Paulann Petersen

Oregon’s 6th Poet Laureate from 2010-2014, Paulann Petersen has four books of poetry:  The Wild Awake (Confluence Press); Blood-Silk (Quiet Lion Press); A Bride of Narrow Escape (Cloudbank Books), which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award; and Kindle (Mountains and Rivers Press). A fifth full-length book, The Voluptuary, is scheduled to be published by Lost Horse Press in late 2010. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and the recipient of the 2006 Holbrook Award from Oregon Literary Arts, she serves on the board of Friends of William Stafford, organizing the annual January Stafford Birthday Events. 

Her poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including Poetry; The New Republic; Prairie Schooner; Poetry Northwest; Willow Springs; Notre Dame Review; Bellingham Review; and Wilderness Magazine. Credits in Oregon publications include Calyx; The Grove Review; Basalt; Burnside Review; Oregon English Journal; Windfall; VoiceCatcher; and Hubbub. Anthology credits include Long Journey, Contemporary Northwest Poets; A Fierce Brightness; Portland Lights; Deer Drink the Moon; Walking Bridges Using Poetry as a Compass; From Here We Speak, An Anthology of Oregon Poetry; O Poetry! Oh Poesia! Poems of Oregon and Peru; and Florilegia.  POETRY IN MOTION, which places poems on the Tri-met busses and lightrail cars in the Portland area, has featured her poems.

Paulann has given readings in hundreds of spots ranging from Powell’s City of Books to Osmania University in India, from Ross Ragland Theater in Klamath Falls to The Museum Hotel in Central Turkey, from Fishtrap House in Enterprise to the tiny Agness Library on the Rogue River, from the Corvallis Library to Newport’s Visual Arts Center. 

A Sacrament

Appetite

Bloodline

Charles Burchfield, Your World

Complete Reading from Mountain Writers Series 2010

Fabrication

Finish

Handwriting

In This Land, Exotic

Miracle

Numen

Pragmatics

Primed

Reading from Summer Fishtrap 2008

When I Walk