A Woman’s Life on the Edge of the Sea Four Decades of Poetry

Author, activist, doula, grandmother, and singer of songs in reverence to the Earth, Irene Skyriver was born on the shores of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Her heritage is of Northwest Coastal Native (Tlingit and Makah) and European blood. At twenty-five years old and penniless, she moved to a small island community with her two, soon-to-be three, children. She felt at home in this small community, Lopez Island, on the Salish Sea. In her forty-two years on Lopez Island, she has lived a rich life. Skyriver is a song-keeper for the community and helped establish Winter and Summer Solstice traditions and Passage Rites ceremonies. She and her husband live on a homestead without traditional plumbing—a hand pump at the sink brings fresh spring water—the toilet is a composting outhouse, they eat from her large garden, drink the milk from raised goats, and brew cider from the orchard. In A Woman’s Life on the Edge of the Sea, Skyriver delves deep into her family and heritage and into the richness of nature and Mother Earth.

A Washington native, Irene Skyriver was born in Port Townsend and raised in the country. She moved with her children and horses to Lopez Island, WA in 1980. Green Writers Press published her first novel, Paddling with Spirits: A Solo Kayak Journey, in 2017. Inspired partly by her own spirit of adventure, and partly by the stories of her native coastal ancestors (Tlingit and Makah), the book interweaves the true account of her journey with generational stories handed down and vividly reimagined. Skyriver lives off-the-grid, and spends most of her time growing her garden.