Ella Higginson

Born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1862, Ella Rhoads Higginson moved west as a teenager and later made her home in Bellingham, Washington. She became known for poems, fiction, and essays that drew on life in the Pacific Northwest, often blending regional scenery with close attention to everyday emotions and relationships.

Higginson published widely in magazines and built a national readership. Her novel Mariella; of Out-West won a prize from The Reader magazine, and in 1931 she was named the first poet laureate of Washington State, a sign of how strongly her work was linked with the cultural identity of the region.

Today she is remembered as an important early literary figure of the American West and Pacific Northwest. Her writing helped preserve a sense of place at a time when the region was still defining itself in national literature.