As we celebrate the last day of June, we also look ahead to next month! Only twelve days remain until the beginning of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, an intense week-long celebration of literature and the writing life. Enclosed is a picture taken by Centrum alumna Elizabeth Thorpe during the 2008 Conference.

We'll be keeping our Readings and Lectures series free and open to the public this year, thanks to a generous grant from Humanities Washington. Every evening at 7:30, two writers will read from new work. It all starts the evening of July 12, with readings by National Book Award-winning poet Mark Doty and famed western novelist and nonfiction writers Kim Barnes, whose new manuscript-in-progress is set in Saudi Arabia.