Yesterday evening, Kickstart Your Writing students Shirley Lewton, Kathy Eaton and Debbe Borders and I started out at McMenamins Market Street Pub, in Portland, Oregon, before attending the Willamette Writers monthly meeting.

During the meeting, featured speaker Elizabeth Woody—a poet, visual artist and enrolled member of the Confederate Tribes of Warm Springs—entertained us with poems and stories, including one story about how Terry Gross, host of NPR’s “Fresh Air” invited Woody to submit a story to be read on the air.  Woody did so only to have Gross reject the story and use one written by Sherman Alexie instead. A Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian who lives in Seattle, Alexie wrote a poetry collection Old Shirts and New Skins, which Woody illustrated.

Just goes to show: All writers are subject to rejection.