Stephen Thomas was born into a working class Catholic family in Auburn, Washington in 1950. At 12, thanks to an inspired teacher, Mrs. Sable, he heard a recording of Emily Dickinson poems. His fate was sealed. He played his role in Seattle’s poetry scene of the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. In 1984, he founded and built The Cabaret Hegel, where now an off-ramp leads I-5 traffic into the Industrial Flats. There he presented and performed with many other Northwest writers and musicians, including Jesse Bernstein. He has published his work in many ephemeral magazines, as well as in Exquisite Corpse, Poetry Northwest, The Malahat Review, Windfall, Malpais Review, and others. His book, Journeyman, was published by Charles Potts’ Tsunami Inc. He currently lives in Germany’s Black Forest, where he co-founded Gemeinschaft Sonnenwald: a sustainable, regenerative, agriculture community, that is, a big family farm.