Holly J. Hughes

Holly J. Hughes is a poet, essayist, editor and teacher. She is the author of Hold Fast, Passings, and Sailing by Ravens, coauthor of The Pen and The Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World, editor of the award-winning anthology Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease and co-editor of Contemplative Approaches to Sustainability in Higher Education. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, were featured in An American Life in Poetry, have appeared in many anthologies, and have been set to music by Minneapolis composer Edie Hill.

She’s a graduate of Pacific Lutheran University’s MFA program, Rainier Writing Workshop, and served on the staff for 13 years. She taught writing at Edmonds Community College for more than two decades, where she received several awards for her teaching. She has also taught writing at conferences and workshops throughout the Northwest.

In addition to writing and teaching, Hughes spent over 30 summers working on the water in Alaska in a variety of roles: commercial fishing for salmon, skippering a 65-foot schooner, working as a naturalist on ships, and most recently co-leading writing and mindfulness workshops in Southeast Alaska. She stays connected to the fishing community by attending the annual FisherPoet’s Gathering in Astoria each year, where she’s been an active participant since it began in 1998.

Prior to her teaching career, she worked as a journalist reporting on environmental and fisheries issues, and she continues to write about these issues as well as sustainability and climate change. She lives on the Olympic peninsula in Washington State, dividing her time between three acres in the Chimacum valley, and a 1930’s log cabin in Indianola, Washington, where she directs Flying Squirrel Studio Retreats and consults as an editor and writing coach.

Source: Holly J. Hughes