Several NWIC-Swinomish students were able to participate in an afternoon poetry workshop with the current Poet Laureate of Washington State, Kathleen Flenniken. 
“Kathleen Flenniken came to poetry late, after working as a civil engineer and hydrologist at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. She teaches poetry and is a co-editor and president of Floating Bridge Press. She lives in Seattle, Washington.”
Workshop activities focused on the integration of environmental science issues and poetry and the use of parallelism in poetry. Her latest volume of poems (Plume) deals with her experience growing up in eastern Washington and working at Hanford.