Description:
...These poems gleam with bursts of joy in the darkness, exploring the dueling imperatives of our earthly and mystical lives. -Gary Thompson, author of Broken by Water: Salish Sea Years
Brief description: Joanne Harris Allred is the author of four previous poetry collections: Particulate (Bear Star Press), The Evolutionary Purpose of Heartbreak (Turning Point Press), Outside Paradise (Word Poetry Press), and Whetstone, which won the Flume Press Chapbook Competition. Her work has appeared in many publications including Women's Review of Books, Prairie Schooner and Quarterly West. She was born and spent her early years in Salt Lake City, Utah, but has lived most of her adult years in Northern California where she taught in the English department at California State University, Chico. With her husband, Jerry, three children, many dogs, and several iterations of chicken flocks, along with a lush companionship of wildlife, she lived many years in Butte Creek Canyon outside Chico. Their home here burned in November 2018 in the"Camp Fire." Outside Paradise chronicles the experience of losing most everything in the fire and beginning again. She now splits her time between a coastal community in Humboldt County, California, and Butte Creek Canyon. The landscapes of both places inspire, backdrop, and are often the subject of her poems.