I am a writer, artist and creepy-crawly lover based in Bellingham, Washington. I write about the sensory experience of being alive and enjoy detours to the underworld, inner space and the cosmos. I grew up in Wyoming where the wind, dryness, and desolate landscape made an imprint on me. This punishing environment taught me self-reliance, the beautiful dimensions of solitude, how to push through pain, and that survival is best friends with adaptation and death.
For formal education, I earned three degrees, two in English and one in Community and Regional Planning. My first real job – full-time, salaried with benefits – was as a proposal writer at an art museum. It was also my last real job. Once during an internship as outreach specialist for a regional government, I was asked to wrap a gift. It was my all-time favorite “other duties as assigned” task. My wrap jobs are interactive upcycled collage puzzles that I create through an iterative process of construction and deconstruction. They are acts of love.
In my pre-pandemic life, I worked on transportation equity and equitable access to outdoor recreation projects. That world of activity is still relevant to my doings here.
Heidi Beierle is an author, slow traveler and artist based in Bellingham, Washington. Her debut memoir, Heidi Across America - One Woman’s Journey on a Bicycle Through the Heartland, published with HCI Books in 2024. Her other written work has appeared in High Desert Journal, VoiceCatcher Journal and Journal of America’s Byways. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee for her short essay, “Carnage.” In addition to encasing gifts in paper and tape, she makes personalized collage art postcards and won an award for the cowgirl outfit she crafted from trash bags and duct tape for the Worst Day of the Year Ride.