Anna has played with language for over fifty years and written for the last 45, which is quite a lot if you think about it. If you ask her if she’s a writer, she will say, Yes! Not because she’s published, (because she is and she has the $1.75 royalty check each month to prove it) but because she writes everyday.

       Sometimes she writes really good stuff and other times she writes junk, but the point is she calls herself a writer because she writes. She becomes agitated by anyone who define writers as those “who have published.” Writers are people who write.

      Anna writes because it challenges her to stay in the moment and connects her to deeper levels of herself. Writing helps her make sense of the fragments, images and ideas that fly into the face of her reality. On a good day writing entertains her and reminds her there’s a larger picture.  On a brave day, she’ll flash light into the dark places.

      She’s pleased when others enjoy her writing, which is about half the time. If they don’t like what she writes, she tells herself one of two things; perhaps they aren’t her audience, or as much as she hates to admit it, she may still have some work to do. Writing is after all, communication.

     When people come into The Writers’ Workshoppe and say, “I really want to write but I doubt I could ever get published, ” she’ll respond by saying something like;

 “Do you play an instrument or a sport or have a craft of some sort?”

“Yes,” they’ll most likely say.

"Are you in the Seattle Symphony or with the Sounders?”

“No.”

      At that point they’ll get her point and consider writing just because it feels good.

      For those of you who need something a bit more substantial, Anna has twenty-six years of experience leading writing workshops on Bainbridge Island and Seattle.

    She has published in “Literature Circles and Response, now in its 5th printing, “Practical Aspects of Authentic Assessment”, “Instructor Magazine”, the “National Council of Teachers of English Journal,” and various other educational magazines. She is also ridiculously proud to say she wrote the final chapter of Port Townsend’s serial novel, “Scuttlebutt.

    In 2010, Anna completed her memoir Speak: The impact of family secrets on the individual, family and culture.She is currently working on her first novel, The Other Side of Silence.

   Finally, no matter one’s publishing history, Anna will continue to define a

writer as someone who writes.

Peter Quinn is a poet and business person. Businessman poets are odd, but it works for him. A graduate of Lewis and Clark College, he studied with poets Vern Rutsala, Tony Ostroff and William Stafford. In 1976 he received an Academy of American Poets Award. For several years following, poet John Willson and Peter convened a poetry group called Moonphases in Portland.

At the beginning of his 35 year career in business, Peter worked as a copywriter, free lance journalist and newsletter editor. He has assisted in the editing of several books, one published by Wiley. A lifelong lover of sci-fi, historical fiction and non-fiction, he enjoys content editing works in those genres.

He has published in Mississippi Mud, Foxfire, the Portland Oregonian and Pacific Northwest Magazine, Tidepools, Northwinds Anthology, and the Port Townsend Leader,. He continues to write poetry and lead workshops to feed his poetry passion. Peter is currently working on a book, “The Poet Creeps Out”.