W.o.o.t.s.

Our annual WITS Summit was held in Hood River, Oregon, this year and the attendance and enthusiasm were at their highest yet. The Columbia Gorge Arts in Education hosted the event, and participants came from organizations around the state, including Fishtrap, The Nature of Words, professor Marjorie Sandor and four students from Oregon State University’s [...]

Here’s the opening part of a great article that Mark Pomeroy wrote about his time at Marshall High School, which is closing soon: A  week from graduation, she walks into her English class, sits down and looks to the overhead screen for the day’s prompt: “Neighborhood.” For a minute she quiets herself, pen in hand. [...]

After an awesome orientation, this year’s writers-in-residence are ready to go! Five of them are brand new to WITS (and are hard at work getting oriented in this photo). The attendees walked into p:ear on a crisp September day, looking much as their students will on the first day of school: armed with nervous-yet-excited smiles, [...]

Tucked amidst live music, sunshine, bustling PSU students, and the vibrant atmosphere of the Park Blocks was WITS Writer Laura Moulton’s mobile art exhibit- Object Permanence.   Working with scientist Jean Piaget’s idea that humans, when they are very young, associate meaning with objects, and remember those associations after the objects have disappeared, Moulton collected [...]

Joanna Rose is the author of the award-winning novel Little Miss Strange, and has a new novel looking for a home. Her short story If Your Hands Would be Like That was recently published in Artisan Journal, and her essay Paisley Afternoon is in the new anthology Citadel of the Spirit, a celebration of Oregon’s [...]

Natalie Serber’s work has appeared in The Bellingham Review, Fourth Genre, Gulf Coast, Inkwell, among others, the collections, Knowing Pains: Women on Love, Sex, and Work in our 40s and Airfare: Stories, Poems and Essays on Flight. She has been short-listed for Best American Stories. Awards include Tobias Wolff Award, H.E. Francis Award, John Steinbeck [...]

Jessica Lamb is our Writer-in-Residence at Cleveland High School. Winner of a Hopwood Award from the University of Michigan, Jessica Lamb’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, The Southern Review, and Willow Springs. Raised in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, she received a Master’s degree in Italian literature from Stanford University before settling in Portland, [...]

Matthew B. Zrebski is our Writer-in-Residence at Grant High School. A native Texan, Matt studied acting, directing, and playwriting at the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University and received his BFA in 1995. Having been closely mentored by Paul Walsh and Lou Salerni, Matt developed a deep passion for new work development [...]