PORT ANGELES — As the Raymond Carver Festival draws to a close this week, two more free events will take place at Peninsula College: a reading of short stories and poetry at 12:35 p.m. Wednesday and the keynote lecture at the same time Thursday.
First, creative writing students at Peninsula College will offer selected short fiction and poetry — including humorous pieces — during the reading in the Little Theater, which is on the main campus at 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
Community members are invited to hear these pieces, polished in creative writing professor Janet Lucas’ class.
On Thursday, Port Angeles poet Alice Derry will give a lecture filled with memories of Carver’s humor and kindness.
Her talk, “Raymond Carver: A Personal Remembrance,” will also show how generosity pervaded his stories and poems, such as “So Much Water So Close to Home” and “Summer Fog.”
Admission is free to this Studium Generale presentation at 12:35 p.m. in the Little Theater.
Derry knew Carver during the 1980s after he moved to Port Angeles to build a new life with Tess Gallagher, the writer who would become his second wife.
Carver, who was hailed as America’s Chekhov, died in 1988 at age 50. This Saturday, May 25, would have been his 75th birthday.
The culminating event of the Raymond Carver Festival will be a kind of Port Angeles walkabout: “A Rouse for Ray,” on Saturday.
After meeting at the intersection of the Olympic Discovery Trail and Strait View Drive at 11 a.m., Gallagher, Derry and other poets will conduct a traveling reading, visiting sites inspirational to Carver poems.
Listeners can join the reading at any of the sites, including the last one at Ocean View Cemetery. A reading of “Gravy” and “Late Fragment” will take place there beside Carver’s grave.
For details about any of these free events, see the Peninsula College Facebook page or www.PenCol.edu.