Jan Walker, Author

Author Jan Walker is launching Plicata Press, a small publisher dedicated to bringing good books from critique groups and workshops to readers. Writer and friend Kathleen O’Brien is joining her as the press marketing director. The press is located in Gig Harbor, Washington, an historic fishing village on Puget Sound.

The first book Jan will release through Plicata Press, A Farm in the South Pacific Sea, is the fictionalized account of an American woman’s attempt to grow spiny lobster in a net-fence environment on a Tongan island.

Nuku’alofa, Tonga’tapu Island, Tonga, June 1967

The customs’ official grasped her papers in one hand, tapped them against the other hand’s open palm and looked her down and up. She wondered if he’d ask to see her teeth. “June Sandusky,” he said, no inflection in his voice. “But there must be some mistake. You are a woman.”

The Tongan alphabet lacks the letter J; women had few rights, and the name June is one a man might take from a western calendar. The first chapter and selected excerpts from A Farm in the South Pacific Sea, and from other published or in-progress works, appear on Jan’s Books page.

On the Stories page, you will find some previously published and some new shorter works in three categories: Family, Prison and Diverse. The first Family story posted, “The War Effort,” recounts how Jan’s dad and mother responded to changes wrought by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Residents on Puget Sound, home of several Naval installations, feared war would soon reach their shores.

Jan’s Prison stories include anecdotes from her prison teacher’s memoir, Dancing to the Concertina’s Tune, a look inside adult female and male facilities where she taught for 18 years. She will be adding vignettes of her current volunteer work with a group that mentors female offenders in two Washington state correctional centers as the women prepare to release to their families and communities.

Diverse stories include fiction and nonfiction, and take readers to mountain and sea, tropical and northwest settings. Jan has been telling and writing stories since childhood. Her mother, a teacher and stickler for accuracy, often said the stories were exaggerated. Thought that’s true, there’s a fine line between fiction and nonfiction, and fiction often tells the greater truth.

Updates on book and story releases, and occasional writing tips from workshops Jan has facilitated, will be posted in News. Please visit again soon.