EMPTY BOWL
Empty Bowl, an independent press founded in 1976 in the Pacific Northwest as a cooperative letterpress publisher, publishes literary anthologies, poetry, translations, essays, and occasionally fiction.
In January 2025, we were pleased to publish Waveshock: Ed Ricketts, the Voyage of the Grampus, and Our Biopoetic Future by Jerry Martien. Waveshock was inspired by Ed Ricketts: From Cannery Row to Sitka, Alaska, a collection of essays edited by whale biologist Jan Straley. Empty Bowl is pleased to announce that Straley’s book is now available on our website.
In 1932, marine ecologist Ed Ricketts, with friends Jack and Sasha Calvin and mythologist Joseph Campbell, departed Puget Sound on board the Grampus for a journey up the Pacific Coast to Southeast Alaska. Ricketts crafted an essay on his "wave shock theory" during that ten-week trip that explored the impact of waves on coastal marine life. However, the essay and the Alaskan voyage were largely overshadowed by Ricketts’s California adventures. In Ed Ricketts: From Cannery Row to Sitka, Alaska, a fresh and compelling collection celebrating the life of this iconic scientist, editor and whale biologist Janice M. Straley writes poignantly of Ricketts’s influence on her own life and career.
With a foreword by Nancy Ricketts, Ed Rickett's daughter, and a preface by the editor, this unique collection includes works by researchers and scientists, with Ed Ricketts's breakthrough "Wave Shock Essay" the book's centerpiece. Ed Ricketts: From Cannery Row to Sitka, Alaska is beautifully designed by Carolyn Servid of Old Sitka Rocks Press, with additional illustrations by Sitka artist Norman Campbell that provide intimate visual renderings of Ricketts's passion: the diverse and bountiful inhabitants of the waters along the Pacific Coast. This edition was revised from an earlier edition by the same title, published by Shorefast Editions in 2015.
Read a recent review of My Heart Is Good in the Anchorage Daily News
Book review: Alaska anthropologist and S’Klallam elder tell a story of treaty rights and fisheries management by Nancy Lord at Anchorage Daily News
My Heart Is Good is a history of treaty rights, told through the life story of Port Gamble S’Klallam elder and former tribal chair Ron Charles, with context and background provided by anthropologist Josh Wisniewski. In recounting Charles’s story, the book traces the historical arc of the Port Gamble S’Klallams from treaty signing to the landmark 1974 Boldt Decision that affirmed tribal fishing rights in Washington State, the subsequent 1994 court decision affirming the tribes’ shellfish harvesting treaty rights, and the growth of today’s S’Klallam commercial fishing fleet. My Heart Is Good offers keen insights into the impact of the Boldt Decision on tribal communities in western Washington and the subsequent development of tribal fisheries management. In chronicling Ron Charles’s pivotal role during this transition, it shows how one small Indian community transformed into the stable commercial fishing community it is today. Through this unique collaboration, My Heart Is Good makes an original contribution to the growing body of treaty-rights literature, Salish Sea history, and Native American oral history.
Take a look at recent articles about My Heart Is Good:
My Heart Is Good: Treaty Rights and Food Sovereignty for the S’Klallam Fishing Community by Angela Downs at The Jefferson County Beacon
Former S'Klallam Tribe chair shares history of tribal fishing, treaties in Washington by Peiyu Lin at the Kitsap Sun
‘My Heart Is Good’ tells ‘an untold story’ by Diane Urbani de la Paz for Peninsula Daily News
Tribal leader explores fighting for treaty rights through lens of growing up on reservation by Tiffany Royal at Northwest Treaty Tribes
Of Note
Read more about the award in a recent story from the Port Townsend Leader.
Chemakum tribal elder, Empty Bowl Press receive Humanities Washington awards by Kirk Boxleitner at The Leader
Please join us at Seattle University in the Rolfe room for a poetry reading from Empty Bowl authors Red Pine and Andrew Schelling. Both poet-translators will be reading from their recently published works; Red Pine with If a Mountain Lion Could Sing: The Lyric Poems of Xin Qiji, translated from Classical Chinese and published by Copper Canyon Press, and Andrew Schelling with Old Time Love Song, translated from Sanskrit and published by Circumference Books. In addition to reading from their works, the authors will also be discussing the art of translation and the challenges that accompany it.
This event is hosted by Dr. Jason Worth and the Seattle University Philosophy department, and will take place at 6 p.m. To find more details and contact information, visit the event posting here.
We were surprised and deeply grateful to have received one of fifty awards given by Humanities WA this year in celebration of their fiftieth anniversary, acknowledging Empty Bowl’s five-decade-long contribution to the humanities. We were especially moved by the words of our nominators: “The people of Washington State are fortunate to have a publisher like this, which originated as a quixotic idea from a bunch of muddy tree planters, but which has become a literary press of unique and diverse voices connecting the Pacific Northwest to the world, and vice versa.” We’re honored to be in good company with forty-nine others, including two of our Empty Bowl authors, Shin Yu Pai and Kate Reavey! For more details, visit the Humanities WA website. To register to watch the Humanities WA award ceremony, use this link to register.
