Joe Wilkins is the author of a novel, Fall Back Down When I Die, praised as “remarkable and unforgettable” in a starred review at Booklist and short-listed for the First Novel Award and the Pacific Northwest Book Award. He is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers, and four collections of poetry, including Thieve When We Were Birds, winner of the Oregon Book Award. Wilkins grew up north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana and lives now with his family in western Oregon, where he directs the creative writing program at Linfield University.
Joe Wilkins
Lay of the Land
Broken Badlands
I WHEN WE ARE SMALL and close to the earth, there is more landscape than time. It’s only later that we forget. Only later that we begin to play pretend. I was Continue reading
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Crossing a Riven Country, Part Two
This is the second installment in a two-part pandemic travelogue by frequent Orion contributor Joe Wilkins. You can read the first installment here. THEY MET HER ONLY ONCE, Continue reading
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Crossing a Riven Country, Part One
IN THE SPRING OF 1919 the McGarritys rode out from their North Dakota homestead, where, back of the house, they left spaded into the prairie earth four graves, their children, born Continue reading
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Where Paradise Lay
To honor the passing of legendary singer John Prine, we are sharing this previously print-only essay “Where Paradise Lay” by Joe Wilkins (Coda, September/October 2014). Bright, high-running clouds, the dry Continue reading
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Recommended Reading: Joe Wilkins
(Editor’s Note: This is a follow-up to Joe Wilkins’s feature article “On Edges” in the Summer 2019 issue.) I hold so many books close. My tattered copy of James Wright’s collected Continue reading
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On Edges
During a summer spent deep in the backcountry, one family learns the value of getting lost and the danger of staying found. Continue reading
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Out West
(This essay was a finalist for a 2010 National Magazine Award in the Essay category.) OUT ON THE BIG DRY we had to kill to live: Come October, we’d herd a Continue reading
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Of Blood and Bone
OVER THE YEARS, we have left many things at my father’s grave: flowers, agates, and fossils found out on the prairie, an old pair of boots he loved. But not everything Continue reading