Like every facet of life before March 2020, creatives had a very different relationship with their work and practice before the COVID-19 lockdowns started. This was true for the people who ran and participated in Whidbey Island-based literary nonprofit Hedgebrook. Hedgebrook is a global community of women and nonbinary writers and well-known in the literary world for its prestigious residency and retreat programs, as well as craft seminars and public events. One of Hedgebrook’s defining aspects is its strong network of alumni who often continue to cultivate a writing community long after their residencies are done.
It was this network of alumni who came together during the pandemic to create Flying Flounders, a unique group that ended up being a vital source of support and creativity during a time when virtual community was both a blessing and a burden.
If you’ve lived here in the Pacific Northwest for a while, you’ve probably heard of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a massive earthquake fault off the coast of British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon where the seismic plate holding up the land is slipping underneath the one at the bottom of the ocean. Pressure builds up for centuries along the area where they overlap and rub against each other, and every 500 years a major “rip” occurs where the mainland plate moves farther west and down, and the ocean plate is pushed up (and potentially east). The resulting earthquake is around magnitude 9.0 — about 100 times stronger than the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, our last big seismic event here in Seattle. In addition to the earth-movement damage that it would cause, the uplifting and dropping of the ocean floor along the fault line is expected to cause a tsunami wave.
