Board of Directors
"Leave a space for the reader at the end of a poem." - Brian Turner
.The OPN Board helps steer the Olympia Poetry Network's direction, MC's our monthly General Meetings and readings, invites featured readers and recruits workshop facilitators. The Board is composed of nine local poets actively producing work, introduced below. Coming Soon! Photos and bios of our newest, valued Board members, Dennis Connolly and Lesia Alexander.
Chris Dahl
Newsletter Editor Chris Dahl's chapbook, Mrs. Dahl in the Season of Cub Scouts, was published by Still Waters Press after winning their Women's Words competition. She has been published in journals such as Poetry Northwest, Seattle Review and Cascadia Review--who nominated one of her poems for Best of the Internet. She completed her M.A. (M.F.A. equivalent) at the University of Washington. Currently, she lives in Olympia, Washington where she serves on the board of the Olympia Poetry Network and edits their newsletter. |
Terri Cohlene
Communications/Special Events Terri Cohlene grew up in Skyway, a suburb of Renton, Washington where she competed with her two brothers in polliwog-catching, berry-tossing and slug-handling. Her work is influenced by car trips to Eastern Washington and visits to her grandparents’ apple orchard in Cashmere. She is the author of nine books for children including Won’t Papa Be Surprised! Something Special and Witch’s Brew, and she wrote and assisted in the production of Clique, a stage play for young adults. Her poetry has appeared in such publications as: Godiva Speaks, Pontoon 8 & 9, Floating Bridge Review, Arnazella, Stories with Grace, Switched on Gutenberg, and the anthology, America at War. She collected and edited two adult poetry anthologies, Godiva Speaks I & II. Terri's work may be seen at www.terricohlene.com. |
Cynthia Pratt
Treasurer/Membership Cynthia Pratt (she/her) is one of the founding members of the Olympia Poetry Network’s board which has been in existence for over 30 years. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, Raven Chronicles, Feminist Theology Poetry, The Raven’s Perch, The Writing Disorder, The Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Dreich Magazine, Kestrel Journal, Skink Beat Review, Quarter Press and other publications, and in the anthologies, Tattoos on Cedar (2006), Godiva Speaks (2011), two anthologies by the Fusion Collective, Dancing on the Edges (2017) and Garden of the Covid Museum (2021), Hidden in Childhood anthology and the anthology by Washington Humanities and Empty Bowl Press, I Sing the Salmon Home (2023). Her manuscript, Celestial Drift¸ was published in 2016. She is a former Fish and Wildlife biologist. A former Lacey Council member and Deputy Mayor of the City of Lacey for the last 12 years, her term ended in December 2021. She is the first Poet Laureate of Lacey as of 2022. Website: Cynthia-Pratt-poet.net |
Sandy Yannone
At Large/Special Events Sandra Yannone published her debut poetry collection, Boats for Women from Salmon Poetry in 2019. Her poems and book reviews have appeared in numerous print and online journals including Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner,The Stony Thursday Book, Glass:Poetry Journal, Women’s Review of Books, The Gay and Lesbian Review (Worldwide), Calyx, and Seattle Review. She also has written articles about the intersections between poetry and social justice for the monthly newspaper Works in Progress. Visit her at www.sandrayannone.com for more information. |
Patrick Dixon
Photographer/Website manager Patrick Dixon is a writer/photographer retired from careers in teaching and commercial fishing. He has been published in several literary journals, including Cirque, Panoplyzine, Oberon, The Raven Chronicles, and The Tishman Review. His work has appeared in the anthologies FISH 2015 and WA129, and in the Raven Chronicles’ Washington State Book Award-winning anthology, Take a Stand: Art Against Hate. His chapbook Arc of Visibility won the 2015 Alabama State Poetry Morris Memorial Award. His poem Western Washington November was selected as a winner of the 2023 “Poems of Place” competition by the Cirque Literary Journal. Mr. Dixon lives in Olympia, Washington.
Mr. Dixon’s book, “Waiting to Deliver, from greenhorn to skipper, an Alaskan commercial fishing memoir” (2022), chronicles his 20 years commercial drift salmon fishing on Cook Inlet, Alaska in prose, poetry and original photographs. Excerpts may be read on his website: http://www.patrickdixon.net/store/c1/Featured_Products.html. |
Nathalie Kuroiwa-Lewis
Secretary Nathalie Kuroiwa-Lewis is an associate professor at Saint Martin’s University and has published poetry in OccuPoetry, Social Policy, Penny Ante Feud, Dark Matter, That Literary Review and In Layman’s Terms and is submitting her first collection of poetry for consideration for publication to various presses. She is also writing a second collection and is learning the classical guitar in order to write lyrics and compose music for the guitar. Nathalie is passionate about issues related to climate change and social justice and finds inspiration in writing poems about the beauty of nature in the Pacific Northwest. Half French-Canadian, Nathalie speaks French and is an ardent traveler having lived in Quebec, Japan, and the Czech Republic. |
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Lesia Alexander
At Large |
Thomas A. Thomas
At Large/Photographer |
Dennis Connolly
At Large |
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Lesia Alexander grew up in New York City a first generation Ukrainian American. Museums, shows, gatherings of music, art, and poetry were daily fare and deeply influenced who she became and how she navigated her life. Immersed in these many faces of creativity, she has, since her early days, been expressing herself using multiple art forms to heal and connect with a greater Spirit.
As a multidisciplinary artist her writing and art express openness and vulnerability while exploring the emotions and psychology of healing connections with self, animals, others and nature. The intention in her work is to cultivate awareness, compassion, a sense of belonging on this earth and a call to action. Along with personal essays, her poetry reflects encounters with nature and social commentary on encounters with the human world. Her upcoming book What They Have to tell Us – Messages from Animals includes a poem at the start of each animal chapter and will be coming out in 2024. In conjunction with her book she has created a performance art piece called Animal Poetry – Messages from Animals and has performed nationally. She lives in Lacey, Washington with her husband and three cats. Her website can be found at: Www.LesiaAAlexander.com |
Thomas A. Thomas was born in Illinois, but after more than 41 years as a resident of Washington he most definitely considers this region home.
At University of Michigan, Thomas A. Thomas, poet/photographer, studied with Donald Hall, Gregory Orr, and Robert Bly. He won Minor and Major Hopwood Awards in Poetry, and his poem "Approaching Here" was choreographed and performed at UM. He has for years been actively engaged in OPN and in the critique group Live Like a Poet, founded by Joanne Clarkson. His poetry and photographs appear in print and online, most recently in Cirque Journal, Gyroscope Review, Blue Heron Review, Vox Populi Sphere, TheBanyanReview.org & FemAsiaMagazine.com, as well as anthologies in English and Serbian and in translation to Spanish, Serbian, and Bengali. His collection, “Getting Here” is available on Bookshop.org and other e-book and printed book sources. He was nominated for both Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize for 2022. Check out more at his Linktree page: https://linktr.ee/thomasathomas |
Dennis Connolly grew up on the North Coast of Ireland where he was an avid fly fisherman. His passion eventually led to writing for the enhancement of River Bush salmon. He worked briefly for the Peace People, where he met his future wife, Patricia. They were married in 1995, and soon afterward moved with his new family to Baltimore, MD. Eight years later Dennis moved to Olympia, Wa. His poems have appeared from Northern Ireland to America, in such eclectic publications as the Coleraine Chronicle and the Olympia Food Coop Newsletter. After more than a quarter century as a poet, Dennis continues to write and enjoy the bardic tradition of spoken word poetry.
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