Even in the wind

Now available

Read "To Miss Alberta Love, My First Creative Writing Teacher."

"I've always found that Bob McAllister's writing helps keep me in balance.

From the night in 1968 when Bob , holding a dripping candle, read Poe's "Raven" to us in Theodore Roethke's old classroom in Parrington Hall and a crow outside the open windows cawed a response to the ending of the poem, I have found these narratives to be entertaining, enlightening---and in his persona as 'the mad priest'--- a suitable replacement for the sermons that you hear on Sunday mornings.

We finally get to learn from poems that have been left unsaid, for too long. The lyric quality of these poems speak to us like music that comes at us from out of a darkness that we feel close to."

––James Masao Mitsui, author of From a Three-Cornered World: New & Selected Poems; After the Long Train: Poems; Crossing the Phantom River

Bob McAllister

Joel Sackett

Bob McAllister grew up in the Pacific Northwest and graduated from the University of Washington in 1965. He taught English and drama at Bainbridge High School, directing 90 plays in 35 years. He’s acted in numerous drama productions in Kitsap and King Counties and been published in various poetry journals. This is his first collected book of poems and the timing is about right for his 70th birthday. In 2001 he received the Island Treasure Award from the Bainbridge Island Arts & Humanities Council. He currently teaches English and communications at Olympic College. He has five daughters, three granddaughters, four brothers and a sister. His wife, Merry, teaches science at Woodward Middle School on Bainbridge Island, WA

Joel Sackett has been a professional artist and editorial photographer since graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1974. In 1980 he relocated to Japan and lived there for 10 years. During that time he worked on several book projects, including Backstage at Bunraku (1984), Rikishi, The Men of Sumo (1986), and numerous internationally distributed photo essays and features. In 1990 he moved with his family to Bainbridge Island. While continuing his work in Asia, he also shoots portraits and projects on Bainbridge Island. Most notably the books, In Praise of Island Stewards (2002), and An Island in Time (2005), reflected on the history of Bainbridge Island and its present spirit of community. He was the first recipient of the Island Treasure Award in the Arts in the year 2000 from the Bainbridge Island Arts & Humanities Council.