Our Board

Joan Dobbie has a 1988 MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon, where she has been teaching yoga for 27 years. She writes & publishes poetry, life stories etc.  As the new Emerald Literary Guild President, Joan co-hosted the River Road Reading Series (RRRS) for nine years and now co-hosts the Windfall Reading Series at the Eugene Public Library. Her poetry books include Woodstock Baby, A Novel in Poetry (The Unforgettables Press), The Language of Stone (Uttered Chaos Press), and Zenyatta/Joanna (Finishing Line Press). She has two well-grown children and six nearly grown grands. Find her at joanspoetry.blogspot.com

Dianne Dugaw is a singer-musician, writer, and scholar. Her memoir CALIFORNIA MEDIEVAL: NEARLY A NUN IN 1960s SAN FRANCISCO (2024) received the Schaffner Prize for Music in Literature. She has published on queer topics, and recorded 2 CDs.  Childhood on a small Pacific Northwest ranch and early years as a Catholic nun shape her storytelling and her scholarship.

Amanda W Powell (she/her) has published in journals including Catamaran, Poetry Northwest, Sinister Wisdom, and her chapbook Prowler (Finishing Line). She translates Baroque women poets and contemporary Latin American queer fiction, teaches Spanish/ Latin American poetry, and lives in Oregon with her musician-scholar-writer wife and their wee dog. Recent poems are in Pensive, Beyond Queer Words, and forthcoming in Ballast and White-Winged Doves: A Stevie Nicks Poetry Anthology (Madville, 2026). 

Erica Goss is the author of Landscape with Womb and Paradox, forthcoming from Broadstone Books in 2025, and Night Court. She has received numerous Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations, and a 2023 Best American Essay Notable. Publications include The Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, Creative Nonfiction, and North Dakota Quarterly. Erica teaches, writes and edits the newsletter Sticks & Stones.