Under Western Skies
Monday, oct 19th - Sunday oct 25th
Under Western Skies brings together fiction, nonfiction, and poetry rooted in the landscapes and communities of the broader American West. This Gathering highlights work where place is central—high desert towns, mountain ranges, river valleys, and wide‑open horizons. Join us to explore how Western environments shape identity, history, and imagination, inviting readers into stories deeply rooted in place, where the landscape often serves as a character itself and the story is inseparable from the land.
Kiliii Yüyan ✹ Beth Piatote ✹ Pam Houston ✹ Marina Richie
Anthea Kreston ✹ Elissa Minor ✹ Kathleen Boland
Brian Laidlaw ✹ Nancy Foley ✹ Gabriel Urza
Keynote Event with Kiliii Yüyan
In partnership with Deschutes Public Library
Saturday, October 24 4:00pm - 5:30pm Sisters Movie House FREE and open to the public!
Photographer, speaker, and National Geographic Explorer Kiliii Yüyan will share stories and images from his book Guardians of Life: Indigenous Science, Indigenous Wisdom and Restoring the Planet. Yüyan captures life at the polar regions, beneath cold seas, and within the heart of human communities, His work appears in National Geographic, TIME, Vogue, and WIRED, and has been honored with National Geographic's Eliza Scidmore Award for Outstanding Storytelling.
Under WEstern Skies Workshops
Nature Writing and the Body
Saturday, October 24th
10:00AM - 12:30PM
Lazy Z Ranch (68540 E Highway 20, Sisters)
Tickets - $50
Whether you’re writing poetry, memoir, or fiction, writing about nature is rooted in the body. The smell of ponderosa, the feel of pine needles on the forest floor, the sound of a chickadee: we process these all through the body first. This workshop will explore the way wilderness mimics the human bodily experience: its rhythms, its tides, its moods, its seasons. We’ll spend time both indoors and outdoors, reading and discussing published examples and playing with writing prompts that use techniques like sensory grounding and mindfulness to improve our craft. We’ll learn to see nature writers not as authorities on the natural world, but rather as extensions of the places they are writing about. Bring your notebook and a good pair of outdoor shoes.
Facilitator Bio:
Elissa Minor is the author of the nature memoir Another Eve: Shame and Desire on the Oregon Coast (Oct ‘26) and the award-winning collection The Prisoner Pear: Stories from the Lake, which was a New York Times Editors Choice pick. Their work has appeared in New Letters, Glimmer Train, Juxtaprose, Baltimore Review, The Ledge, and Crab Creek Review, among others. They teach creative writing and literature in the Pacific Northwest.
Containing Multitudes: At Home in the West
Sunday, October 25th
10:00AM - 12:00PM
Pine Meadow Ranch
Tickets - $35
Just as Walt Whitman wrote about the complexity of being authentically human, our experience living in the West - and the West itself - contains multitudes. Join Bend writer and storycatcher Caela McKeever for a generative workshop exploring how life under the ever-changing Western skies roots and shapes us. You'll explore connection to place through examples from literature, sensory memories, and hands-on collage art, then end with shared writing time. No writing experience necessary. Please bring your own writing materials.
Facilitator Bio:
A lifelong resident under Western skies, Caela McKeever (she/her) was born and raised in a tight-knit farming community in California's San Joaquin Valley before attending college in San Luis Obispo. After practicing architecture for almost two decades in Seattle, she moved with her family to Bend, OR, in 2022. Now a creative project manager and storycatcher, she cares deeply about instigating change towards a future focused on kinship and care. Her writing explores themes of nature, community, and interconnectedness.
Welcome to Sisters Festival of Books!
A celebration of literature and storytelling In the NW
Sisters Festival of Books offers literary arts programming for all ages including writing and creativity workshops, author presentations and panels, storytelling events, authors dinners, author visits to schools and more! With programs offered throughout the year, we are committed to providing opportunities for enrichment through books, stories and writing for the Central Oregon community.
Join us in beautiful Sisters OR for our next event!
Author submissions are always open!
Our Mission
Our mission is to promote literacy, foster a love of reading and storytelling, and increase access to the literary arts across Central Oregon, with an emphasis on uplifting underrepresented voices. We aim to connect readers, writers, and storytellers from across the NW and beyond in a celebration of all things literature, serving as a hub for cultural enrichment and engagement.
Financial Accessibility Statement
Sisters Festival of Books charges admission for festival tickets for the sustainability of the organization and to raise funds for the local literacy initiatives we support. However, we believe that everyone should have access to the arts and community gatherings.
If cost is a barrier to your participation in the festival, please contact us HERE, with the event you would like to attend and we will make it happen, no questions asked!