Kim Stafford's publications

Kim Stafford's vita

The Archive of William Stafford

Kim Stafford's writing samples

The Northwest Writing Institute

We live in a world where a few people could destroy us all, but a few people cannot save us. The math doesn't work that way. We can only be saved when many people -- and finally all people -- recognize and live by our true interdependence on earth. This means that education, interactive culture, and the expressive arts are the greatest priority of our time. They may not be funded as such, but they are in fact. Writers have a place in this essential work -- to question, listen, and tell the connecting stories of human experience, the quiet voices of local life everywhere. This is the work I champion, through my own writing and teaching, and through the programs we have created in the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College. What is the place of the Internet in this work? It seems to me that in our time there is a great thing not yet done: it is the marriage of Woody Guthrie's gusto and the Internet. It is the composing and wide sharing of affectionate songs, poems, stories, and letters public in all directions -- by those with voice, for those with need. This is our work, and our delight.

Kim Stafford grew up in Oregon, Iowa, Indiana, California, and Alaska, following his parents as they taught and traveled through the West. He has taught at Lewis & Clark College since 1979, where he directs the Northwest Writing Institute, and teaches writing. He also serves as the Literary Executor for the William Stafford Archive, helping readers and publishers to increase public access to William Stafford's writing. He has worked as an oral historian, letterpress printer, editor, photographer, teacher, and visiting writer at a host of small towns in the Pacific Northwest, and at colleges in New York, California, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon.

His publications include A Thousand Friends of Rain: New & Selected Poems (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1999); Wheel Made of Wind (a CD of original songs, Little Infinities, 1997); Having Everything Right: Essays of Place (rpt. Sasquatch Books, 1996); We Got Here Together (a children's book, Harcourt Brace, 1994); Wind on the Waves (short stories, Graphic Arts, 1992); Lochsa Road: A Pilgrim in the West (a travel essay, Confluence Press, 1991); Entering the Grove (essays in celebration of trees, Peregrine Smith, 1990); Places & Stories (poems, Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1987); Rendezvous: Stories, Songs, & Opinions of the Idaho Country (Idaho State University Press, 1982); A Gypsy's History of the World (poems, Copper Canyon Press, 1976).

Stafford has received two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his book Having Everything Right won a Western States Book Award in 1986. He received an Oregon Governor's Arts Award in 1998. He holds a Ph.D. in medieval literature from the University of Oregon, and lives in Portland with his wife and children.

Swans sing before they die.

Should people?

--poem by an Idaho child

updated: 18 May 2005