Publications
Refugia of the Blue Mountains
Award-winning author Marina Richie and artist Robin Coen created an exhibit of images and poetic narratives honoring exquisite relationships of wildlife and plants in wild places. From vast wildlands to tiny habitat pockets, refugia translates to safe havens and corridors for native plants and wildlife to survive dramatic climate changes. The Blue Mountains are Oregon’s largest ecoregion and a wildlife mega-corridor bridging the Rocky Mountains, Cascades, and the Great Basin.
Marina and Robin created the exhibit as artists-in-residence for the Greater Hells Canyon Council. They also serve on the board of directors. Showings so far: World Center for Birds of Prey (Boise), Crossroads Gallery (Baker City), Press Room (La Grande), and Josephy Center (Joseph).
The exhibit book (77 pages with art and writing) is available for purchase for $25. All proceeds benefit Greater Hells Canyon Council. Contact Marina.
Articles & Essays
Marina has written many articles for popular and literary magazines, as well as contributed essays and poetry for published book collections. Her story, “Undaunted, Grad Students Return to the Field After Wildfires” appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of National Wildlife.
poetry
Marina’s poems have appeared in Lothlorien, Humans of the World, Musepaper, Right Hand Pointing, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, two book anthologies of Central Oregon Writers Guild, and accompanying art in the exhibitbook, Refugia of the Blue Mountains. She writes with an Ekphrastic Poetry Group and publishes poems on her website. Nature is often her muse.
Inspired by Carmen Giménez’s poem “Ars Poetica”
Metamorphosis
I am feathered, I am dappled light, I am moss cupping lichens, maidenhair fern, chanterelle
mushroom, and hidden spring. I am shadow, I am silken sticky strands catching dewdrops.
Lost in in lawn grass choking wildflowers, I am cocklebur, hounds tongue, leafy spurge,
spotted knapweed, cheatgrass. I am English Ivy persisting and incessant. I am sorry.
I am tree-song, I am mistletoe, I am decaying heartwood, I am alive in my outer rings, I am beetle, woodpecker, nuthatch, and flying squirrel gliding on a moon ray.
Tunneling under snow, I am a vole on everyone’s menu, I am plover chick, pandora moth, stingless wasp. I am earthworm washed down a drain, I am the swatted house fly.
I am prey, I am predator, I am native, I am invasive, I am migratory, I am resident, I am parasitic. I am symbiotic. I am feathered, furred, scaled, and thorny.
Splitting my cocoon, I am tortoiseshell butterfly hardening new wings. I am readying
to pollinate flowers for a future I will never see. I am flapping my wings to spawn a tornado.
— Marina Richie
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