Writers’ Studio Annual Collection

Aya moved to Bainbridge Island, and became involved with the Japanese American Exclusion Memorial and with BARN, which helped her find her “sansei” – third generation Japanese American voice.  Straddling two cultures it was often difficult to know where she belonged. Exploring stories from the past helps her understand how people, places and events shaped who she is today. IShe is grateful to BARN and the Writer’s Studio for the opportunity to introduce an excerpt from Asian Face to the community.

Longtime Bainbridge Island resident Kenneth G. Bennett is the author of the acclaimed sci-fi thriller, EXODUS 2022, the young adult novels, THE GAIA WARS and BATTLE FOR CASCADIA, and the short story collection WANDERINGS (Wildrose Press). Ken’s young adult sci-fi wilderness thriller, LOST BOY releases Fall 2025 and his adult paranormal thriller, THE TERRITORY, in 2026. Ken serves on the board of local non-profit Arms Around Bainbridge and is a past Board President of the Bainbridge Island Land Trust.

Some people are born to be writers. Was Brad Alan Lewis one of them? Hard to say. He was definitely a born reader. From Walden to The Snow Leopard to All Fours, Lewis has always had wildly eclectic taste.

From reading to writing was a leap Lewis could not resist. He backpacked the John Muir Trail numerous times so he wrote about the High Sierra backcountry. He spent years sailing, so he wrote about sailing. On it goes. Writing. For Lewis, there’s no better way to spend the day.

Martha Kay Salinas writes multi-generational novels about the complexities of relationships and breaking free from the past. In an earlier life she worked as a family therapist. She began writing while staying home with her two sons and went on to earn an MFA in creative writing. She’s the former children’s and young adult editor of the literary magazine, Soundings Review. Martha and her husband live on Bainbridge Island where she’s involved in a thriving literary community. When she’s not writing or reading, you can find her supporting other writers.

Cecilia Utne is a healing practitioner and facilitator of systemic and family constellations, currently writing a trans-generational memoir exploring the echoes of inherited trauma. Her work is rooted in deep listening, nature, meditation, and cross-generational healing. She lives between Norrtälje, Sweden, and Bainbridge Island, Washington, finding balance near the sea and forest. A native of Sweden and lifelong traveler, she has lived in Spain, the UK, Chile, and Guatemala. Cilla is also the owner of Cross Cultural Journeys, a small purpose-driven travel company focused on healing and intercultural connections.

Anna Choi is an author, TEDx speaker, and founder of SolJoy, a social enterprise blending ancient wisdom with modern mindfulness. A second-generation Korean American immigrant, her story of navigating two worlds shapes her upcoming memoir, Finding Peace in Chaos: Soul Strength in an Ego-Driven World. Through retreats, courses, and her nonprofit Peaceful Warriors, Sol supports underserved leaders in restoring resilience and joy through meditation, martial arts, and music. Her writing invites readers to come home to themselves cultivating well being within. Learn more at https://linktr.ee/annasunchoi.

Joe Gondar was born and raised near Bridgeport, Connecticut. He studied Economics in university and, in that era of compulsory military service, went into the Army after getting his undergraduate degree. In Vietnam, he was an interrogator of prisoners of war with the 199th Light Infantry Brigade. After his discharge, he became a CPA and worked in government and private industry before going abroad to teach English and Accounting in China, Japan and Saudi Arabia. He lives in Kingston, Washington.

Beth Ann Mathews is a marine biologist, mother of one son, and an award-winning author. She taught biology for two decades at the University of Alaska in Juneau and did research on marine mammals in Glacier Bay National Park. Her book, Deep Waters: A Memoir of Loss, Alaska Adventures, and Love Rekindled, won the Next Generation Indie Book Awards/Memoirs (personal struggle/health issues) and a bronze award in the Independent Publishers Book Awards (Best Regional Non-Fiction, West-Pacific region). She and her husband live on Bainbridge Island, Washington. www.elizabethannmathews.com

Shama Shams is a Seattle writer, speaker, and nonprofit advocate. Her memoir, She Called Me Throwaway (March 2024), details her journey from a challenging childhood to healing. Her writing has earned accolades in publications like Palooka, Fiction Fix, and Mandala Literary Journal, and she was a finalist for the Black Warrior Review and WOW! Women on Writing.

