Jenny Westdal

The Printed Word in Port Townsend Jenny Westdal

In the 1970s and 80s a beautiful, forgotten, small town on the Olympic Peninsula, Port Townsend, Washington, was the sight of an unusual literary blossoming. Writers, most of them young, had started migrating to the area in the aftermath of the sixties. The Centrum Foundation's Writers' Conference was established and Copper Canyon Press found a home with them. Other small presses started soon after. In 1984, only New York City received more National Endowment of the Arts awards to literary presses than Port Townsend. There was more than one publisher for every 850 people of the population. This is the story of seven of Port Townsend's presses, the people behind them, and the magical time and place where they came into being.