Swart

ENTERPRISE — December’s Fishtrap Fireside begins Friday, Dec. 3, with readings from three Wallowa County writers and longtime Fishtrap friends: award-winning author David Laskin, educator and children’s story writer Evelyn Swart and Enterprise Junior High School student Emrys Hobbs.

Anyone anywhere can take in Fireside online at Fishtrap.org and on Fishtrap’s YouTube Channel, according to a press release.

Fishtrap Fireside is a monthly reading series designed to feature diverse voices from local writers. Each month offers a fresh look at what people of the West are thinking about and writing down.

“I’m particularly excited about this month’s lineup of readers,” said Mike Midlo, Fishtrap’s program director in the release. “The diversity of life experiences and generations represented in these writers should make for a great program.”

December’s Fishtrap Fireside is sponsored by Hurricane Coffee Co.

• Emrys Hobbs was born in Wallowa County and enjoys art, animals, reading, writing, music and being outdoors. He hopes to someday become a graphic novelist, a teacher, an astronaut or all of the above.

Meanwhile, he is attending junior high in Enterprise, hanging out with his family as much as he can and working at getting better at piano and making pie crusts. He feels lucky that Fishtrap has been part of his life for as long as he can remember.

• David Laskin has devoted the bulk of his literary career to works of narrative nonfiction about the lives of ordinary people caught up in events beyond their control, be it catastrophic weather, war, mass migration or genocide.

Laskin’s harrowing story of a deadly 1888 winter storm, “The Children’s Blizzard,” was a national bestseller that won both the Washington State Book Award and the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award. He has also won the Washington State Book Award for “The Family,” the story of three branches of his mother’s family, and “The Long Way Home,” the account of 12 European immigrants who fought with the U.S. armed forces in the First World War.

After decades of writing nonfiction books and articles for publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Smithsonian, Laskin jumped the fence to fiction with his first novel “What Sammy Knew,” published by Penguin this past spring to rave reviews.

Laskin and his wife, retired law professor Kate O’Neill, spend summers in Wallowa County and winters in Seattle. He is currently working on his second novel.

• Evelyn Swart is a former teacher, principal, superintendent of schools, state educational consultant and teacher of teachers. She is a proud mother of three, and grandmother of four grandchildren residing in Washington, Colorado, Poland, Thailand and soon, Australia.

Swart has a major interest in people and their positive attitudes toward our planet’s past, present and future. She’s been a Wallowa County resident and Fishtrap admirer for 20 years and likes writing stories for and about children of all ages.

Learn more at Fishtrap.org.