C.L. Downing has previous work featured in Imbroglio, Ribbit, Text Lures Text, Word & Image, North Coast Squid, and The Timberline Review. She has won the Academy of American Poets Prize, Honorable Mention for the Elizabeth Lyons Award, and Runner-up for the MoonPath Press Sally Albiso Award. Her first novel is to be published near the end of 2024. C.L. Downing is also an accomplished photographer of nature, and from behind the lens, even uncovers beauty in the decaying world at large. Her photographs have won awards, are prized by art lovers, and grace many publications, such as this very collection, as well as the cover of the 2023 edition of the literary journal North Coast Squid. Culling from a life of adventure/misadventure, sometimes privilege, sometimes hardship, always hope, she brings an avenue of authenticity and prospect for optimism in a vial of words painted in the colors of laughter, despair, loneliness, elation, and courage.

C.L. Downing's Website.

About To Walk the North Direction:

"To Walk the North Direction by C.L. Downing is a narrative of a life fully lived, stories of deepening self-awareness and empathy toward the world with a voice free of artifice or self-pity. Downing's writing blooms with energy, wit, and honesty. Through each poem, her integrity as a creator is obvious. With a style all her own, she grants her subjects full reveal without sentimentality, but always through her kind heart which is why she can be trusted. Readers will feel their own life experience expand in Downing's recounting of her time spent paying concentrated attention to the world."
—Caroline Boutard