Celebrated poet Nance Van Winckel, who taught more than 20 years at Eastern Washington University’s creative writing program, died on July 19 at the age of 74 from complications of treatment she was receiving for cholangiocarcinoma. Van Winckel was a literal and figurative spinner of yarns, publishing fiction, memoir, and creating art from bits and bobs, including a genre of her creation: pho-toems, which integrated photography, photo editing, and poetry.
A reformed bad girl-“ish,” says her husband, artist Rik Nelson, Van Winckel wrote 17 books of poetry and prose, including her debut poetry collection, Bad Girl, with Hawk. Van Winckel won two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the Washington State Governor’s Award for Poetry, Poetry Society of America’s Gordon Barber Award, a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship, and three Pushcart Prizes.
In 1974, Van Winckel began her creative writing studies at Eastern Washington University. A premed student, she told her family she needed to get poetry out of her system…