CMarie Furhman will be featured at the First Draft Writers Series on Thursday, Nov. 16, 7 p.m. at Pendleton Center for the Arts.

PENDLETON — The First Draft Writers Series will welcome CMarie Fuhrman for the next event on Thursday, Nov. 16, 7 p.m. at Pendleton Center for the Arts, 214 N. Main St.

Admission is free. The gathering can also be joined via Zoom — for the link, visit pendletonarts.org/first-draft.

The evening includes a talk by the author and audience discussion, followed by an open mic portion where writers can share an original piece. To participate in open mic, authors can sign up at First Draft, or send a note through Zoom.

About the author

Fuhrman has authored “Camped Beneath the Dam: Poems” and co-edited two significant anthologies, “Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, and Poetry” and “Native Voices: Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations.”

She hosts Terra Firma, a podcast from Colorado Public Radio, and has published poetry and nonfiction in multiple journals and several anthologies.

She is a regular columnist for the Inlander, former Idaho Writer in Residence, and the Elk River Writers Workshop Director. She is the associate director and director of poetry for the graduate program in Creative Writing at Western Colorado University, where she teaches Nature Writing.

When asked about themes in her work, she said she is “sure to get out of the way and let the story or poem say what it needs to.”

She mainly writes creative nonfiction and poetry.

“My poetry is mostly free verse, narrative and lyrical,” she said. “But I don’t think too much about genre or subgenre just as I don’t want to be pigeonholed as a nature writer or memoirist — those titles would only serve to limit me and my creativity.”

Her hope, she said, is that her writing “makes the reader feel something.”

“Joy, sadness, love, recognition — even anger. Our job as writers is to bring life and feeling into our reader,” she said. “I work really hard to do that. I’m not going to say that anyone should experience my work — there are so many great writers out there that are doing wonderful things with word, story, verse, but I hope that they are all finding some way to engage with the arts.”

First Draft The next session of the First Draft Writers Series is Thursday, Nov. 16, 7 p.m. at the Pendleton Center for the Arts, 214 N. Main St. Admission is free. Another option is to attend by Zoom — find the link at pendletonarts.org/first-draft.

The next session of the First Draft Writers Series is Thursday, Nov. 16, 7 p.m. at the Pendleton Center for the Arts, 214 N. Main St.

Admission is free. Another option is to attend by Zoom — find the link at pendletonarts.org/first-draft.