Oregon Poet Laureate and award-winning author Ellen Waterston has published four literary nonfiction and five poetry titles including, most recently, As Far as I Can Anthem, Poems (2026). Completed while traveling the state as Oregon's Poet Laureate, the poems in As Far as I Can Anthem enlist peoples and places across Oregon to inform, challenge and inspire in vital and unexpected ways. Other recent titles include We Could Die Doing This (2024) and Walking the High Desert (2020). In 2024, Waterston was appointed to a two-year term as the eleventh Oregon Poet Laureate and received both the Stewart H. Holbrook and Soapstone Bread and Roses awards recognizing her work as an author and advocate for the literary arts. In addition to fellowships, residencies and the publication of poems and essays in numerous journals and anthologies, Waterston's awards and recognitions include the WILLA in both nonfiction and poetry, Foreword finalist in literary nonfiction, winner of the Obsidian Prize in Poetry, and recipient of an honorary Ph.D. in Humane Letters from Oregon State University Cascades. She is founder of the Writing Ranch which, since 2000, has conducted workshops for established and emerging writers, and of the annual Waterston Desert Writing Prize, established in 2015 and adopted in 2019 as a program of the High Desert Museum. www.writingranch.com