Shama has dedicated over two decades to the nonprofit sector, advocating for marginalized communities and sharing her expertise through her book Nonprofit Fundraising—Lessons from the Trenches and the podcast From Passion to Purpose.

Walter Sutton
After growing up in Los Angeles in the fifties and early sixties.
After graduating from the University of Washington.
After founding a computer services company in the early seventies (before computers were cool).
After writing a business book about being a CEO.
Walter finally… finally retired and went all in on my lifelong passion.
And wrote three crime novels, all published by Next Chapter:
Finders Keepers
Losers Weepers
Knick Knack Paddy Whack
Walter is currently working on a fourth crime novel and a memoir: Re.Invent.Ion.
Living with his wife Deborah on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Anna Du Pen is a Bainbridge Island memoirist, retired nurse practitioner, widow, recovering dementia caregiver, mother, grandmother, and a GRITS (Girls Raised in the South). Her memoir-in-progress follows her soulmate’s journey with Alzheimer’s Disease during the tail end of COVID, when despite being trained in Hospice and Palliative Care, she agonized over hastening death per her husband’s wishes. She writes on Substack at betwixtproxy.substack.com on being a medical decision maker for someone with advancing dementia. When not writing she can be found kayaking on Eagle Harbor or transporting grandkids.

A. Fox is a writer local to Bainbridge Island, Washington. Who, as a child, ravaged through novels as if they were the most delicious delight. Now, she holds a fascination with horror, fantasy and creative non-fiction. A. Fox hopes to pursue a career in creative writing, where then she’ll finally be able to give voice to the stories that have always been with her. She believes she will succeed in her future endeavors and looks forward to what the world throws her way.

Sallie Maron is a generalist at heart, she loves finding connections everywhere. She also loves words. Having a couple of essays published in the last century was a thrill. Soon afterwards, however, she found a different kind of joy in working on projects with a succession of community organizations. At BARN, she is grateful for her trusty writing group because they have shown extraordinary patience for the number of times she’s arrived with yet another excuse for why she has nothing to share. This one is for you all!

Leslie Schneider is a 3-term city councilmember for Bainbridge Island focusing on alternatives to dependence on cars, and how places create community. She helped build a cohousing community near downtown Seattle and now lives in cohousing on Bainbridge. She co-founded a coworking business started in 2011.  Leslie has a BA in communications from UCLA and completed a Certificate in Memoir Writing from the University of Washington. Her flash fiction story “Invention and Reinvention” was originally published in a 2018 anthology called “Stories to Change the World,” now available on EarthStory2050.org.

Stephanie Joyce Cole lived for decades in Alaska. She now lives on Bainbridge Island with her husband and Max, a perpetually happy labradoodle. Stephanie is the author of two novels, Compass North and A Late Hard Frost, about a woman fleeing to the quirky small town of Homer, Alaska, to escape her past. But can you ever run away from your own life?

Jessica Dubey has two stories that were included in a self-published anthology, “Short Stories of Bainbridge Island.” For her day job, Jessica works in global communications for an iconic Seattle-based coffee company, as a graphic designer and video editor. At all other times she is engaged in various activities around Bainbridge Island, including but not limited to: writing, volunteering, filmmaking, biking, running and yoga. She gets her best ideas while swimming in the icy waters of Puget Sound.

Amie Glazier works in content marketing by day, wrangles four kids by night, and dreams up the best meet-cutes and fantasy worlds after bedtime. After following her husband’s military career around the country, Amie and her family now live near Seattle where she is pursuing an MFA and working on her novels. When she’s not writing about swoon-worthy moments or magical heroines, you can find Amie binge-reading by the fire, excelling at carpool karaoke, and actually enjoying chemistry while home-brewing beer with her husband. You can connect with her at www.amieglazier.com

Linda Owens loves words, spoken and written. She is a long-time Bainbridge resident and mom of three children. A volunteer for numerous organizations and an occasional actor, singer/musician, and poet, she is now enjoying her retirement from the Washington State Senate where she worked with Senator Rolfes for many years. With retirement comes time, so as an author of many rough drafts in poetry and prose over the years, she is now polishing, revising and occasionally jettisoning her work.

Jen Pitts is a writer drawn to the mysterious and unusual. A lifelong reader of mysteries, psychological thrillers, and horror stories, she now enjoys crafting her own tales. When she’s not writing, Jen loves traveling throughout the Pacific Northwest and the Southern United States, reading, and drinking copious amounts of coffee. She lives on Bainbridge Island with her husband, children, and two cats, who offer endless encouragement and patience.

