Cedar Burnett profiled by Helen Landalf

Cedar Burnett has three tattoos. She acquired the first, the Winnie the Pooh that adorns her ankle, at the ripe old age of 15 – the same age at which she committed to being a writer.

Her early interest in writing isn’t surprising, since she grew up in the Bryant/Ravenna neighborhood of Seattle in a house full of books, with a mom who was an English teacher and an older sister who, according to Burnett, is a better writer than she is. Her parents met in a Christian commune in Switzerland. They named their daughter after the Cedar trees of Lebanon, which are known for their deep roots, in hopes that she would grow up grounded. She spent her childhood in Seattle’s damp weather and coffeehouse culture, and by the time she was in high school, she was hanging out at Bauhaus on Capital Hill, sporting a beret and smoking clove cigarettes as she penned plays. Then she won the National Council of Teachers of English essay contest, and a vision of herself as an essayist began to take shape.

When she went off to college at Evergreen, though, she studied everything but writing. Following some advice she’d heard, she instead set out to explore the subjects she thought she might be interested in writing about, including History, American Studies, and Russian Literature. After graduation she moved to Minneapolis, where she worked in the music industry and had the dubious distinction of having Hank Williams III grab her ass on a tour bus. From there it was back to Seattle for a stint in fundraising at KPLU, until, finally, she began her career as a freelancer willing to write about anything that someone will pay her to write about.

Burnett wears her second tattoo, the Neverending Story image on her back, as a proud badge of her self-professed status as a nerd who relishes composing articles, essays, and posts about pop culture. The topics she covers don’t end there, though, as she’s the first to admit that she’s “freakishly curious” and refuses to specialize. She has written on such diverse subjects as travel, home and garden, politics, and health for outlets ranging from parentmap.com to Fox News to the Wall Street Journal – and, most recently, the New York Times.

Her accomplishments are even more amazing when you factor in the fact that she has a two-year-old daughter and a maximum of just two full days per week to devote to writing. Motherhood has forced her to be efficient; she has no time for writer’s block. It has also, according to her, destroyed her ego – which, in terms of her freelance career, is a good thing. She maintains that freelancing requires “no ego and 100% tenacity” because you have to deal with constant rejection and editing of your precious work, yet still maintain the strength to keep going. Part of the reason she’s successful, she believes, is that she uses humiliation to spur herself on.

Burnett’s third tattoo, the whipworm on her abdomen, is the emblem of a more personal challenge, her quest to heal her ulcerative colitis, a form of Irritable Bowel Disease that she struggles with on a daily basis. Unlike its more benign cousin, IBS, which can be controlled with diet, IBD is a lifelong condition with no easy cure. But in typical Cedar Burnett style, rather than letting the disease stop her, she has used it to fuel her writing

In addition to writing blog posts about her disease, Burnett has penned a book on being a mother with ulcerative colitis titled Does This Diaper Make Me Look Fat? In it, she writes candidly about the challenges of taking care of someone else when you can barely take care of yourself. The book also details her attempts to heal herself through any means, including swallowing parasitic worms – thus the whipworm tattoo. Although Salon.com published an excerpt from Does This Diaper Make Me Look Fat, Burnett wonders whether the traditional publishing world “is…ready for a book about crapping your pants.”

Publishing her book, either traditionally or indie-style, is only one of Cedar Burnett’s goals. Her other two are to be heard on public radio’s “This American Life” and to have an essay published in the “Modern Love” section of the New York Times. With her track record, she’ll most likely accomplish all three. And if she does, maybe she’ll add a fourth tattoo.

Roselle Kovitz – A profile by Angie McCullagh

It was in the sunny college town of Claremont, California that Roselle Kovitz, daughter of a radio man and an artist-teacher mom, discovered her love for writing. She says that Claremont, designed to echo ivy league schools, along with her parents’ high regard for education, contributed to her curiosity and interest in learning. 

A Profile of Carol Levin

By Carl Deuker

Carol Levin

Sing! That’s what Carol Levin’s mother—blessed with an operatic voice– commanded. “Sing, Daughter, Sing. Sing like me.”

