After living in Mississippi for twenty-odd years, fiction and nonfiction writer Selah Saterstrom moved to Glasgow, Scotland, where she completed the bulk of "The Pink Institution," a novel that takes place in Mississippi. When she moved back to the United States, she wrote her follow-up novel, "The Meat and Spirit Plan," which takes place mostly in Scotland.

"I found," Saterstrom says, "that the tension that existed between these two places because of their differences had the effect of enabling me to love them more profoundly."

In the way that William Faulkner set the bulk of his work in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Selah Saterstrom creates in her work the fictional Mississippi town of Beau Repose, where she has set much of her fiction. In lyric prose, Saterstrom revisits the mythic traditions of Southern writing with new angles. Spare, raw, and unflinching, her examination of modern-day Dixie renders the effects of violence–physical and emotional, suffered from others and self-inflicted–on individual lives.

Selah Saterstrom, known widely as a excellent teacher of writing, will be teaching a "New Works" class at the 2008 Port Townsend Writers’ Conference. She will be guiding participants in the process of creating new work and finding new, rich sources of inspiration. Registration for all Conference workshops is available here, as well as by calling Centrum at 360.3102, x114.