Derek Sheffield

Derek Sheffield’s (Leavenworth) collection, A Revised Account of the West, won the inaugural Hazel Lipa Environmental Chapbook Award (2008) judged by Debra Marquart. His poems have also appeared in Poetry, Orion, The Southern Review, Terrain.org, Wilderness, Ecotone, AQR, and The Georgia Review, where they have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His full-length manuscript was the runner-up for the 2012 Emily Dickinson First Book Award. His work has appeared in several anthologies and is forthcoming in Ecopoetry: A Contemporary American Anthology. He lives with his family in the foothills of the Cascades near Leavenworth and teaches at Wenatchee Valley College.

Derek received a 2004 GAP to cover expenses while he travels Washington for what he refers to – using Richard Hugo’s phrase – as “Triggering Towns.” Retracing many of Hugo’s visits around the State in the 1960s and 70s, Sheffield will travel to the Olympic Peninsula, Buick, Montana, and other locales in order to create collection of poems reflecting the towns, rivers, and landscapes of this region. Sheffield’s project will be published as a compliment to another of his collaborative projects – a collection of poems written in response to the Columbia River.

Artist's Addenda: Derek Sheffield's A Revised Account of the West won the inaugural Hazel Lipa Environmental Chapbook contest sponsored by Flyway Literary Magazine. The full-length manuscript was a finalist for the 2008 Brittingham Prize and a semi-finalist for the 2008 Walt Whitman Award. The chapbook is forthcoming from Iowa State University.