Creatives, by definition, are constantly changing and pushing against boundaries. There are examples of people successfully changing directions, innovating, and reinventing all over. Whether it was economic pressure, a global pandemic, or a more personal reason, creatives grow and change and come out stronger.

In this uncertain current climate, the creatives we know want to connect and talk about change in their community and their craft. Wheelhouse is interested in meeting with creative entrepreneurs who want to share how they have reacted to external forces and successfully weathered the storm.

The goal of this panel, which features Washington State Poet Laureate Derek Sheffield, is to share some of these inspiring stories with other creative entrepreneurs to empower them to face change and thrive.

Derek Sheffield is the 2025-2027 Washington State Poet Laureate. Hailing from the Wenatchee Valley, Sheffield is the author of Not for Luck, selected for Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and Through the Second Skin, runner-up for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award. He is the co-editor of Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, which won a 2024 Washington State Book Award. The first in his family to attend college, Sheffield is now on the English faculty at Wenatchee Valley College and is the poetry editor of Terrain.org. When he’s not crafting poems, Derek is teaching his beloved Northwest Nature Writing class, where he has shared his passion for the outdoors with students for the past 20 years.

“I write because the words of others saved me in the long blue silence of my childhood,” he says, “and making poems for me has come to be about living more deeply and widely.”

The Poet Laureate program is sponsored by Humanities Washington and The Washington State Arts Commission/ArtsWA, with the support of Governor Bob Ferguson.