begins writing to her deceased daughter as she navigates grief and guilt for Lily’s death, which will haunt their French community for generations.

In 2019, Alice, Grace’s great-granddaughter, awakens in her apartment in Berkeley and opens a jewelry box given to her decades earlier upon Grace’s death. When she explores its contents, the lines between past and present fade. As she works to meet the demands of her career, she battles increasing ancestral memories that mingle with experiences at work, causing her to question everything about the life she has chosen.

A haunting and magical story of a family with hidden gifts and secrets, the story follows Alice, a young journalist who begins having memories that are not her own and must find her place in a lineage of women healers who are protectors of the waters that surround their Louisiana home.

Michelle is a writer, poet and educator. She is the co-author with Alma Rosa Alvarez of two poetry collections, Promised Fruit and Water’s Edge. In addition to writing and teaching, she works in the nonprofit field raising funds and awareness for issues close to her heart. Song of Belonging began as an idea in her mind when she was seven years old and her great-grandmother gave her a green jewelry box when she died.

Michelle grew up in Louisiana surrounded by siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, and the novel combines her love of the environment and the natural world with stories from her French Acadian heritage. She leads creative writing workshops and retreats and has taught English and creative writing to children and teens in California, Hawai’i, and Oregon. She holds a B.A. in English from Loyola University, New Orleans and an M.A. in English/ Creative Writing from California State University, Sacramento. Her work has been featured in the Poetry Phone Line Project of the Oregon Humanities, The Rapids literary magazine, The Stanford Challenge 2026 Anthology (Wild Poets Press), and on Jefferson Public Radio and Ashland Community Radio. Michelle was volunteer poetry reader in 2025 for The Timberline Review.

Michelle lives in Southern Oregon with her wife, two spaniels, and a wise, aging cat. They are enjoying watching their three creative young adults launch into the world.

Song of Belonging received three 5-star reviews from Readers Favorite and is available wherever books are sold. Books launch events are planned in Portland, Eugene, and Southern Oregon. Michelle will also be a panelist at the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley in late May and at the Northwest Book Fair and Media Fest in Vancouver, Washington in June.

View a full list of upcoming events with Michelle here.

Follow Michelle at Website, Facebook and Instagram.

Cleah Lucky proves to be even more overbearing in death than she was in life. Her estranged kids learn of the exhaustive list of requirements written into her will, starting with shared custody of her urn. Family is complicated. Cleah’s Bequest is a funny and surprisingly heartfelt story about the struggle for control. “Who knew Cleah Lucky could be even more overbearing in death than she was in life?

Three estranged siblings learn their mother has placed extensive and seemingly irrational requirements in her will as a condition of inheritance, starting with having to share custody of her urn. The list goes on with things like having to spend holidays together with a list of what to serve, what to wear, games to play, a song to listen to, on and on, with more surprises along the way. Can she even do that? Turns out she can, thanks to a legally airtight trust. Cleah has done her homework, to her kids’ dismay. It seems like she’s thought of everything, and it tests their resolve, their cooperation, and even their sanity.

Set in the Pacific Northwest, Cleah’s Bequest is an irreverent and unexpectedly heartwarming tale about what we owe the people who raised us and the price of getting what we think we deserve. Published by Unsolicited Press, this is Mari’s second novel.

Follow Mari at Website, Facebook and Instagram.

Maryka Biaggio’s novel Margery and Me will be released April 21 by Regal House Publishing. Margery and Me, a historical novel based on the true story of the psychic who tangled with Harry Houdini, was a Publishers Weekly Editors’ pick.

It has been hailed by Valerie Martin as “a wry, lively, and wicked-good novel.” Victoria Kelly, author of Mrs. Houdini, called it “a spellbinding dive into the glittering yet shadowy world of 1920s spiritualism and the enigmatic life of Margery, the era’s most notorious psychic.”

Follow Maryka at Website and Facebook.

Pages from my dramatic feature script, Living In A Postcard, will receive a staged reading at the Broadwater Theater in Hollywood, CA on April 22, presented by the Breakthrough Reading Series.

The story’s inspired by my 2024 residency at Pine Meadow Ranch and Center for Art & Agriculture, Sisters, OR. Logline: Living In A Postcard; a rancher in Central Oregon confronts threats to her family and way of life posed by climate chaos and predators — both two and four-legged. Think “East Of Wall” meets “Nomadland.”

Follow Kathleen at Website, Instagram, LinkedIn.

Publication of Debut Novel, Rules for Mothers: A Novel; releases on April 14th 2026. In a story about motherhood, gender roles, cultural expectations, and mental health. Set in 1980’s Portland, it features Elly Sparrow, wife and mother of four, who is desperate to regain her sense of personal autonomy. Who is she beyond wife and mother? How can she find herself when she is constantly giving, giving to the needs of others? Elly loves her children deeply and feels guilty for even thinking about herself, a universal truth for many women. Rules for Mothers puts forward themes as relevant today as they were forty years ago.

Book readings: April 29th at Broadway Books and May 22nd at BOLD Books.

Follow Julie at Website, Facebook, or Twitter.

John Dover’s new spaghetti western horror novel, A Fistful of Fangs, is available April 24th. His follow-up to Once Upon A Fang in the West is filled with werewolves, a cultist preacher, and Ruby.

Follow John at Website or Facebook.

My 10-minute play, Circle Two Blues will have its staged premiere on Saturday, April 18 as part of Fertile Ground’s Epic Shorts: Public Domain program. Circle Two Blues is an updated version of The Inferno of Dante Alighieri and Canto V : the Second Circle of Hell. It re-imagines Paolo and Francesca’s relationship and what might happen if you had 734 years to think about it.

More information available at Website, Instagram.

Who Knew the Ridpath Girl, the second standalone mystery by Stacy Johns, will release on April 14th, 2026.

Welcome to Meander, where truths are best left buried.

Gracen Ridpath has a secret. As the host of a successful YouTube channel for stay-at-home-dads, Gracen is known for his handy tips and trademark self-deprecating humor. But off camera, he struggles with the aftereffects of a tragedy that shaped him and everyone else in his hometown of Meander: the death of his eleven-year-old sister, Douggy.

When Gracen mentions his sister’s long-ago death for the first time on his channel, he taps a vein of interest he hadn’t known existed. Soon enough, he finds himself discussing a theory he’s kept quiet for years: that Douggy chose to die. And he’s finally figured out why . . . and who is to blame.

At first, Gracen is grateful for the jump in views, until his shift in content brings Quinn, Douggy’s childhood best friend, back to Meander looking for answers. And when people start dying around them and detectives start asking questions, Gracen and Quinn find themselves at the center of an investigation that will prove to have consequences deadlier than they ever could’ve imagined.”

More Information available at Website, or Instagram.