Paul J. Willis
AUTHOR

Paul J. Willis

Literature & Fiction
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Paul Willis grew up climbing in the Oregon Cascades, and a mythic version of these mountains became the soul of his first novel, No Clock in the Forest (1991). A revised version of this novel, together with three sequels, has now appeared as a single eco-fantasy, The Alpine Tales (2010). He first drafted No Clock in the Forest while pursuing his graduate degrees in English at Washington State University. He is now a professor of English at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, where he teaches British Renaissance literature and creative writing. His background in Renaissance literature informs his YA time-travel novel, All in a Garden Green (2020). During his years of teaching he has apprenticed himself to poetry and now has eight full-length collections: Visiting Home (2008), Rosing from the Dead (2009), Say This Prayer into the Past (2013), Getting to Gardisky Lake (2016), Deer at Twilight: Poems from the North Cascades (2018), Little Rhymes for Lowly Plants (2019), Somewhere to Follow (2021), and Losing Streak (2024). His poems have been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer's Almanac, and he served as poet laureate of Santa Barbara from 2011-13. With David Starkey he edited the anthology In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare (2005). And with Leslie Leyland Fields he edited A Radiant Birth: Advent Readings for a Bright Season. Creative nonfiction is also an occasional pleasure. His debut in this genre, Bright Shoots of Everlastingness: Essays on Faith and the American Wild (2005), was chosen by ForeWord magazine as the best essay collection of the year from an independent press. His second book of creative nonfiction is To Build a Trail: Essays on Curiosity, Love, and Wonder (2018).
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