Theresa Whitehill

A California poet, letterpress printer, and graphic designer, Theresa Whitehill served as Poet Laureate for the northern California city of Ukiah from 2009 through 2011 and has been involved her entire career in the production of poetry readings and literary events. Her interrelated focus on literary and graphic arts came out of her study of book arts at Mills College in the early 1980s. Since 1984 she has lived in Mendocino County, where she is well-known to local poetry audiences. “Évora a Doce,” her poem about Portuguese soul and food, was published by Alice Waters. She has also served as Poet-in-Residence for Stags’ Leap Winery in the Napa Valley. Whitehill’s collections of poetry include A Grammar of Longing (2009) and A Natural History of Mill Towns (1993), published by Pygmy Forest Press; Saudades, published by Stags’ Leap Winery in 2003; and the anthology, Deep Valley: Poets Laureate of Ukiah 2001–2018, published by Slow Mountain Press in 2017. Her poetry and letterpress broadsides are in numerous fine press collections, including the Getty Center for the Arts, the John Hay Library of Brown University, the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, and Stanford University’s Special Collections Library. She spends her time between her studios in Ukiah and St. Helena, California, managing her commercial graphic design business, Colored Horse Studios.