Kirsten Telander lives in Walla Walla wine country where she was the director of Telander Gallery for over 10 years and where she raised two boys Miles and Oliver alongside her husband, artist Todd Telander. Her short fiction, personal essays, and poetry have appeared in publications including Salon and The Pitkin Review. As a freelance writer for over 20 years, Telander’s work has appeared in numerous food, wine and lifestyle publications and blogs. You can find samples of her work at www.kirstentelander.com.

Kathleen Alcalá is the author of six books receiving the Western States Book Award, the Governor’s Writers Award, and a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Award. She received her second Artist Trust Fellowship in 2008 and was recognized by Con Tinta at the AWP Conference in 2014. Designated an Island Treasure, her most recent book is The Deepest Roots: Finding Food and Community on a Pacific Northwest Island, by the University of Washington Press. This is her first published poem since college, inspired by the life of a Hispano-Arabic ruler.

Darsie Bowden currently lives on Bainbridge Island, WA.  Born and raised in the Seattle area, she has a PhD in writing and rhetoric from the University of Southern California.  For many years, she worked as a writing instructor at DePaul University (Chicago) where she served as Writing Program Administrator and published, among other things, The Mythology of Voice, which explores the uses of the voice metaphor in writing and writing instruction.  Her current focus is on poems and short non-fiction that explore anomalies and contradictions that permeate and enrich everyday life. 

Candace DeLeo came to the Pacific Northwest by way of Boston, then San Francisco. When she moved to Bainbridge in 2018, it was to realize the dream of actually living on the water instead of just near it. The view from her home on Murden Cove has served as her inspiration for much of her poetry.  Insomnia is the impetus for the remainder.

She shares her life with her husband of 42 years, and her adult son and two cats.

Dawn Geschiere is an empowerment life coach and founder of YesToLife Coaching, where she guides people in discovering their unique form of badassery. She’s currently writing a memoir exploring the paradox of suffering through personal stories of cancer and her own journey through breast cancer. Dawn also writes poetry, poetic prose, and stories inspired by her recent experience with living in Italy for three months. A nature-lover, avid reader, and Mom to five wonderful young adults–Dawn loves being outdoors, cooking, dancing, theater, and gathering with friends and family.

Gwen Mansfield brings a background in theatre and an MFA in Creative Writing to a variety of genres. Her poem “Please, Turn” was honored in the Ars Poetica 2025 Season, and her play “Tell Me” featured in the 2025 Best of the Rest, 8-Tens, Santa Cruz Actors’ Theatre. Exploring the postapocalyptic sci-fi genre in Roll Call Trilogy, her quirky characters discover themes of justice through high-tension adventure. Gwen lives with her family in the Pacific Northwest, serves as a director at Port Gamble Theater, and teaches literature as a university adjunct.

After years of pounding the keys defining and defending sustainable design and construction in the Northwest, Kathleen O’Brien (she/her) has turned to her first love: expressing the personal in poetry and prose. Her work has appeared in Kerning: A Space for Words (No 2); The Gift: Your Gift is Inside; as part of Bainbridge Island Poetry Corners Exhibits 2024 and 2025, as part of the BARN’s Ars Poetica exhibit in 2023, and on the website “Poetry Breakfast” on January 4, 2024.

Words, books, art, and music are my favorite toys. Joan Piper self-published “EOiRrTBW” at age four. Later, she got to write exhibits at the San Diego Zoo. In 1991 she became Director of Exhibits and Programs at the Museum of Flight, later Director of the Bainbridge History Museum. For fun, she took Doug Nathan’s Beyond Words classes, writing poems (in the ferry lot) for Exhibition and Poetry Corners. “In One Ear” won a cash prize in the Amy Woodward Fisher Poetry Contest, 1997. Finally it’s in print! Thanks, BARN!

As a NW native Gayl TenEyck is an outdoors enthusiast which has provided her inspiration for penning her poetry. Walking through forests and admiring the simpleness of nature has served to create poetry that connects the reader through visualizing nature through her words. Her favorite line,”Breathing in the forest is like Mother Nature touching your soul”, embodies the essence of her work.

Gayl, the woodsy traveler lives with her cat, Stella in Kingston, Wa.