author
Ella Higginson
1862–1940
A major literary voice of the Pacific Northwest, she wrote poems, stories, essays, and novels that helped bring the region into American literature. In 1931, she was named Washington’s first poet laureate.
2 Audiobooks
From the Land of the Snow-Pearls: Tales from Puget Sound
by Ella Higginson
Alaska, the Great Country
by Ella Higginson
About the author
Born in Kansas around 1862 and raised largely in Oregon, she later settled in Bellingham, Washington, where much of her writing life took shape. Her work is closely associated with the Pacific Northwest, and she became known for fiction, poetry, and essays that drew on the landscapes and communities of the region.
At the height of her career, her writing appeared widely in magazines, and she published poetry collections, short story collections, a novel, and a travel book. Among the works often mentioned are The Flower that Grew in the Sand, The Forest Orchid and Other Stories, Mariella of Out-West, and the poetry collection The Vanishing Race.
Her reputation was strong in her own time, and in 1931 she was appointed the first poet laureate of Washington. Although she is less widely read now than some of her contemporaries, she remains an important figure in western American literature and in the literary history of Washington State.