La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

The Skagit River Poetry Foundation invites our community to a galaxy far, far away and presents an evening fit for a Jedi at their annual auction, A New Hope: “May the 4th” (Force) Be With You from 5 to 9 p.m. Saturday, May 4 (Star Wars Day), at Hill...

NOT TO BE MISSED The Skagit County Fair runs Aug. 9-12, at the fairgrounds in Mount Vernon. See farm animals and pets, visit the carnival, check out entertainment on several stages. Info: skagitcounty.net/fair. The Lincoln Theatre presents BrewFest...

Even in the dog days of summer, there is no shortage of events to satisfy diverse entertainment cravings over the next couple of weeks. The Anacortes Arts Festival runs Aug. 4-6. The annual show attracts up to 90,000 guests. It fills several blocks...

NOT TO BE MISSED Anacortes Arts Festival, Aug. 4-6. Some 200 arts and crafts vendor booths fill several blocks of Commercial Avenue. Check out jazz and main performance stages, art demonstrations, a kids’ discovery area, beer and wine gardens, f...

The Skagit River Poetry Foundation held its third annual auction June 24 at Hillcrest Park Lodge in Mount Vernon. One hundred and twenty five supporters gathered to raise funds for their mission of cultivating literacy and changing lives through the...  Website

The April 15 poets reading in celebration of National Poetry Month at 7 p.m. at Pelican Bay Books are Claudia Castro Luna, Kathleen Flenniken, former Washington poet laureates, and the wonderful Susan Rich, all coming up from Seattle. They...

April is National Poetry Month and Pelican Bay Books in Anacortes has a full line up of poets coming every Saturday, along with music and some local student poets. Start time is 7 p.m. and lasts through about 8:30 p.m. The line up: April 8th: Alice...

Join poet Jeffrey Morgan and paper artist Nancy Scagliotti to create love poems and valentines 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday in Mount Vernon. Fee of $10 includes supplies. Families welcome. Register: [email protected]. Sponsor: Skagit River Poetry...

Skagit Valley poet Georgia Johnson reads poetry at Pelican Bay Books accompanied by Roberto Ascalon and Natalie Lahr Friday, Jan. 28, 7 p.m. Johnson has published “Just Past Dew Point” and other volumes of poetry. Ascalon, winner of the 2012 Rat...

Listening to Javier Zamora sing one of his poems at Maple Hall to a Meringue beat during this month’s Skagit River Poetry Festival, you would be surprised to learn he had traveled more than 3,000 miles on foot, by bus and boat, across rivers, d...

Tickets are still available for the Skagit Poetry Festival, which starts Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m. While a full Festival pass costs $300, you can purchase daily passes. Pick and choose and chase favorite poets and sessions on your schedule. For...

Some of the 37 guest poets and artists participating in this year’s Skagit River Poetry Festival are crossing oceans to reach La Conner. Others just have to cross the Rainbow Bridge. Canadian poet Karen Solie, flying in from St. Andrews, Scotland, is...

By Anna Ferdinand When Rena Priest stood before a crowd at the Lincoln theater Sept. 3, she asked attendees to answer this question: “Where do poems come from?” A theater took pen to paper, writing to the prompt for five minutes, each person fre...

“When you are poeting, you are making the world, creating the universe out of nothing,” Washington State Poet Laureate Rena Priest said last Saturday at the Lincoln Theatre. That’s because the word poet comes from the Greek word poesis or “maker,” sh...

Every April, organizations across America celebrate National Poetry Month. It is a great opportunity to focus on this genre of literature. One of poetry’s great contributions is that it works to expand everyday words to hold more nuance, emotion a...