Paul Nelson is the founder of SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB) & the Cascadia Poetry Festival and serves as Founding Director. SPLAB was founded in 1993, has produced hundreds of poetry events and has created over 600 hours of interview programming with many legendary poets and whole systems activists and theorists including Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Robin Blaser, Diane di Prima, Daphne Marlatt, Nate Mackey, George Bowering, Brenda Hillman, Jean Houston, Riane Eisler, Larry Dossey, Father Matthew Fox and many others. Paul is engaged in a 20 year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia, lives in Rainier Beach, in the Cascadia bioregion's Cedar River watershed with Bhakti Watts and his daughter Ella Roque and serves as literary executor for the late poet Sam Hamill.