Music was in Carol’s house as she grew up. Music and a mother, but an absent father. Carol would come home from school and lose herself in scarves and blankets, as she twirled about her room, an only child dancing before thousands in her imagination. The love of music was in her blood, but she did not inherit the voice, much to her mother’s disappointment. “Sing, Daughter.” Read more →

Rita Bresnahan – Rich In Words

By Roselle Kovitz

On a wet fall morning, Rita Bresnahan welcomed me into her condo overlooking Shilshole Bay. Both of us stood for a few minutes, captivated by the view of masts set against the deep blue of the Puget Sound, trailing off into the horizon. Like the water that reached out in front of us, behind her smiling eyes, Rita seems vast, deep, playful and mysterious. She giggles at her good fortune to wake to this view every day, especially so, since she grew up in the Midwest on the edge of the Great Depression.

She was the second oldest of six in a devout Catholic family. “Our family was very poor, but oh so rich in the ways that count the most, what brings life meaning: love, spirit, values.”

Education was also important in her family, and all her siblings went on to finish college. Rita herself earned a BA in education and theology, an MSW, and a Ph.D. in psychology and spirituality. She taught for nearly 50 years, across subjects and grades, from elementary to high school, college and graduate school. For 35 years, she was a psychotherapist and for 25, a spiritual director, something she continues on a part time basis.

Rita loves to travel, and has spent extended time in South America, Africa and Europe. She also has a passion for being in nature, especially for the mountains. She even scaled sixteen of the14,000 foot peaks in Colorado!

In 1981, when the waters of the Northwest beckoned, she made her way to Seattle. She walks with friends or family along those waters nearly every day. Shortly after arriving here, she began teaching in the grad psych department at Antioch University, and at the Institute for Theological Studies at Seattle University.

“My work has always held deep meaning for me,” she says. And it has been quite diverse: as a social worker in the poverty areas of Illinois; also with special needs children, with troubled teens in a residential setting, and with elders at Foss Home. Through the years Rita has found ways to help people make sense of life by listening, and letting their own truth reveal itself—whether with a toddler examining a leaf, or with her mother when her mind was slipping away.

In Walking One Another Home: Moments of Grace and Possibility in the Midst of Alzheimer’s, published in 2003, Rita documents her extended visits with her mother as she succumbed to Alzheimer’s. Rita has heard from hundreds of readers who were inspired and helped by her story. To honor Alzheimer’s Day in 2009, BBC Mondo featured Rita responding to questions from readers of the Spanish version of her book on their BBC Latin American Service.

Rita writes what she calls “real-life narrative” and has “some 200 stories, poems and other material in its rawest form, just waiting to be called upon…or not,” she says. She is ever on the alert for “everyday kinds of poems.” “There is so much to marvel at, every day. I write when I’m touched by something or surprised…These days, I write mostly about times with the three children I play with nearly every day.” Whether talking about her nieces and nephews or her contemporaries, there is a sense of play in her eyes and in the way she speaks—sometimes with a bit of a lilt.

She’s an alumna of Hedgebrook, on the staff of Crone: Women Coming of Age, a frequent keynote speaker for conferences. She has offered hundreds of workshops, such as “With a Laughing Spirit,” “Aging as a Spiritual Journey,” “Creating Joy in Caregiving,” and “Leaving a Spiritual Legacy.” She also coaches aspiring writers.
Rita’s stories, poems and reflections have appeared in Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul, and also in A Time to Weep, A Time to Sing: Faith Journeys of Women Scholars of Religion.

As I left, Rita’s joy followed me, reminding me that it is available anywhere along the journey for us to take. She revels in the contentment of her “crone” years and time with her peers, as much as that she spends with her young nieces and nephews, hiking in the mountains, or meditating. In talking with her and reading her writing, it appears that when life’s winds kick up, she goes deep into the stillness where she finds an abiding sense of calm.

“Remember who you are,” her parents regularly reminded her, meaning that being in the Bresnahan family was a mark of honor. Now, Rita’s family is a vast one—like the Sound outside her window. Whether she’s writing about 3 year old Emma’s latest discovery, or her mother’s last days, her parents’ words seem to echo forward. Through her writing and her life, she seems to remember not only who she is, but who we all are.

