Category: 2021 Newsletter

On April 1, 2021, Rena Priest was appointed Washington State Poet Laureate by Governor Jay Inslee.

Winner of the 2018 American Book Award for her debut collection, Patriarchy Blues, Priest is an enrolled member of the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) Nation and the the first Indigenous poet to be named Washington State’s Poet Laureate.

Priest is a Vadon Foundation Fellow, and a recipient of an Allied Arts Foundation Professional Poets Award. She previously served as a National Geographic Explorer (2018-2020) and as a Jack Straw Writer (2019). She holds a BA in English from WWU and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her most recent work is Sublime Subliminal.

“I am incredibly excited and honored to take on this role,” said Priest in a NW Book Lovers interview. “I’m fascinated by the way people come together around poetry. I am always delighted by how they gather in quiet rooms and let themselves be drawn in, lit up, and transformed by the words of other people. It’s a powerful way of connecting.”

“Poetry is a gift,” said Priest. “This is my approach to it and my belief about it: I’m very lucky to have it. We all are.”

“We are in an important historical moment when science has given us a deadline to make significant changes to heal our planet,” she said. “I want to use poetry as a tool to offer new perspectives and generate enthusiasm for the idea that we can slow and reverse the effects of ecological destruction simply by loving the Earth.”

Priest’s work can be found in Poetry Northwest, Pontoon Poetry, Verse Daily, Poem-a-Day at Poets.org, and elsewhere. She has taught Comparative Cultural Studies and Contemporary American Issues at Western and Native American Literature at Northwest Indian College. She lives in Bellingham.

You can learn more about Rena at her website, https://www.renapriest.com/

Valerie Nyberg (BEd 1996, MA 2004) is beginning her second year as principal at Ames High School in Ames, Iowa. She is the first African American woman to hold this position in Ames, and one of only a handful in the entire state of Iowa.

Previously Dr. Nyberg earned her PhD in Teaching and Learning from the University of Iowa in 2012. She also earned her administrator’s certificate while working on her doctorate. In 2013 she went from educational consulting to become the associate principal at George Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. In 2019, she earned the School Administrators of Iowa’s Assistant Secondary Principal of the Year Award, which led to her current position. As the award recipient, Dr. Nyberg wrote guest blogs for the National Association of Secondary School Principals under their AP Expert of the Week banner.

Valerie has three sons, aged 25, 22, and 19, which she raised as a single parent during her doctorate studies. Her middle son graduated from Northwestern University in June 2021 with a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering. He starts his full-time job at Boeing in the aerospace division in August. Her youngest son is currently entering his sophomore year at the University of Iowa. Her oldest son is working in management in the food service industry in Iowa and is writing two fantasy novels. Dr. Nyberg is starting to build a consulting business in the area of equity and trauma-informed care, and is also working on a couple of creative nonfiction writing projects.