Port Angeles – The North Olympic Library System announced Friday that Nellie Bridge has been selected as Clallam County’s next Poet Laureate. Bridge will serve from April of this year through March 2027, succeeding the county’s first poet laureate Jaiden Dokken.

Community members are invited to the inauguration ceremony during Poetry Fest on Friday, April 4, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Port Angeles Main Library. During the event, Dokken will perform their final poetry reading as poet laureate, and Bridge will kick off her two-year term with a reading of her own. Attendees can browse a variety of poetry books in celebration of National Poetry Month.

The inauguration will also be livestreamed on Zoom.

A second Poetry Fest celebration will take place on Friday, April 25, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Forks Branch Library, where Bridge will read from her work.

Bridge recently returned to Sequim, where she was raised, after spending six years working with teens in international schools, including four years in Sofia, Bulgaria, and two in Lima, Peru. She currently works with fourth through sixth graders at Five Acre School in Dungeness.

Bridge says she plans to collaborate with other organizations to display poems in unexpected places in the county, and explore the possibility of creating an anthology of new and old poems from the community.

A committee of community arts leaders and others from across the county selected Bridge from a pool of talented poets who submitted applications last fall. The appointment comes with a $10,000 stipend funded by the North Olympic Library Foundation and Clallam County in recognition of the poet’s time and energy in hosting events, and to support the poet’s craft and practice.