Rainbow Café welcomes the works of Lorraine Ferra and Kat Van Eddy on Monday, Sept. 3

For the Reporter

Poetry at the Rainbow Café presents the works of Lorraine Ferra and Kat Van Eddy on Monday, Sept. 3.

The program is from 7 to 9 p.m. at the café, 112 E. Main St.

Coffee and conversation follow readings. It is an open mic opportunity. The public is invited.

About the poets

Ferra was born and raised in Vallejo, Calif., a seaport on the east side of the San Francisco Bay. She was a nun for seven years in a community in Fremont, Calif., where she majored in theology and education and taught in elementary and secondary schools.

After leaving the convent, she lived for several years in Salt Lake City, pursuing seminars in modern and contemporary poetry and creative writing under the directorship of Robert Mezey at the University of Utah.

Her poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies since 1976, and some are collected in Eating Bread (Kuhn Spit Press, 1994) and What The Silence Might Say (One-Crow-Dancing Books, 2012).

Her creative writing book, “A Crow Doesn’t Need A Shadow: A Guide To Writing Poetry From Nature” (Peregrine Smith Books, 1994) has been endorsed by the National Council of Teachers of English.

Ferra is a recipient of a Utah Arts Council Award in Poetry and a Westigan Poetry Award selected by John Haines.

She has worked extensively for many years as a poet-in-residence with various state arts programs across the country and, since 2002, through the Skagit River Poetry Foundation in La Conner.

Lorraine and her spouse, Deborah Trent, have lived for 23 years in Port Townsend.

Van Eddy is a California-born poet living in Tacoma with her husband, two young children, and their cat, Dexter. She earned a BA in creative writing and a masters in elementary education from the University of Puget Sound, and has been accepted to the Rainier Writing Workshop to earn an MFA in poetry (beginning June 2019).

Her poems have appeared in Crosscurrents (University of Puget Sound), Creative Colloquy Volume 4 and HoosierLit. She is a member of Striped Water Poets as well as Third Saturday Writers (based in Tacoma and accepting any suggestions for names for the group). She teaches third/fourth grade at a Catholic school while moonlighting as a writer and runner.

The Rainbow Cafe, Striped Water Poets, the NorthWest Renaissance, Auburn Arts Commission, City of Auburn, and King County 4Culture make the program possible.