Many events and activities are associated with the Big Read, including this Gratitude Jar where people can add their own slips.

ENTERPRISE — Fishtrap welcomes author Ross Gay on Tuesday, March 12, for a keynote address finale for the 2024 Big Read.

His talk begins at 7 p.m. at the OK Theater, 208 W. Main St. Tickets are $15, $12.50 for Fishtrappers or $5 students. All ages are welcome. Purchase tickets at fishtrap.org.

This year’s Big Read featured Gay’s book “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.” Events were held throughout Wallowa and Union counties — book discussions, poetry readings, workshops and more.

“Each winter, Fishtrap puts on the NEA Big Read as an opportunity to gather people together by reading a great book as a community,” said Fishtrap’s Mike Midlo. “Ross Gay’s ‘Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude’ is one of those books that sparks conversations and inspires people to seek a greater appreciation of each other and the world around us.”

About the book

Through 24 lyric poems, Gay’s “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” offers a “luminous exploration of death, life, and their many tides,” according to a description of the National Endowment for the Arts, which sponsors the Big Read.

Animated by what Gay has called the “discipline of gratitude,” NEA says the collection “considers sorrow’s potential, grounded in the rhythms and abundance of the natural world: the compost that gives way to rich soil, the decay that reveals seeds, the branches that must be trimmed to make room for new growth.”

About the author

The NEA provides the following background on Gay at arts.gov.

Ross Gay was born in Youngstown, Ohio, but moved with his family at a young age to an apartment complex just outside Philadelphia, where he grew up listening to his parent’s old records and playing games of manhunt and pickup football with the other children who lived in the building.

Gay’s father, a restaurant manager, and his mother, a teacher and a copy editor, cultivated a passion for both language and food in their children.

His journey toward poetry is varied. One version of the story, as Gay tells it, began in an American literature class that he took in college. He attended Lafayette College to play football and a professor gave him a poem called “An Agony. As Now.” by Amiri Baraka.

“I read it and it changed my life,” Gay said in an interview with the Creative Independent. “I read the poem and then I started reading poems.”

Gay went on to major in English and art, and then to earn an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and a PhD in English from Temple University.

He has authored four books of poetry: “Against Which” (CavanKerry Press, 2006); “Bringing the Shovel Down” (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011); “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015); and “Be Holding (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020).

His collection of essays, “The Book of Delights,” was released by Algonquin Books in 2019; and his new book of essays, “Inciting Joy,” was released by Algonquin in October 2022.

Now a professor at Indiana University, Gay lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where he is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a nonprofit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy program.

Among the vegetables and flowers in his own yard, Gay has planted fig trees from his Pennsylvania hometown.

“Ross Gay is a busy guy,” Midlo said. “He writes, teaches and gives readings all over the country. We’re lucky that he’s taken time to visit our corner of the world. In fact, he’s staying up at the lake for a couple extra days with family and friends to get to know Wallowa County better.”

Big Read events

Big Read events leading up to the finale include:

March 8: Book discussion, 1 p.m., Enterprise Library, 101 NE First St.

March 9: Storytellers Group, 2 p.m., Cook Memorial Library, 2006 Fourth St., La Grande.

March 9 and March 10: Youth Theater Workshop for ages 6-12, “Write It and Read It: A Youth Theater Workshop with Attitude and Gratitude.” Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. and Sunday, 2-5 p.m. at South Fork Grange, 307 Rosewell St., Lostine.

March 12: Keynote with Ross Gay, 7 p.m., OK Theater, 208 W. Main St., Enterprise. Tickets at fishtrap.org.