Events | Heller Center for Arts & Humanities

Winter Salon Series

Thursday, February 12 * 7pm

Carole Woodall
Associate Professor, Department of History

Minor Registers: Early Jazz Culture in 1920s Istanbul

Visiting Author Series

Thursday, February 26 * 7pm

Peggy Schumaker
Former Alaska Poet Laureate

Cairn: New and Selected Poems

Peggy Shumaker is the daughter of two deserts—the Sonoran desert where she grew up and the subarctic desert of interior Alaska where she lives now. She served as Alaska State Writer Laureate and received a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Shumaker is the author of eight books of poetry, including Cairn: New and Selected Poems, as well as her lyrical memoir Just Breathe Normally. Professor emerita from University of Alaska Fairbanks, Shumaker teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA at PLU. Shumaker is editor of the Boreal Books series (an imprint of Red Hen Press), editor of the Alaska Literary Series at University of Alaska Press, poetry editor of Persimmon Tree, and contributing editor for Alaska Quarterly Review.

Visiting Authors Series

Thursday, March 12 * 7pm

Rob Davidson
Award-winning Fictionist

Welcome Back to the World

Rob Davidson was born in Duluth, Minnesota, and was educated at Beloit College and Purdue University. He is the author of six books, including Welcome Back to the World: A Novella and Stories (Cornerstone Press, 2024), winner of the 2025 National Indie Excellence Award in Short Stories. Davidson’s honors include a Fulbright award, an AWP Intro Journals Project Award, and multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. His fiction, essays and interviews have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, The Normal School, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing and American literature at California State University, Chico.