Alumni News

George Drew is the author of nine poetry collections, including most recently Drumming Armageddon, which appeared in 2020 from Madville Publishing. In addition, he has a new chapbook, Hog: A Delta Memoir, coming out from Bass Clef Press, and a book of essays titled Just Like Oz that is likewise coming out from Madville. George has won awards such as the South Carolina Review Poetry Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award, the Adirondack Literary Award, the St. Petersburg Review Poetry Contest, the Knightville Poetry Contest, and, in 2020, the William Faulkner Literary Competition. In 2019 he collaborated with singer/songwriter Rick Kunz on a CD of original poetry and songs entitled A Triumph of Loneliness, KBW Music.

Barry Sarchett recently retired as Professor of English and of Film and Media Studies at Colorado College. He would like to thank Professors Reed Merrill, Larry Lee, Arthur Hicks, Golden Larsen, and Merrill Lewis, all of whom are long gone from Western but were so important in forming his passion for literature and careful, precise, close reading. Barry has very fond memories of Bellingham and Western.

Sara Long’s three poems, “Feral Sterile Honey Baby,” “Perennial Ghost,” and “The Vast Loneliness of Living on the Ground” were published in volume 4, issue 3 of Night Picnic.

Thomas Phinney is gainfully employed in the construction industry, and while he has yet to do anything professionally with his degree and studies of creative non-fiction at Western, some of the students and faculty from his time here remain his favorite people and he has no complaints about where life has taken him.

Drawing on her forty-year career teaching high school and college English, Norma Petersen has completed a manuscript about the benefits of teachers writing with their students. She argues that the practice transforms the classroom into an encouraging community of writers with strengthened relationships and enhanced skills. The manuscript offers many examples for both experienced and beginning teachers and is also suitable for an English methods class.

This past fall, Antonio began his second year teaching English composition as a full-time Communications Instructor at Blackhawk Technical College in Janesville, Wisconsin. He took the position after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in December 2019 with a Ph.D. in Composition and Rhetoric. Antonio’s son Westley turned three on November 7 last year. Before that, the family purchased their first home, a lovely ranch-style house with a large deck, in May. Antonio sends his regards to Professor Laura Laffrado.

McKenzie Grenz recently accepted a position as a Career Development Counselor with People For People in their employment and training department.

Joy Barber received her JD with High Honors and a Certificate in American Indian Law from the Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana in May 2021. She was the recipient of the William S. Frost and Maylinn Smith Award from the Margery Hunter Brown Indian Law Clinic and the Fran Elge Award from the Women’s Law Section of the Montana State Bar. She began clerking for the Honorable Mike McGrath, Chief Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, in August 2021.

Luke Lefler works as Manager of Records and Docketing at the Pacific Northwest law firm Lane Powell PC.

Vernon Giesbrecht recently published articles in four different magazines: British Columbia History, Our Canada, The Senior Paper and the Mennonite Historical Society of BC’s Roots & Branches. Moreover, Vern has published an article every year for the past ten years in BC History. His most recent one is a profile of actor and director Antony Holland, whose seventy-year theatrical career flourished until just weeks before his death at the age of ninety-five.