Peter Ludwin

Peter Ludwin is a poet and former member of the 1970’s folk band Rag Daddy. He has performed and taught workshops for many years at the Northwest Folklife Festival. For the past six years Peter has been accepted in the San Miguel Poetry Week in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and has studied under poets such as Mark Doty, Alfred Corn, C.D. Wright, Forrest Gander, Stanley Moss, Patricia Goedecke, and Linda Gregg. In poetry he has been a featured reader in Washington, Oregon, and California, including for the Distinguished Writer’s Series in Tacoma and the Kent Canterbury Fair. Through the sound and flow of his poetry, Peter aims for resonance with his readers to take them out of their normal frame of reference and allow them to experience it in a different way.

As part of his Fellowship’s Meet the Artist requirements, Peter journeyed out to Skagit Valley Natural Foods and Co-op in Mount Vernon to share his work, along with Lana Hechtman Ayers (author of Dance from Inside My Bones). After each gave a brief reading, a discussion on orientation, place, culture and history in Peter’s writing followed. These themes are addressed in his upcoming book, A Guest in All Your Houses. Peter shared the significance of being awarded an Artist Trust Fellowship: “The money has been timely, certainly, but more importantly, the validation of my work by a panel of peers has strengthened my belief in my own ability and further encouraged me to aim for higher goals as a writer. It’s hard to put a price on that.”

In 2008, Peter had poems published in Concho River Review and The Comstock Review, and later that year in The Prague Revue, Quercus Review, Red Wheelbarrow, South Dakota Review, Flint Hills Review, and Hurricane Review. His poetry was a finalist for the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award, and he was named the Second Prize Winner of the 2007-2008 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Awards for Poems on the Jewish Experience.