Walter Hesford - English, American Studies

Cheryl Johnson - English - I grew up on the Colville Reservation in Keller, Washington and was raised by my half Colville grandfather, my full-blooded Dane grandmother, my mother who just retired from working for the Suquamish tribe and my step-father, a rancher and logger for many years in Keller.  My roots are firmly planted along the Sanpoil River and that's where I travel, imaginatively, nearly everyday to think and let go of thinking.  I am shaped by that landscape.  Since I come from a rural and ranching background, I can appreciate how complicated our perspectives can be when examining our roles as guardians of nature.  I have also lived the urban life while I attended SUNY at Stony Brook, N.Y. and the University of Denver and tried hard to get sand in my shoes while living in DeLand, Florida for ten years and teaching in Daytona Beach.  For the last twenty years, I've lived in Lewiston where my husband/obsessive fly-fisherman teaches at LCSC and I trek the 35 Palouse miles to Moscow.  Exploring how we experience place and how we define our relationship to place play a central role in both my literature and writing classes as well.  One of my favorite pieces to teach is Gilgamesh (2000 B.C.); here, we have Enkidu, perhaps our first documented animal rightist, and Gilgamesh working out this balance between civilization and nature.