Read Ballard Writers on other Ballard Writers every couple of weeks. If you join our group, you may enter your name on a slip of paper and put it in Bob Dalrymple’s hat. We’ll draw the name of someone for you to profile and someone else to profile you. Who will it be? The surprise is all part of the fun. Today, Roselle Kovitz profiles Rita Bresnahan.

A brief account of the whole Ingrid Ricks

Read Ballard Writers on other Ballard Writers every couple of weeks. If you join our group, you may enter your name on a slip of paper and put it in Bob Dalrymple’s hat. We’ll draw the name of someone for you to profile and someone else to profile you. Who will it be? The surprise is all part of the fun. Today, Carol Levin profiled Ingrid Ricks.

Nina Laden: The Whole Package

By Peggy Sturdivant

Nina Laden admits, “Ever since I was born I’ve been trying to do the whole package.” Although referring to writing and illustrating books the statement could apply to all aspects of her life.

She is so creative she can barely hear a word without realizing its story potential, gather shells without creating jewelry, or pick berries without making her own liqueur (and labels).

Nina credits her creativity in part to genetics; her parents were both artists. From the time she could hold a crayon she was drawing. At three she was folding paper into books and dictating stories to her mother. She completed her first book, “The Unbearable Bird,” at nine years old; including a dedication to her 4th grade teacher and handwritten copyright. With every single school assignment she included full-page color illustrations.

A framed illustration from her 4th grade book hangs on the wall of her Ballard home office, next to the bookshelf with first editions of some of her 13 books in print, above the oak file drawer that belonged to her mother and holds every sketchbook journal she’s kept since a teenager.

The journals hold ideas for projects already realized and still to come. Hence a notebook is always close by, because that way no idea is ever lost. When Nina visits schools or speaks to groups about inspiring creativity she passes on her most important lesson, “Never tear out any pages.” In the journal drawer there’s a gift from a high school friend who must have been wise beyond her years. The journal was one continuous page so Nina couldn’t tear anything out.

These journals and notebooks contain sketches as well as ideas, including one of her teacher Tobias Wolff at Syracuse University who was surprised to learn she was a Fine Arts major rather than one in Creative Writing. The writing was intuitive, she wanted to master illustration so she could create that full package. Nina also wanted to have her first book published by the time she was 30 years old. The Night I Followed the Dog was in bookstores when she was thirty-two.

In the 18 years since that children’s book Nina has had 12 more books published, illustrated three others, won numerous national awards and has a book she authored due out in December 2013, through Little, Brown. She also has a young adult novel being “shopped” by her agent and several other projects in various stages. Her picture book Peek-A-Who was on Scholastic’s 100 Greatest Books for Kids list that was released in 2012.

Since her youthful desire for publishing Nina has acquired more patience, realizing that even time not spent illustrating in her studio or writing in her office is creative time. However she wishes she did have more time to devote to work. Along with her husband Booth she raised three stepsons and the last years have had more than their share of challenges, Booth’s father’s death, her father’s mental illness. Nina’s mother died when she was in her mid-twenties; Nina hopes she somehow knows of her success in creating award-winning children’s books.

“The story is what matters to me the most,” Nina said. “I can draw in any style but the story is what brings a child back over and over.” Even though for the first time she won’t be illustrating the forthcoming Once Upon A Memory it is her story and rhyme. “I’ve never been accused of warm and fuzzy,” she said referring to the publisher’s concept for this book, “but the collaboration has been a great symbiosis.”

Although raised in Queens and then New York State Nina came to Seattle by way of Atlanta.

She met her future husband Booth Buckley in Atlanta. On a subsequent visit to him in Seattle, “The coffee blew my mind.” After all she was a child raised by New York artists, with her mother stirring a teaspoon of espresso into her milk. Now she stirs a teaspoon of milk into her Kenyan coffee, her mother’s stovetop espresso makers still very much part of her spotless kitchen. What could she do but move here and buy a house in Ballard?

The 1903 Ballard Farmhouse is another one of Nina’s artistic creations, along with her husband Booth. “The history of the house is written on the walls.” It’s true, the original owner did write on the walls. In the backyard she has a studio and Booth has a garage and storage for their kayaks. Just as in her speech everything but the exterior of the house speaks to the creativity percolating inside night and day. Nina had the idea to use aluminum diamond plate in the kitchen, usually seen only on semi-trucks. From cooking to jewelry making to book projects, “I have never ever been without ideas,” Nina says.

