Poems “funny, stark, spot-on and utterly beautiful” comprise her collection, "Our Foreigner", “a brilliant and dark comedy.” This is Betsy Sholl’ s apt description for the poetry of Nance Van Winckel, one of the Northwest’s foremost poets and writers, and her latest release—from The Pacific Coast Poetry Series/Beyond Baroque Books. Van Winckel’s own relatives traveled west enduring the hardship and tests of character that confronted those who made such treks in the 1800's. "Our Foreigner" explores, among other conditions and anomalies, ideas of journey, progress and regress, travel both physical and psychological. A variety of voices populate this collection, speakers from the past, or bright, sassy, contemporary folks talking as if all they have to do is open their mouths and out flies poetry. They manage, these poems, to be at once plain-speaking and brainy, lucid and deeply mysterious. Nance Van Winckel is the author of seven other books of poetry, most recently Pacific Walkers (U. of Washington Press, 2014) and Book of No Ledge (Pleiades Press Visual Poetry Series, 2016). She's on the faculties of Eastern Washington University's Inland Northwest Center for Writers and Vermont College of Fine Arts' MFA in Writing Program. She is the recipient of two NEA poetry fellowships, the Paterson Fiction Prize, Poetry Society of America's Gordon Barber Poetry Award, and a Christopher Isherwood Fiction Fellowship.