Our Board
Artistic Board
Derek Sheffield
Derek Sheffield is the 8th poet laureate of Washington State (2025-2027). His books include Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, winner of a 2024 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, Not for Luck, selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, Through the Second Skin, runner-up for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy. A two-time finalist for the Washington State Book Award, his other awards include the Foreword Reviews Indies Book of the Year in Nature Writing and the James Hearst Poetry Prize judged by Li-Young Lee. He teaches at Wenatchee Valley College and Western Colorado University, edits poetry for Terrain.org, and can often be found in the woods along the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range near Leavenworth, Washington.
Danny Sherrard
Danny Sherrard is a San Juan Archipelago-based author, poet, performer, and educator whose work links the lightning pulse of the spoken-word stage with the contemplative depth of the page, scrawled in verse. He is the youngest person to have won both the US National Poetry Slam and the World Poetry Cup Paris, France. Collective on San Juan Island.His debut full-length collection, Cast Your Eyes Like Riverstones into the Exquisite Dark, was released by Write Bloody Publishing in 2025. Now Sherrard serves as Founder and Executive Director of the Island Verse, a nonprofit dedicated to honoring and amplifying the voices of the region’s numinous archipelago.
Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor
Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor’s non-fiction, poetry, and short fiction have appeared in print and online in several journals and anthologies including Katipunan Literary Magazine, Growing Up Filipino II: More Stories for Young Adults, Kuwento: Small Things, and Beyond Lumpia, Pansit, and Seven Manangs Wild: An Anthology. Her poetry chapbook Pause Mid-Flight was released in 2010. She is also the co-editor of True Stories: The Narrative Project Vol. I-IV, and her poetry and essays have been collected in Dancing Between Bamboo Poles. Rebecca, as Rebecca A. Saxton, received her MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University in 2012, her BA in Humanities from Washington State University in 1998, and her MA degree in English with honors from Western Washington University in 2003.
Marty Cunningham
Marty Cunningham grew up in North Seattle on the water, in the water, and in the mountains. Coming to Bellingham to attend Huxley College of Environmental Studies at Western in the late 70s, has a BS in Elementary Education and a Masters in Literacy. She is a National Board certified teacher who was a finalist for the Presidential Award for Science Teaching in 2001. Marty has had a fulfilling career as an elementary teacher working for the Mount Baker School District. Being a sixth grade teacher the majority of her professional life, she thinks its important that her students can and do think for themselves when considering the future of our environment, social justice, and their personal responsibilities as positive contributors to our community.Marty teaches art in her treehouse studio, and works with NSEA – the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association and Common Threads – our community’s school gardening program while still playing in and on the water and in the mountains.
Jacquie Bresadola
Jacquie Bresadola is a figurative sculptor using many media to express her love of the human form including, stone, clay, mixed media, leather and bronze. She has been facilitating art classes with children for the past twenty-five years (eighteen in the Seattle area). She and her family moved to Bellingham in 2006 where she Pacé Atelier Art Studio for artists of all ages in 2006. Jacquie received her BFA from the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. She focused on Figurative Sculpture and Stone Carving. She also completed a two year program at The Johnson Atelier Technical Institute Of Sculpture In Princeton, New Jersey, where she learned all aspects of bronze casting. She currently owns her own studio in Bellingham, WA., where she offers art classes to youth.