Just as in her illustrations Nina Laden doesn’t get described as warm and fuzzy. Her mind is too sharp, her past too dark. Possibly her contradictions create the tension at the root of all compelling stories. She’s anti-social by nature and yet appears to open her life to others in words and photos on-line, through website, blog and Facebook. Her energy is incredible yet she claims to know that rest is essential. On the eve of what life has most recently put across her tracks, her husband’s need for triple bypass surgery, she’s as fierce and yet nurturing as a mother bear. When Nina Laden says, “No one will get between me and my husband’s life,” know that she means every word, with or without illustrations.

Read Ballard Writers on other Ballard Writers every couple of weeks. If you join our group, you may enter your name on a slip of paper and put it in Bob Dalrymple’s hat. We’ll draw the name of someone for you to profile and someone else to profile you. Who will it be? The surprise is all part of the fun. Today, Peggy Sturdivant profiled Nina Laden.

You can read more about Nina Laden at her website, www.ninaladen.com.

And thanks Ballard News Tribune, for letting Peggy reprint her article here.

An Early Morning Coffee Chat With Alison Krupnick

Interview by BJ Neblett

How do you interview a master interviewer? That was the daunting task I faced on a recent early October morning. If experience is any gauge of ability then Alison Krupnick has certainly achieved the title of Master Interrogator. I met Alison at one of Seattle’s more charming neighborhood coffee spots, and soon began to wonder who the interviewer was and whom the interviewee.

I found Alison to be a totally charming and ageless beauty who is as interesting as she is outspoken. I attributed this to her East Coast upbringing. “I’m a Jersey Girl through and through,” she proudly announced, anticipating my first question. Although it’s been a while since she called Lakewood, a small community near the Jersey Shore, home Alison’s well planted roots are evident.

But unbridled wanderlust found Alison studying languages and international relations in France and later college on the Monterey Peninsula. A move to Washington DC and she landed her dream job as a diplomat with the State Department. For the next ten years Alison represented the US in exotic locales such as India, Thailand and Vietnam, where she helped many displaced or orphaned by the war find their way to America. It was also while serving in Vietnam that Alison met Jeff, her husband of now sixteen years. Jeff and Alison have two daughters, and although settled in Seattle, the old wanderlust has yet to be sated. “I just love to travel, and there are still so many places I want to visit and things I want to discover.” The faraway twinkle in her expressive eyes punctuates the point.

The frothy mocha I ordered has turned cold as I find myself completely captivated. Conversation with Alison is so easy and natural that I have to keep reminding myself of my purpose and the notes hastily scribbled on a legal tablet. “Ok, so, why writing?” I ask.

“The first thing I ever wrote was an essay about 9/11. Putting my thoughts and feelings on paper seemed to help make some sense of things.” Here Alison shows what I assume is a somewhat rare serious side. “I began writing stories for my kids, and then about friends and people I met or saw on the streets.” An article about her exploits in Vietnam was published in the Harvard Review. Another, about a terminally ill friend, found national publication. She went on to publish a number of essays in literary journals and anthologies.

Alison now writes full-time, for work as well as pleasure. She works as a corporate communication writer, writing a quarterly maritime magazine, and freelances for Seattle Magazine. This very busy lady also manages to find time to write for Crosscut, an on-line publication, as well as maintain her own blog, Slice of Mid Life. Somewhere along the way she managed to write her first book. Ruminations From The Minivan: Musings From A World Grown Large, Than Small to be available in book and Kindle formats and hopefully will also be on the shelves of your favorite bookstore by the end of the year.

“Ruminations is very aptly titled, I literally wrote it while driving my kids to and from school and soccer and everything else a good suburban mom does. It’s a memoir, a collection of the essays I started in 2001.”

Aside from observing everyday things around her, Alison finds inspiration in the power of the written word. When not writing or working or driving or being a full-time mom, Alison enjoys international cooking, travel, reading, and founded a mother-daughter book group, now in its seventh year. “It’s encouraging to see young people interested in talking about books,” she says.

