Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters
Wendy Willis is a poet and essayist living in Portland, Oregon. Her book of essays, These Are Strange Times, My Dear, was published by Counterpoint Press in 2019. Her second book of poems, A Long Late Pledge, won the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize and was released by Bear Star Press in September 2017. Her first book of poems, Blood Sisters of the Republic, was published by Press 53 in 2012. Her last two books have been finalists for the Oregon Book Award. Wendy is a faculty member in poetry and creative nonfiction at the Attic Institute in Portland, Oregon.
Wendy is the Executive Director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium and the founder and director of Oregon’s Kitchen Table. Wendy has served as a federal public defender and as the law clerk to Chief Justice Wallace P. Carson, Jr. of the Oregon Supreme Court. She graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law Center and holds a B.A. from Willamette University and an M.F.A. in poetry from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.