Skagit Valley Poet & Memoirist

Jessica Gigot

author of the memoir A Little Bit of Land and the poetry collection Feeding Hour

in conversation with series host

Michael N. McGregor

author of Pure Act and the forthcoming novel The Last Grand Tour

6 p.m., Thursday, January 9

Cascadia Art Museum, 190 Sunset Ave, Edmonds, WA 98020

(To order tickets through the Cascadia website, click here)

Jessica Gigot is a poet, memoirist, farmer, and writing coach who lives on a small sheep farm in the Skagit Valley. Called Harmony Fields, the farm produces artisan sheep cheese and organic herbs. Gigot holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University and a PhD in Horticulture and Plant Pathology from Washington State University.

Antrim House Books published Gigot’s first book of poems, Flood Patterns, in 2015. Her second book, Feeding Hour, came out in 2020 from Wandering Aengus Press and was a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Award. Oregon State University Press published her first memoir, A Little Bit of Land, in 2022. Claire Dederer, author of Love & Trouble and Poser, called the memoir “a tender meditation on the meaning of home, the practice of farming, and what it means to be connected to the land” while praising Gigot’s writing as “lyrical, immediate, and sharply observed.”

Gigot has published other writings and reviews in a number of publications, including Orion, Ecotone, Terrain.org, Poetry Northwest, and the New York Times. A poetry editor for The Hopper literary journal, Gigot is also the creator and host of the podcast Her Deepest Ecologies.  You can read more about her and her work at jessicagigot.com.

You can purchase Jessica Gigot’s books online at the Edmonds Bookshop.

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About the Cascadia Writers-in-Conversation Series

On the second Thursday of each month, host Michael N. McGregor will bring one Northwest writer in front of an enthusiastic audience for a brief reading, a discussion of the author’s work, and a question-and-answer session with engaged literature lovers.

The series is intended to showcase the wealth of writing talent in the Pacific Northwest. To that end, it will feature writers from different genres at different stages of their careers who may have been overlooked rather than those readers already know.

Writers who appear in the series will be featured on WritingtheNorthwest.com.

This is a unique chance to hear talented writers speak in-depth about what it means to be an author in the Northwest and why and how they create their works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The conversations will all take place in one of Cascadia’s beautiful galleries, with Northwest art lining the walls.

Cascadia Art Museum is the only museum dedicated to artists and their works from the Pacific Northwest. Focused on visual art and design from 1860 to 1970, it is committed to the belief that recognizing previously neglected artists who made significant contributions to the region’s cultural identity gives us a fuller and more comprehensive understanding of Northwest art history. The Writers-in-Conversation series signals the museum’s desire to highlight underappreciated Northwest artists in literature as well. The series is sponsored by the Edmonds Bookshop and Holman.

Michael N. McGregor is Seattle-based author whose book Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax was a finalist for a Washington State Book Award. After living his early life in Seattle, he spent 17 years as an award-winning professor of creative writing at Portland State University, where he helped found the MFA in Creative Writing program. A former member of the Advisory Committee for the Oregon Book Awards and Fellowships, he holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Oregon and an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University in New York. His next book, The Last Grand Tour (a novel), will be published on January 28, 2025, by Portland publisher Korza Books.

Note: I’m an affiliate of Bookshop.org, where your purchases support local bookstores. If you buy a book through a click on this website, I’ll earn a small commission that helps defray the costs of maintaining WritingtheNorthwest.co