My newest essay "You Have to Be Taught" has been published in the Fall 2025 issue of the North Coast Squid literary magazine.

This is the 10th edition of The Squid -- a magazine published every other year, which means 20 years of increasingly excellent writing and art!
To order your copy online visit
https://hoffmanarts.org/events/north-coast-squid-10th-edition/?

Copies are also available at many stores and cafes along Oregon's north coast.

I like to write essays which report and reflect on connections: Connections among humans, nature, and spirit. Connections among people and ideas.

One of my favorite themes is how to live balancing—balancing inside and out, past and future, quick and slow—what Hopi people and Daoism call the Middle Way.

For some samples of this, please enjoy the essays:

• "Everything Moves"
• "Portrait of a Cruiser: Gvogozdev Eugueni"
• "Electric Cars Won't Make the World a Better Place"

You can also see a selected list of my Publications and Grants.

The Southern Ocean © Eef Willems 

Sailing Between Sea and Sky: What I Learned from the Ocean about Life on Earth is a Finalist in the 2025 Wandering Aengus & Trail to Table Book Awards!

Editors called Finalist manuscripts "more than worthy of publication."
In particular, they admired my memoir Sailing Between Sea and Sky for its "meticulous research" and its rich subject.

For a glimpse of the tone and style of Sailing Between and Sky, please enjoy the excerpt on this website from my essay "Everything Moves"

which appeared in   Catamaran Literary Reader, issue 30  Fall 2020

   





Calm waters off Greenland © Phyllis Thompson

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© 2017 • Phyllis L. Thompson