Coomer

ENTERPRISE Paula Coomer is coming to Fishtrap to read from her first novel, Dove Creek, which chronicles the journey of a young woman moving from a bare-bones upbringing in Kentucky to a Pacific Northwest Indian reservation. 

 Coomers reading at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 19, at Coffin House, 400 E. Grant St., is open to the public. Donations are appreciated.

The main characters rural upbringing and integration into reservation life is informed by Coomers own experience growing up in Louisville, Ken., and later on a farm along the banks of the Ohio River, before moving to Oregon in 1978. 

Coomer received her nursing degree from Eastern Oregon University in 1989. Between 1991 and 1996 she worked to develop public health and community health nursing programs on the Nez Perce and Coeur dAlene reservations. In 1999 she received a Masters of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from the University of Idaho. 

Coomer visited Wallowa County in 2006 as Fishtraps Writer-in-Residence, participating in the regions first Big Read. She also taught Fishtrap College in the fall of 2008. 

She now lives and writes in Clarkston, Wash., and is a part-time instructor in the English Department at Washington State University.