POETRY CONTEST JUDGES 2025
Estrella Brown:
Estrella Brown's life began in the beautiful sunny state of Hawaii. She settled in Portland after attending the University of Portland and raised her family. She spent 33 years teaching English, 3 years in Portland and 30 enjoyable years at Camas High School in Camas, Washington. Now Estrella enjoys a quiet life in Clatskanie keeping herself busy with a variety of activities.
Marj Hogan:
Marj Hogan grew up in the Pacific Northwest and lives in the Kenton neighborhood, just south of the Columbia River. She teaches Spanish at Union High School and is an active member of her educators' union. Her poems have appeared in various publications, including Paperbark, Bear Deluxe Magazine, High Shelf, Pretty Owl, 3elements, and VoiceCatcher.
Scott MacGregor:
Scott MacGregor is a storyteller with a great love of poetry. He has written a handful of small books including Hookey Walker, illustrated by Tracy Precott MacGregor. He is a Jamestown S'Klallam member, farmer, indigenous drummer, and a part of the Skipper Jamestown Canoe Family. Scott can usually be found opening the Clatskanie Farmers Market with a beautiful, thought-provoking story.
Michael Calvin Mills:
Calvin Mills is a writer of fiction, essays, and plays. His short story collection, The Caged Man is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press (2025). His chapbook of creative nonfiction essays, A Handful of Tragic Days, will be released in April 2025. His stories and essays have appeared in Short Story, Weird Tales, and other magazines. He teaches writing and hosts The Raymond Carver Podcast at Peninsula College in Port Angeles, Washington. calvinmillslit.com
Dayle Olson:
Dayle Olson is a recent Northwest Voices featured writer at Lower Columbia College and won first prize for prose in the 2024 Oregon Poetry Association poetry competition. Her work appears in The Salal Review, Cathexis Northwest, Rockvale Review, and The Poeming Pigeon, among others. She is a frequent contributor to the Columbia River Reader. She is currently working on readying her first poetry collection for publication.
Cliff Taylor:
Cliff Taylor is an enrolled member of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska. He is a writer, poet, speaker, and storyteller. His essays and poems have been published both online and in print. He is the author of two books, most recently a poetry collection, The Native Who Never Left. Learn more on his website, cliffponca.com.
Armin Tolentino:
Armin Tolentino is the author of the poetry collection We Meant to Bring It Home Alive (Alternating Current Press) and served as poet laureate for Clark County, WA from 2021-2023. In partnership with middle grade novelist, Kate Ristau, he's co-authoring a children's book about Filipino mythology. He is a phenomenal clapper, a passable ukulele player, and a bumbling, but enthusiastic, fisherman. More info at www.armintolentino.com.
2025 PRESENTER BIOGRAPHIES, RAYMOND CARVER WRITING FESTIVAL
Moe Bowstern
Moe Bowstern contributes to underground literary culture as a reader, writer, and editor, notably of XtraTuf zine. She performs annually at the Fisher Poets Gathering in Astoria, Oregon. From 1997 to 2007 Moe gave her time to DIY agitprop, co-creating space for citizens to protest within the queer, fun-centered, anarchist Amalgamated Everlasting Union Chorus, and making ceremony outside of mainstream capitalism with an annual mega-collaboration, the Winter Solstice Puppet Show, among other projects. She co-wrote narration for the award-winning independent podcast "It Did Happen Here" and was the principal author for the subsequent book (PM Press, 2023).
Allen Braden
Allen Braden grew up in the Yakima Valley not far from where Carver grew up. He is the author of A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood, a finalist for the Walt Whitman Award judged by Mary Oliver, and Elegy in the Passive Voice, winner of the University of Alaska’s Midnight Sun Chapbook Contest. He has published recently in The Laurel Review, Interim and Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology.
Martha Gies
Portland writer Martha Gies has published widely over the last four decades in newspapers, magazines and literary quarterlies, including Gettysburg Review, Notre Dame Review, Orion, The Sun, and Zyzzyva. Her memoir, Broken Open, was published last fall by Wandering Aengus Press. A previous book, Up All Night (OSU Press, 2004) portrayed Portland through interviews with people who work graveyard shift, and was listed by the two major Oregon newspapers as one of “Ten Best Books of the Year.” In addition to her writing and teaching, she has been an activist for human rights and for maintaining housing affordable for the poor and elderly amidst a gentrifying city.
Holly Hughes
Holly J. Hughes is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Hold Fast, coauthor of The Pen and The Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World, and editor of several anthologies. Her fine-art chapbook Passings received an American Book Award in 2017. She is copublisher of Empty Bowl Press, directs Flying Squirrel Studio, which offers residencies for women, and consults as a writing coach. She divides her time between a log cabin in Indianola and her home in the Chimacum valley.
Mandy Ellen
Mandy grew up on the beaches of southern California, went to high school in Albany, Oregon (where she skipped class to hide out in the poetry section of the local used bookstore), and studied comparative literature at Berkeley (where she skipped class to hear the Lunch Poem readings in the Morrison Library). After a brief stint as a bookseller, Mandy found meaningful work in her favorite community spaces: public libraries. A lifetime pursuer of poetry, lover of languages, player of pianos, mother of twins, and slave to curiosity, Mandy can most often be found barefoot with a pocketful of lichens.
Laura Moulton
Laura Moulton is the founder of Street Books, a street library that serves people who live outside in Portland. She is the author of Loaners: The Making of a Street Library, co-written with Ben Hodgson. Moulton taught writing in Portland high schools for 20 years for Literary Arts, and for the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College. She is currently on the faculty of the Attic Institute. She is the founder of Truth & Dare, contemporary art/writing workshops created during the pandemic that is now a monthly community writing and art project published on substack. In 2025 Moulton received the Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award from Literary Arts in honor of her contributions to the literary life of Oregon.
Dayle Olson
Dayle Olson is a recent Northwest Voices featured writer at Lower Columbia College and won first prize for prose poetry in the 2024 Oregon Poetry Association contest. Her work appears in The Salal Review, Cathexis Northwest, Rockvale Review, and North Coast Squid, among others. She is a frequent contributor to the Columbia River Reader. Dayle has her sights on publishing her first poetry collection in the coming year. She lives in the small river town of Cathlamet with her husband, David.
Derek Sheffield
Derek Sheffield is no longer able to attend the 2025 Clatskanie Raymond Carver Writing Festival. (Updated April 8, 2025)
Armin Tolentino
Armin Tolentino is the author of the poetry collection We Meant to Bring It Home Alive (Alternating Current Press) and the children’s book, Mythwakers: The Manananggal (forthcoming from Hope Well Books). He served as poet laureate for Clark County, WA from 2021-2023. He earned an MFA at Rutgers University-Newark and is a former Oregon Literary Arts Fellow, Carolyn Moore House Writer in Residency, and Atticus Hotel Artist in Residency. He is a phenomenal clapper, a passable ukulele player, and a bumbling, but enthusiastic, fisherman.