LEWISTON, ID – Washington State Poet Laureate Derek Sheffield will deliver the 44th annual Stegner Lecture on Thursday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. at the Lewiston City Library. The event is free and open to the public.

Sheffield’s talk, titled “In Whose Presence: On the Nature and Language of Place and Poetry,” will explore his connection to both the physical and psychological landscapes in which he lives.

Sheffield, appointed the eighth poet laureate of Washington for 2025–2027, has received recognition for his work across the Pacific Northwest. In 2024, he was awarded the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award for “Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry.” His other collections include “Not for Luck,” winner of the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize; “Through the Second Skin,” a runner-up for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award; and “Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy.” In addition to writing, he teaches at Wenatchee Valley College and Western Colorado University and serves as poetry editor for Terrain.org.

The Stegner Lecture, named after Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner, has been a cultural highlight in the region since Stegner himself gave the first lecture in 1982. Stegner is widely regarded as “The Dean of Western Writers.”

More details about the lecture are available through the Lewis-Clark State College Humanities Division at lcsc.edu/humanities/stegner-lecture .