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A New Englander who married and moved to the ranching West, Waterston grounds her writing in both of those cultural and geographic landscapes. Her award-winning essays, short stories and poems have been published in numerous journals and anthologies and reviews. She is the 2007 recipient of the national Obsidian Prize in Poetry awarded by the High Desert Journal and in 2007 was named an Honorary Distinguished Professor of Humane Letters by Oregon State University/Cascades Campus for her accomplishments in the literary arts.
Sack of Birds, a collection of her poetry, is due out summer 2008 from Ice River Press. An earlier collection, I Am Madagascar was awarded the WILLA Prize in Poetry in 2005. Her memoir, Then There Was No Mountain, Rowman and Littlefield publisher, was selected by the Oregonian as one of the top ten books in 2003, was a national Foreword and WILLA finalist, and earned her an appearance on Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer. She is the author of two children’s books, Barney’s Joy and Tea At Miss Jean’s, Roberts Rinehart Publisher. Waterston is currently completing a novel and a collection of essays.
In 2003, Waterston was awarded the Special Literary Fellowship for Women Writers given by Oregon’s Literary Arts, Inc. She is the recipient of eight writing residency fellowships, including a 2004 Ucross residency and the three-month Fishtrap Writer-In-Residence in 2005 funded by the Wildhorse Foundation.
Waterston is the founder and director of The Nature of Words, an annual literary event that brings nationally recognized authors and poets for four days of readings, panel discussions, and workshops to Bend, Oregon the first weekend of November. She is also the founder and director of the Writing Ranch dedicated to supporting the craft and careers of emerging writers through workshops and retreats.
A sought-after speaker, she delivered the 2007 commencement address to Oregon State University/Cascades Campus. Waterston has also been the keynote speaker or featured presenter for the Oregon English Teachers Association, the Oregon Library Association, Oregon State Poetry Association, Trillium Family Services and CASA (The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse). She was commissioned to write and perform, with the Cascade Festival of Music, the centennial poem for Bend, Oregon and selected to read her poetry to open for Maya Angelou in Oregon.
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