Ray will be reading his long elegy on Willits, entitled “The Willits Farewell.” Hibshman will be reading two stories from his recently published book, Of a Lifetime: Stories 1963-2023. “The Willits Farewell” is an elegy of 220 lines, nearly the same length as Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed.” In the poem, Ray catalogs scores of Willits old-timers who flourished here in the second half of the last century.

Dan Hibshman has been a resident of Mendocino County since 1969. He’s worked in the county as an English teacher, a clerk in a natural foods store, and as a librarian in the Mendocino County Law Library. He is the author of two books, Disquiet and Of a Lifetime: Stories 1963-2023. Hibshman will read two stories, “Catch” and “Lost Puppy.” The later story is set on the streets of a fictionalized Willits.