About Laurie

Laurie Easter is a writer and editor from southern Oregon, where she lives on twenty-eight forested acres in a funky, little cabin off the grid on the edge of wilderness with some chickens, cats, and a Labradoodle/Bordoodle named Bailey. She is the author of ALL THE LEAVINGS, published by Oregon State University Press in October 2021.

In ALL THE LEAVINGS, Laurie Easter deftly navigates both the rugged terrain of the human heart and life on the edge of wilderness. Her contemplative, often experimental essays explore love and risk: giving birth in a rustic cabin; the destructive power of wildfires; losing friends to cancer, AIDS, suicide, and meth; encounters with birds and mountain lions; and the unthinkable potential loss of a child to illness. Drawing from a reverence for the natural world—perilous yet rich with beauty—that is deeply rooted in a wild Oregon, ALL THE LEAVINGS examines what it means to love, lose, and find strength in facing adversity.

Laurie’s essays have been honored with a grant and a fellowship by the Vermont Studio Center, a residency at Playa, nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award, and named a prizewinner in Prime Number Magazine’s Award for Creative Nonfiction, judged by Ned Stuckey-French in 2014. Her essay “Crack My Heart Wide Open,” published by The Rumpus, was listed as a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2015. As a manuscript, ALL THE LEAVINGS was a finalist for the 2018 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Prize. Essays appear in The Shell Game: Writers Play with Borrowed Forms and A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays (October 2021), both published by University of Nebraska Press. Her work appears in Chautauqua, Under the Gum Tree, and Hippocampus Magazine, among other literary journals.

She holds a bachelor’s in English with a writing emphasis from Southern Oregon University and an MFA in writing with a Creative Nonfiction emphasis from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is a former creative nonfiction editor at Hunger Mountain: The VCFA Journal of the Arts, where she helped curate two annual issues of the magazine that were recognized as “Notable Special Issues” in Best American Essays.