We couldn’t be happier to be announcing our final 2017 speaker list. The Terroir Creative Writing Festival happens once again in McMinnville on April 22, 2017. Registration is OPEN NOW and you can download the form HERE.

Sean Davis is the author of The Wax Bullet War, a Purple Heart Iraq veteran, and a community leader in Northeast Portland. He is the American Legion’s 2015 winner of the Legionnaire of the Year Award and the recipient of the Emily Gottfried Emerging Leader, Human Rights award for 2016.

Steve Duin has written a column for The Oregonian since 1984.  He is the author of seven books, including The Less We Touch, a novel, and the graphic novel, Oil and Water.

Harry Fuller had a professional career was in TV and Internet news.  Birding became his escape, then his passion and finally, an obsession. Fuller once wrote for big corporations. Now her writes for himself and for the birds. The rewards are not monetary. The more people know and admire birds, the better the chance that we will aid their survival. 

Emily Grosvenor is a journalist, essayist, Kickstarter creator, and social media maven who created our series of WordStudio workshops and runs our media outreach. She’s a contributor to Sunset, AAA Via, The Atlantic, Good Housekeeping and others. Follow her on Twitter @emilygrosvenor. 

Ed Higgins has published poems and short fiction in numerous print and online journals including recently: Peacock Journal, Uut Poetry, Triggerfish, and Tigershark Magazine. Ed teaches literature at George Fox University. He is Copy-Editor for the poetry journal These Fragile Lilacs, and also Asst. Fiction Editor for Brilliant Flash Fiction. 

Anna Keesey received her MFA from the University of Iowa. Her work has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and Houghton-Mifflin’s Best American Short Stories.  Her novel Little Century (2012) earned a “Discover Great New Writers” award from Barnes and Noble and the Janet Heidinger Kafka award from the University of Rochester. Keesey teaches at Linfield College.

Morgan Kennedy is an author of contemporary romance, futuristic, and steampunk novels. In her day job, she is a marketing and business development professional for smart building technology. She also writes The Melting Pot: Stories with Diversity & Multiculturalism column for Night Owl Reviews’ The Booklover e-magazine. 

Chip MacGregor is the president of MacGregor Literary, Inc. He began working as an agent eighteen years ago and has represented nearly a thousand titles. The authors he represents have been on every major bestseller list. A well-known speaker at writing conferences and via online writing sites, he lives on the Oregon coast. 

Michael N. McGregor is an award-winning professor of nonfiction writing and a former director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Portland State University.  His book Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax was shortlisted for several awards, including a Washington State Book Award.  He writes and teaches biography, memoir, fiction and personal essay. 

Kathleen Dean Moore, Ph.D., is a philosopher, climate activist, and writer, the author or co-editor of thirteen books.  Her 2016 book, Great Tide Rising, is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award.  Bill McKibben calls her most recent book, Piano Tide: A Novel, “savagely funny and deeply insightful.”

Lynn Otto holds an MFA from Portland State University, facilitates two poetry critique groups in Newberg, is an advisory editor at Triggerfish Critical Review, and works as a freelance copy editor. Recent poems are in Compose, Driftwood Press, Eyedrum Periodically, Centrifugal Eye, Young Ravens Literary Review, and Sequestrum. 

Andrea Stolowitz has seen her plays presented nationally and internationally at theaters such as The Long Wharf, The Old Globe, The Cherry Lane, and New York Stage and Film.  The LA Times calls her work “heartbreaking” and the Orange County Register characterizes her approach as a “brave refusal to sugarcoat issues and tough decisions.” 

Daniel Wilson is a Cherokee citizen and author of the New York Times bestselling Robopocalypse and its sequel Robogenesis, as well as seven other books, including How to Survive a Robot Uprising, A Boy and His Bot, and Amped. He earned a PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as Masters degrees in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. His next novel, The Clockwork Dynasty, will be released on July 4th, 2017. Wilson lives in Portland, Oregon.

Mark your calendars now for April 22, 2017. It’s going to be an inspiring day!