Nancy Townsley is an essayist, an award-winning journalist, a novelist, a marathoner, and a devoted fan of the river life. She lives on a floating home along the Multnomah Channel west of Portland, Oregon, where she runs and writes.
Her flash piece, “Halfway Out,” appears in *2020: The Year of the Asterisk, a collection of essays about life during the coronavirus pandemic, published in October 2021 by University of Hell Press. Her work has appeared in The Timberline Review, Nailed, The Big Smoke America, The Riveter, Elephant Journal, and at runnersworld.com. Her essay “Running Commentary” was included in the anthology Brave on the Page: Oregon Writers on Craft and the Creative Life (Forest Avenue Press, 2012), a Powell’s Small Press Bestseller that year.
During her 35-year career as a community newspaper reporter and editor, Nancy earned numerous state and national awards for her writing and editorial work, including from the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association and the Society of Professional Journalists.
Her greatest loves include her husband Gregg, a woodworker who writes place-based fiction; her three adult children; her grandchildren; and her golden retriever, Bernie, who often accompanies her on romps along the dike road above the Columbia River.
In May 2021 Nancy led an online salon discussion about the state of journalism in the U.S. and news-consumption savvy, attended by residents of River West Village in Southwest Portland.
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