As for the future, Alison has the herculean task of promoting a self-published book. “After my manuscript won an award at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association conference, I was contacted by a few agents, but I was just uncomfortable with the process, so I set the book aside for several years. Now was the time for the book to be published. It won’t be easy, but…” Ms. Krupnick’s Jersey fortitude and stubbornness are obvious when she talks about getting Ruminations published and into the hands of readers. “I also plan to continue my blog and eventually it might meld into my next book.”

If Ruminations is half as interesting and entertaining as morning coffee with Alison, than she has a best seller on her hands.

You can find more on and about Alison Krupnick at:
alisonkrupnick.com
sliceofmidlife.com
crosscut.com
ballardwriters.org

Angie McCullagh: Not Too Tall for Words

By Jan Dalrymple

Angie McCullagh

Read Ballard Writers on other Ballard Writers every couple of weeks. If you join our group, you may enter your name on a slip of paper and put it in Bob Dalrymple’s hat. We’ll draw the name of someone for you to profile and someone else to profile you. Who will it be? The surprise is all part of the fun. Today, Jan Dalrymple profiles Angie McCullagh.

Angie McCullagh discovered her passion for writing fiction when she was in Middle School in a small rural community in Michigan. She had what appeared to be the misfortune of having the toughest teacher in school for 8th Grade English. Everyone was afraid of him. He demanded perfection to the extreme for everything from writing to posture. For unusually tall Angie slouching was the only way to blend in, but her teacher would have none of it. Then one day he called her aside. This time instead of reprimanding her, he gave her a totally unexpected glowing complement. He referred to one of her short stories as “top drawer”. That ignited her creativity and she has been going strong ever since.

It hasn’t been easy for Angie, however, even with her successes. The unusual tallness that was tough to deal with when she was an eighth grader and before is something she has to fight against even today. When Angie was in the 9th Grade and 5’10” tall her parents took her to the doctor to see if she had reached her maximum height. The women in her family were pretty normal in size. Her mother was 5’6” and it was looking as if her younger sister wouldn’t get past 5’3”. Everyone was hopeful that Angie had stopped growing. But to Angie’s dismay, she was told that she had more growing to do. Her height was projected to be 6’2”. Angie broke into tears. She was certain more than ever that she would never fit in.

As soon as she graduated from high school Angie moved out of her small town and went off to the big campus of Michigan State University. It was a chance to blend in to an environment where she wasn’t totally out of place. She majored in journalism, but upon graduation realized that even though she loved writing, reporting was not her passion. She found more gratification working in graphic design. She worked in Detroit until she was 24 then with a spirit of adventure joined her boyfriend as he moved to a job in the Pacific Northwest.

That change was only to last for two years. An uncomfortable split with her boyfriend made her seek the comfort of familiar Michigan. She got a job in graphic design at a Financial Services company, but really longed for what she had found in the Pacific Northwest. Three years later she moved back to Seattle and took on jobs as a graphic designer for a Newspaper Chain and then the Alaska Airlines In-Flight Magazine.

She found a great 6’4” guy in Seattle, got married, had her first child Max when she was 33 and her second child Claire two years later. Through it all Angie was writing. That passion she had found in the 8th Grade never went away. She had her first short story published in a literary journal “Phoebe” when she was pregnant with Max. At the same time she worked on a contemporary adult novel. She actively sought to get it published, but the exhausting ritual of submissions followed by interest then rejections made her decide to set that novel aside.

Among Angie’s many current projects, she has two very creative and engaging blogs. In her blog alladither.com, Angie describes herself as a “writer, mom and photography enthusiast”. It was because of a piece she did on her blog about the experience she had with rhinoplasty surgery (nose job) that Angie found her current 15 hour a week job at the start-up Realself.com. Actually they found her. The site allows viewers to “Find, Share and Discuss the Real Story about Cosmetic Treatment”. Her ability as a skillful communicator who had experience with plastic surgery attracted the attention of the developer of Real Self and Angie liked what she could do for them.

Angie also has another blog halfassedkitchen.com. The recipes and photography made my mouth water and I wasn’t even hungry at the time. I understand that you can rate the recipes at their level of “assed-ness”.

