Piper Lane
Piper Lane grew up in Homer, Alaska, a claustrophobic small town that taught her how to build community and how to survive variances of light. She has commercial fished every summer since she was 20, knows how to gut and clean a fish, and loves collecting sun-baked bones from rural Washington roads. She holds both an MA from Ohio University and an MFA from University of Washington, and was a Hugo House fellow from 2019-20. Her work can be found at [PANK], Fourth River, and Territory (The Map is Not), and has been chosen as a finalist for the Bellingham Review Tobias Wolff fiction contest and the Katherine Anne Porter prize. At University of Washington, she co-founded Black Jaw Literary series, won the Eugene Van Buren award twice, and the David Guterson outstanding thesis award. She is a Hedgebrook alum. In 2023 she will receive a June Dodge fellowship from Mineral School. In 2023 she completed a Master’s in the Art of Teaching at CWU, completed a certification to teach English Language Arts, PE, and Health, and currently works in the Methow School District as a middle school teacher. She is represented by Hannah Strouth at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates and her novel, IN OUR EVERY BONE, is on submission.
Work
“The birds were the worst. March and the migration to Valdez in full swing. If asked, those of us who first came to Alaska to study bird patterns, we could name all the variations of murres and guillemots and murrelets. The gulls and kitties, auks and dovekies. If asked, those of us who were fishermen said the birds were brown and brown and brown.”
— Excerpt from “Spillionaires,” Territory (Summer 2020)
“Beak against glass. Don’t forget about us, first we whispered. Whispering mistaken for wind. A breeze at first. Planetary, westerlies and easterlies, periodic, trade. These are too many names for the same sort of riot.”
— excerpt from “Chronology,” PANK (Issue 15)
“Not until there’s white jizz covering our rain gear and eggs spilt all over deck. Not until late August. Not until we’ve all lost our minds, ‘til we’ve all got glazed eyes—’til we’d do anything just to feel something, the end coming slow and fast at the same time. We can’t look at each other in August because we’re wet with longing for land and the smell of undergrowth. We won’t look and we won’t go home yet. We won’t go home—not until we’re numb and drunk and rich.”
— excerpt from “How the Bloodline Weaves the Spine,” Fourth River (Feb. 2020)
