Shakespeare & Co. is pleased to host a reading and discussion with Métis poet and expressionist painter Carrie Ann McCoy on Wednesday, April 22, 2026, at 7:00pm. McCoy will read selections from her poetry collection, Searching for Yellow (in a world so blue). This event is free and open to the public.

About Searching for Yellow (in a world so blue):
Searching for Yellow (in a world so blue) is a yearlong cycle of poems, prayers, and ponderings.

The book reads as a symphony shaped from Sunday nights—that quiet threshold between what has been and what is coming. Composed as five thematic movements, with fifty-two works, there is a pause in each week of the year. The book moves gently through nature, including birth, grief, loss, and return. The arc says:

something old stood down
something carried us through
the noise finally stopped
and morning arrived

Each piece tends a deliberate light, attending to the sacred within ordinary hours. This book is about noticing—how color reenters a life, how hope survives its own dimming, how beauty persists even when the world feels washed in blue.

Author Biography:
Carrie Ann McCoy—Chief Sun Woman—is a Métis poet and expressionist painter. While she has many stories to tell in longer forms, she has become increasingly drawn to the abstract language of poetry and painting. Within these forms, she believes there is space for readers and viewers to discover their own meaning, healing, and inspiration.

Carrie Ann published her first poem at the age of seven and later studied poetry at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon with American author Kim Stafford through the Oregon Writing Project. Her writing has appeared in several magazines addressing themes of shadow trauma and public education.

She comes from a family deeply connected to military service, as the daughter, granddaughter, and sister of Foreign War veterans. Carrie Ann later completed additional work with the Oregon Writing Project at Southern Oregon University while earning her master’s degree, focusing on civics and immigration reform policy.

Throughout her career she has served in a variety of educational roles, including adjunct professor at Concordia University Portland and School Improvement Specialist with the U.S. Department of Education.

It seems Ms. McCoy may be destined, as William Shakespeare once wrote, to carry her “tiny candle” and shine a few good deeds into a sometimes “naughty world.”

Carrie Ann McCoy