And if all of this isn’t enough, Angie has completed her self-published Young Adult novel “Spectacle”. The novel revolves around the life of a girl who is six feet tall and growing. It is a topic that Angie knows intimately and makes for a very accurate great read even for older adults. It is an e-book that is available through Amazon.

You can learn more about “Spectacle” and Angie on her blog alladither.com. 

Nancy Schatz Alton: Terrible Receptionist, Passionate Writer

By Elena Louise Richmond

Read Ballard Writers on other Ballard Writers every couple of weeks. If you join our group, you may enter your name on a slip of paper and put it in Bob Dalrymple’s hat. We’ll draw the name of someone for you to profile and someone else to profile you. Who will it be? The surprise is all part of the fun. Today, Elena Louise Richmond profiles Nancy Schatz Alton.

Nancy Schatz Alton – The Healthy Back Book

Nancy Schatz Alton told me she was used to being the interviewer, not the interviewee.  I’m not used to sticking to the facts so both of us were looking at unfamiliar territory when we set up our interview.  She came to my house: with two children under the age of ten, she wanted to get out of hers.  Me, I can’t think in noisy, crowded coffee shops and bars. With our Gemini suns, both of us are easily over-stimulated and prone to generate more energy within ourselves than we know what to do with.  We both prefer one-on-one time with people.

I found it interesting that Nancy was used to being the listener because she didn’t even need to be wound up.  Her story poured out of her.  Maybe that’s what interviewing does to you after a while. We all have stories to tell.  But she started by saying she couldn’t imagine how I would interview her because she wasn’t a fascinating person. I asked her to tell me the most uninteresting thing about her.

“I grew up in suburban Minnesota,” she said.

That explains the self-deprecation.

After graduating from Macalester College, Nancy came to Seattle and showed enviable initiative in applying for writing jobs.  She wrote for Adventure Media airline magazines. When she couldn’t find writing jobs, she worked as a receptionist at Seattle magazine.

“I was a terrible receptionist,” she said.  “I was annoyed with everyone who came in. I wanted to say, ‘Why are you here?’ All I wanted to do was write.”

She wrote The Healthy Back Book and The Healthy Knee Book with Astrid Pujari, a Seattle physician and founder of The Pujari Center of spiritually centered and integrative medicine.  The work required her to ask medical professionals to contribute their expertise which in turn involved a lot of cold calling.  Nancy described her first cold call to a doctor.

“He asked, ‘What’s in it for me?’ All I could think was Don’t hang up the phone!”

Nancy told the doctor the truth: that he wouldn’t get any financial remuneration but he would get his name put to his contribution along with the knowledge that someone might be helped by what he had to say.  She never heard from him again.

But she finished both books and got a couple of nice fat advances for them.  She hasn’t seen anything since because the publisher hasn’t promoted the books.  We talked about self-promotion and marketing.  Nancy said she would promote a book if she felt passionate enough about it. We agreed that’s what it takes: one has to feel passionate if she is going to shove herself out there into the world and declare, “I am very proud of my life and my book.”

Nancy is passionate about what she’s working on now: a memoir about being a mother to a dyslexic child: But Still and Yet is about “how to be in the world differently.”  As she works on this book, she writes a lovely, reflective blog.

How she finds time to do any of this, I don’t know.  She’s married to Chris Alton and the two of them have two daughters KK, 10 and Elizabeth Annie, 7.   Here is Nancy’s description of herself from her website:

“I’m a freelance writer, editor, and writing coach, too. I’m a baker and a short-order cook by virtue of the fact that I love to eat and I have two picky children to feed. I’m a runner who can’t imagine not lacing up my running shoes at least a few times a week. And a walk with family or friends is bliss.”

She doesn’t mention what a fascinating person she is to talk with.

You can find out more about Nancy Schatz Alton. Visit her personal page on Ballardwriters.org.

The Many Loves of Laura Cooper

By Sheila Kelly

Read Ballard Writers on other Ballard Writers every couple of weeks. If you join our group, you may enter your name on a slip of paper and put it in Bob Dalrymple’s hat. We’ll draw the name of someone for you to profile and someone else to profile you. Who will it be? The surprise is all part of the fun. Today, Sheila Kelly profiles Laura Cooper.

