(Airdate: July 1, 2026) Host Cris Wilson welcomes Rufina C. Garay to Booklovers’ Cafe. Rufina is the City of Port Townsend poet laureate for 2026 and 2027. She is a spoken word poet, food writer, and visual artist who works in multimedia. She is also a culinary artist and practitioner of Taoist meditative arts in which poetry is a healing practice and often incorporates both into the poetry events she creates. Her current projects include a chapbook with a Salish Sea perspective on the Uvalde
mass shooting, poems collected in a “Ministry of Rage” chapbook as a form of self-care and social justice, and a “Meditations on Love” chapbook. Rufina is the founder of “Shattering Glass,” an ever-evolving curation of established and emergent poets from the Olympic Peninsula who amplify social and environmental justice issues.

(Airdate: June 16, 2026) Cris welcomes poet and editor Susan Rich to talk about Bird Brains, her delightful and lyrical look at the birds of the Pacific Northwest. Each bird has not only scientific notes but an original poem and lovely evocative Japanese brush style illustration. Some of the poets are from Port Townsend!

(Airdate: April 7, 2026) Booklovers’ host Cris Wilson talks to Seattle author Kay Smith-Blum about her latest novel. Tangles  is a historical fiction thriller about the Hanford Nuclear Reservation during the Cold War, blending a love story with a mystery surrounding government secrecy and its devastating health and environmental impacts. The novel follows a young scientist, Luke Hinson, as he investigates the harmful effects of nuclear production, uncovering a trail that connects to the disappearance of his former neighbor, Mary, and exploring themes of courage, loss, and the human cost of the nuclear age.

(Airdate: March 3, 2026) Celebrating Ian’s Ride by Ian McKay, this year’s Community Read for Port Townsend library, host Cris Wilson welcomes Ian MacKay to Booklovers’ Cafe. While studying as a biology undergrad at UC Santa Cruz, Ian Mackay crashed his bike into a tree on campus. Paralyzed from the shoulders down, Mackay adapted to his new life with the help of his dedicated family, particularly his mother, Teena Woodward, and a group of quirky friends. After years of despair, and against all odds, he became an inspiring leader, an innovator with Apple, and a world-record-breaking athlete. In this intimate biography based on more than one hundred hours of interviews, journal entries, and more, writer Karen Polinsky recounts Ian’s accident and determined recovery, in which he discovered the healing power of nature and community. Ian’s Ride is both a personal journey and an adventure quest for nature lovers, endurance athletes, and anyone struggling with a life-changing loss or diagnosis. This deeply moving true story examines how we exist in our bodies, adapt to and overcome adversity, and what it means to push our limits.

(Airdate: February 1, 2026) Cris invites local author and retired professor of Information Science, Ricardo Gomez to talk about his novel, The Tides of Freedom: The Slow Drowning of Democracy  This is political fiction examining how democratic institutions erode and how individual choices can make a difference. This is truly a book about our current time. We also dip into AI and how it can help without taking over the writing process. 

(Airdate: December 2, 2025) Cris welcomes Tessa Hulls to talk about Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir. It is a critically acclaimed book that explores intergenerational trauma, love, and identity through three generations of Chinese women in her family, focusing on her grandmother’s experiences with political turmoil and her mother’s mental illness. The graphic memoir uses powerful visual metaphors, like ghosts representing historical events, to connect personal history with larger Chinese history, and it won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography!

(Airdate: November 4, 2025) Cris talks to Seattle author Thomas Kohnstamm about his latest novel Supersonic. This is a book of place, specifically, Seattle. He says “Seattle isn’t the Space Needle or the Fremont Troll,” but rather the interactions between neighbors, the waves of people entering the city, and the constant process of building. The novel tells the stories of four families over 150 years of Seattle history, and delves into what Kohnstamm calls the mythology of the city in a way only a book written by someone born and raised here could.

(Airdate: October 7, 2025) Cris brings Kathleen Alcala to Booklovers Café to talk about her novel, Treasures in Heaven. This book is a turbulent tale of love and political awakening set in Mexico a century ago. The protagonist, Estela, finds herself swept into a world of politics and entangled in secret relationships. What starts as lessons to educate poor children grows into a school for prostitutes. The school leads to a radical underground newspaper and a dangerous movement for social change that foreshadows the Mexican Revolution.

(Airdate: September 9, 2025) Cris welcomes back Thor Hanson.  In an era of global environmental challenges, Close to Home argues that hyper-local, hands-on efforts to connect with nature have never been more important. Hanson shows readers the myriad, simple ways to improve biodiversity. Moving and reverent, Close to Home provides a much-needed lesson in curiosity and community, one that reminds us to slow down and invest in the world waiting for us just outside our doors.