June 20, 2013

Esther Altshul Helfgott is a nonfiction writer and poet with a PhD in history from the University of Washington. Her work appears in Journal of Poetry Therapy, Maggid, American Imago, Raven Chronicles, Floating Bridge Review, Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease, HistoryLink, and elsewhere. She’s a longtime literary activist, a 2010 Jack Straw poet, and the founder of Seattle’s “It’s About Time Writer’s Reading Series,” now in its 23nd year. Her book, Dear Alzheimer’s: Why Did You Pick Our Sheltered Lives to Visit, is forthcoming from Cave Moon Press in 2013.

Joan Swift’s most recent poetry collection is Snow on a Crocus: Formalities of a Neonaticide. She has published four full-length books of poems, the two most recent both winners of the Washington State Governors Award. Her poems have appeared in The Yale Review, Poetry, The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Puerto del Sol, DoubleTake, The Iowa Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She has received three National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowships, an Ingram Merrill writing award, and a grant from the Washington State Arts Commission. After graduating from Duke, she earned an MA at the University of Washington where she was a student in Theodore Roethke’s last class. She lives in Edmonds, Washington.