Lion Rock Visiting Writers Series reconvenes April 21 at CWU

Central Washington University is proud to welcome poet, editor, and naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield on Tuesday, April 21, for the second installment of the 2026 Lion Rock Visiting Writers Series.

Members of the CWU and Ellensburg communities are invited to the Multicultural Center on the first floor of Black Hall (room 107), where Bradfield will be presenting two free events: a craft talk, Q&A, and book signing at noon, and a reading, Q&A, and book signing at 5:30 p.m.

Online attendance for both events will be offered on Zoom. If you would like to participate in the April 21 events online, please pre-register for the craft talk here and the reading here. Both presentations will also be recorded.

Bradfield will be reading from her recent works: SOFAR: Poems; Interpretive Work, winner of the Audre Lorde Prize in Lesbian Poetry; and the Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, winner of a Pacific Northwest Book Award, among other honors.

Thanks to the generosity of the Friends of the James E. Brooks Library, students attending each of the events in person will have the chance to win one of five copies of Bradfield’s co-edited book, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry.

Maya Jewell Zeller, CWU Professor of English, notes that “as clearly as Bradfield's work is rooted in careful attention to the non-human world, it sings also to that embodied sixth-sense mystery that wants to rise up through us as human animals. Her powerful work is the kind that calls us all in.”

In addition to her accomplished writing career, Bradfield is the founder and editor-in-chief of Broadsided, a publishing project focused on integrating art and literary work. She is inspired by her work as a naturalist, field assistant, and marine educator, having worked on boats since her childhood in Tacoma. She now lives on Cape Cod in the Northeastern United States.

SOFAR: Poems combines Bradfield’s ecological and naturalist knowledge, her experiences as part of the LGBTQ+ community, and life at sea. SOFAR is an acronym for the “sound frequency and ranging channel,” which the author describes as “a deep layer of oceanic water that enables sound to travel [vast] distances” and reflects her question, “What am I, human and other, even listening for?”

Bradfield co-edited Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry with poets CMarie Fuhrman and Derek Sheffield. The publisher, Mountaineers Books, describes the book as fusing “art, poetry, and stories holding scientific, sensory, and cultural knowledge to celebrate and illuminate Cascadia, the diverse ecoregion stretching from Alaska’s Prince William Sound to Northern California ... offering locals and visitors a new way of connecting — with heart and mind and body — to place.” It’s an explorer’s guidebook, a tool for teachers, and an anthology that Braiding Sweetgrass author Robin Wall Kimmerer sums up as “a gift in reciprocity for the gifts of the land.”

Learn more about Bradfield’s many publications and projects on her website.

The CWU Lion Rock Visiting Writers Series features nationally known writers reading their work in person and/or on Zoom. The series has hosted winners of the MacArthur Genius Award, Washington State Poets Laureate, and recipients of Guggenheim, Lannan, and NEA Fellowships. Past readers in the Lion Rock Visiting Writers Series include Natalie Diaz, Eduardo Corral, Elissa Washuta, Lucia Perillo, Anthony Doerr, Major Jackson, Kim Barnes, and many others.

Author David Haynes kicked off this year’s series on February 18. Creative nonfiction author Nora Wendl is scheduled to be in Ellensburg on May 5, and novelist Sonora Jha will present on May 26.

All of the Lion Rock Visiting Writers Series events will take place in the Multicultural Center inside Black Hall and will be available via Zoom. Questions about the series may be directed to Dr. Candace Walsh in the CWU Department of English at candace.walsh@cwu.edu.