Katy Fitzpatrick Shedlock is a pastor, performance artist, and poet. Born and raised in Spokane, WA, she spent her twenties teaching language arts in Kazakhstan, the Lehigh Valley, PA, and Pittsburgh, where some semi-homeless punk rockers convinced her Jesus was actually one of them.
Katy is a provisional elder in the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, and her work on and off Sunday mornings focuses on complicating old language for God, re-presenting the stories of women in Scripture, and challenging the hermeneutical status quo.
She is a published playwright, wrote and performed original work with the ensemble of Touchstone Theatre of Bethlehem, PA, and her one-woman show For I Was a Stranger: Biblical Stories of Refuge raised several thousand dollars in benefit performances for World Relief Spokane. Katy was part of the Spokane Poetry Slam team for the 2018 National Poetry Slam in Chicago.
Like the other poems in this week's readings, this is from I Sing the Salmon Home: Poems from Washington State, an anthology edited by Washington State Poet Laureate Rena Priest and published by Empty Bowl Press.