Sally Green

Sally Green was born in Port Orchard, Washington. Initial exposure to letterpress printing came during a summer workshop at Centrum in 1977, with Tree Swenson, followed by countless hours of hands-on experience and consultation with premier printers of the Northwest (Clifford Burke, Jules Remedios Faye, Christopher Stern, etc.).

She co-founded Brooding Heron Press after moving to remote Waldron Island with her family into a surplus army tent, where she printed her first books. In 1985 the Greens moved into a log house built with their own hands. Sally continued press work in the shop that takes up a third of the ground floor, making books that have won multiple prizes and brought positive notice from Fine Print, Bookways, and the New York Times.

During her time as publisher and printer, Sally was also working on her own poems. Her first collection appeared in 2014.

Sally received 2017 GAP Award funding for her collection in process is Instead of Sleeping (working title), taken from what she call a “daily,” a small poem in which some part of a day is isolated and examined. I chose it to remind me that I don’t want to sleep through my life, but to be a full participant in it; that poetry doesn’t only occur when I’m deliberately working on it, but all the time.

Artist Trust thanks the Amazon Literary Partnership for underwriting this award through Artist Trust’s Corporate Partnership program. For information about supporting Washington State artists, visit here.