When not tilting at environmental, social, and political wind- mills, David Hedges has spent the past 63 years writing, first as a journalist, then as a public relations practitioner and editor, then as an advertising copywriter and producer, and then as a political writer and aide, all the while churning out poems, essays, and works of fiction. He has published eight books, including Petty Frogs on the Potomac (1997), a poke at America's power base in rhymed verse; A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to a Geology Degree (2011), detailing, in verse, his escape to Greenwich Village six months shy of a degree and a commission in the Navy; Prospects of Life After Birth: Memoir in Poetry and Prose (2019), a chronicle of his early adventures; and finally, in 2021, The Changer, a novel based on the Interior Salish myth of the Change, marking the end of this world and the beginning of the next. He has served on the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission board since 1988, and co-founded, with State Librarian Jim Scheppke and Poet Laureate Lawson Inada, the Oregon Poetry Collection at the University of Oregon's Knight Library. He served for 24 years on the Oregon Poetry Association board, six as president, founding and editing Verseweavers, OPA's annual anthology of prize poems, and creating the Oregon Student Poetry Contest, now in its 23rd year. At the 2003 Oregon Book Awards, he received the Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award for his contributions to the state's literary life. He lives in Oregon City, Oregon, where his pioneer ancestors settled in the mid-1800s. View samples of his work at david.hedges.name.