Laura Cooper

You might know Laura Cooper as fisherwoman, writer, cook, artist, photographer natural resource advocate, or neighborhood activist. If you don’t know her and find yourself standing next to her at some garden party and you lead with “So what do you do?”, she pauses before replying that she is “an artist, writer, small business owner, and Ballard denizen” Notice that “artist” is first, though she is one of three authors of The Fishes and Dishes Cookbook, Seafood Recipes and Salty Stories from Alaska’s Commercial Fisherwomen, a book that American Booksellers Association included among the “Top 20 ‘great reads’ of 2010.” She readily admits that only two of the 80 recipes in the book are hers, though she does love food. When you look for her on Amazon be sure to search for “Laura K. Cooper.” (Otherwise you’ll get that other Cooper woman who wrote My Hot Bedtime Stories and Confessions of a Slut Wife.) Our Laura did contribute artwork and salty stories for Fishes and Dishes, based on her years as a cook and deckhand, long-lining and salmon tendering in Alaska. (If you wonder just what those terms mean, the book’s helpful glossary provides a quick lesson in the vocabulary of commercial fishing.) At the age of four, Laura caught a trout out of a stocked

swimming pool in Santa Barbara, and she was hooked on fishing. She always was fascinated by Alaska because her great-grandfather was in the last Alaskan gold rush up in Fairbanks. By 1990 she had gotten a job on a long-liner and worked her way north.

After a few years fishing out the Aleutian Chain, she became concerned over depleted stocks and the efforts to privatize this public resource. She got off the water and into politics through the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council. She advocated for equity for the small boat industry. Later she earned a Master’s Degree at University of Washington with a focus on natural resources and joined the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) where she worked to harness market forces to promote sustainable fishing. She also worked as the Alaskan liaison for WWF’s Arctic Program promoting sustainable tourism. Both those efforts paid off: she helped establish protocols for the eco labeling of fish; and on an Artic excursion she met her future husband.

After she quit fishing, burned out on writing policy position papers and doing advocacy work, Laura decided to let herself be the artist she always knew she was. She turned her original collages into greeting cards and launched a business, Blue Flower Designs—her collage art cinched her role as a co-author of Fishes and Dishes Cookbook.

Her migration to Ballard happened out of the blue. In 1989 she walked over the hill from Phinney Ridge to meet a guy in Ballard, and fell in love—with Ballard. She felt comfortable there; her resonance with the salt water and the boats came from growing up on a coast. Later she discovered that her great-grandparents also lived in Ballard from 1914-1917. She grew up in Connecticut with no sense of a Scandinavian identity, though she is one quarter Swedish and her best friend was Norwegian. She was 32 the first time she went to Sweden where everyone looked familiar. She is now on the board of the Ballard Historical Society. She helped “Bring the Ring Back to Ballard” reinstating the Ballard Bell at 22^nd NW Ballard Avenue. As a contributor to the Nordic Heritage Museum’s Oral History Project, she recorded the stories of local fisherman. She learned that back in her fish tendering days, eighteen years ago, the guy she was delivering salmon to in King Cove Alaska was her fourth cousin.

With her fishing and Scandinavian heritage duly honored, Laura now is in the early stages of writing about her three generations of great-grandparents who were pioneers on the Olympic Peninsula. They lived in New Dungeness (Sequim) and Discovery Bay. Her great, great grandfather was Sheriff of the Olympic Peninsula. Through her research she got interested in the Tubal-Cain Copper Mine in Buckhorn Mountain near Sequim. (Tubal-Cain appears in the Bible as a “forger of all instruments of bronze and iron.”) The mine was a bust and abandoned in 1920. This summer Laura climbed the 6992 foot Buckhorn mountain, went 150 meters into the mine adit, and walked through the ruins of the mining camp among metal boilers and cabin foundations. She has combed the files and archives of the area and wonders whether she still “may be missing a critical piece.” She is hoping to unearth letters or diaries from the early 20^th century. She has not decided whether she is writing historical fiction, a family memoir, or a collection of good stories to hand on to her niece.

You can find out more about Laura Cooper. Visit her personal page on Ballardwriters.org.