Novelist & Librettist

Karen Fisher

author of

A Sudden Country

in conversation with series host

Michael N. McGregor

author of The Last Grand Tour

& An Island to Myself: The Place of Solitude in an Active Life

6:00 p.m., Thursday, February 12

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

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

Karen Fisher’s A Sudden Country is one of the most stunning novels written about the Oregon Trail and the Pacific Northwest. When it first appeared, USA Today called it “an instant classic” and the Library Journal proclaimed it a “literary masterpiece.” At its heart is the bond between a hard-bitten trader from Montana’s rugged Bitterroot Mountains and a resourceful and reluctant emigrant mother heading West.

A Sudden Country is “a gorgeous and mesmerizing story of a journey,” says author Karen Joy Fowler. “Fisher provides both the historical context and the perfect detail with equal grace. She deals in big emotions, big adventures, big landscapes, and human-size people. This is a remarkable, remarkable book and I loved every word of it.”

Fisher’s book won the Washington State Book Award and the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for best novel, and was a PEN/Faulkner finalist.

Fisher has spent her life exploring the cultural, physical, economic, intellectual and emotional edges of the American West. The descendant of pioneers on both sides, she holds a BA in history from the University of California at Santa Barbara. In 1990, she and her husband left secure teaching jobs to take up farming on a remote homestead in Idaho. In 1998, they moved to Lopez Island, off the Washington coast, where they cleared forests, built a house, and sailed the Northern waters.

In addition to being an author, Fisher has worked as a wilderness guide, teacher, arborist, market gardener, custom home-builder, and horse trainer. A National Endowment of the Arts recipient, she has taught for Hugo House, the University of Washington, and Fishtrap. Now, she teaches from her Lopez Island home, sings, plays, writes (poetry, memoir and fiction), and enjoys the process of moving her many creative endeavors forward through the ever-shifting fields of time, inspiration, and collaboration.

In January 2025, Fisher’s first libretto, for the opera Precipice, had its debut in New York. She is working on her next one while also completing the second and third books of a trilogy about the end or the beginning of the world.

You can read more about Fisher and her work at karenfisherauthor.com.

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Purchase Karen Fisher’s A Sudden Country 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 brings 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 showcases the wealth of writing talent in the Pacific Northwest by featuring 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 are also featured on WritingtheNorthwest.com.

The series offers 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 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 co-sponsored by the Edmonds Bookshop.

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 first novel, The Last Grand Tour, and his first memoir, An Island to Myself: The Place of Solitude in an Active Life, were published in 2025.

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.com.