Photo by Steve Horn

 

Iris Graville is a writer, bookbinder, teacher, editor, and independent publisher from Lopez Island, WA. Her profiles and personal essays have been published in national and regional journals and magazines. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts where she served as nonfiction editor for Soundings Review.  Iris is also the  publisher for SHARK REEF online literary magazine.

 

Iris’s first book, Hands at Work—Portraits and Profiles of People Who Work with Their Hands, received numerous accolades including a Nautilus Book Gold Award, Independent Publishers Award, and an Indie Next Generation Book Award.

Hands at Work was inspired by a showing of Summer Moon Scriver’s black-and-white photographs of hands. Scriver’s images of strong, weathered, soiled, muscled hands digging potatoes, knitting, kneading dough, and spinning wool suggested a passion for the kinds of work that have become rare for many Americans.

As a writer, Iris strives to give voice to the untold stories of ordinary people. She had her first taste of the thrill of helping people tell their stories as a feature writer for her high school newspaper in a small town in southern Illinois. Years later, as a nurse in Indiana and Washington, she listened to patients in hospital rooms, exam rooms, homes, and schools and experienced an uncommon intimacy as they shared their fears, hopes, grief, and pain.

Iris blogs regularly about writing and spiritual matters (see Writing/Bloggerbyconvincement). Her memoir, Hiking Naked—A Quaker Woman’s Search for Balance, is a personal narrative of what she learned in the remote mountain village of Stehekin, WA about work, community, and leadings of the Spirit (as well as dealing with six feet of snow in the winter, ordering groceries by mail, and living without a telephone).

 HIKING NAKED 

scheduled for publication in September 2017 by Homebound Publications.

 

Upcoming Workshops

Journaling as Meditation: From the Blank Page to the Divine

October 28-30, 2016 – Quaker Center, Ben Lomond, CA

An introduction to journaling as a spiritual practice

combined with making a hand-bound journal.

See Journaling as Meditation for more details and to register.