Admissions
Programs
Student Life
About PNCA
Initiatives

Meet the Artists

Kim Stafford

— PNCA Writer-in-Residence —

Kim Stafford refers to himself as a man who is “easily pleased by a few words,” a man who delights in the creative process—surrendering himself entirely to what he calls the “making place.” A writer and longtime educator, Stafford has been appointed PNCA’s first writer-in-residence, and he hopes to engage students and faculty in the practice of writing as a complement to one’s ongoing artistic endeavors.

“My vision here is to be a companion to students, faculty, alumni, events, stories, silences, enigmas, moments of luck and consternation, and other dimensions of the city of art,” he says.

A typical day may find Stafford dropping into a class for a spontaneous session of writing from prompts, gathering faculty members to write over lunchtime or meeting with a thesis student about, as he says, “improvising within the structure.”

He also enjoys collaborating with faculty members, students and visiting artists to explore a project of common interest. Recently, he teamed up with visiting writer Barry Sanders to lead a forum inspired by Sanders’s essay on the environmental impact of the Iraq war. During the three-day session, participants wrote from prompts selected from Sanders’s essay as a foundation for further discussion and artistic exploration. By the end of the session, the classroom wall was full of posted writing samples and sketches, with the participants making plans for future collaboration and perhaps a studio book printed on an old letterpress Stafford has stashed in his basement. A perfect outcome, perhaps, for a man who says “the practice of writing can befriend the creative life.”

Having worked as an oral historian, editor, writer, photographer, letterpress printer and teacher, Stafford is a fixture on the northwest’s literary landscape. Literary Arts recently honored him with the Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award for his many contributions including his publications of poetry, essays and stories as well as his work as co-founder of both the Oregon Folk Arts program and the Fishtrap Writers’ Gathering. In 1996, he founded the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis and Clark College, where he taught for 28 years. He serves as the Literary Executor for the William Stafford Archive and hopes to one day open the William Stafford Studio, a civic resource around the practice of writing.

In the meantime, you’ll usually find Stafford in a classroom or in the Commons, encouraging students and faculty to use writing and conversation about writing to inform artistic exploration and expression.

“Writing is the friend who will never leave you,” he says. “In art-making, in seeking vocation, in your life as a seeker, writing is the song-of-new-thinking always right there in your pocket ready to whisper a new notion.”