Barbara LaMorticella

Barbara LaMorticella lives in a cabin in the woods outside Portland, Oregon.  She has edited or co-edited three collections of Portland poetry including Portland Lights in 2000. In 1997, her second collection of poems, Rain on Waterless Mountain, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award [1] and in 2000 she received the first Oregon Literary Fellowship for women writers [2]. Barbara was awarded the Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award [3] by Literary Arts in 2005, an award presented to a person or organization in recognition of significant contributions that have enriched Oregon’s literary community.

Her work is featured in many anthologies,  most recently To Topos Poetry International: Poverty and Poetry, (Oregon State University,  2008), Not a Muse, (Haven Books, 2009), and Eating the Pure Light, (The Backwaters Press, 2009).  She's been featured at Bumbershoot [4], Seattle's Music and Arts Festival, where she won a Bumbershoot Big Book Award. In addition, Barbara was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize [5], has had her work featured as part of  Poetry in Motion, and hosts a regular poetry program, The Talking Earth [6], on KBOO-FM in Portland.