Hanford's Leaks, Legends, and Legacies

An Exhibit and Author Panel about the Hanford Nuclear Site

Authors Trisha Pritikin, Kay-Smith Blum, and James Patrick Thomas will join renowned investigative journalist Karen Dorn Steele for a discussion about Hanford. Dr. Ann Le Bar of EWU will moderate.

Four renowned writer-activists converge on the nxʷyxʷyetkʷ stage to discuss their work and the Hanford Nuclear Site's troubled impact on our region. A month-long exhibit of archival materials about Hanford will also be available for perusal. Auntie's Bookstore and Latah Books will be on hand to assist with book sales.

About the panelists:

Trisha Pritikin is the author of award-winning The Hanford Plaintiffs: Voices from the Fight for Atomic Justice, published in 2020 by University Press of Kansas (UPK) and released in Japanese by Akashi Shoten, Tokyo. Trisha was born and raised in Richland, where her father worked as a Hanford engineer. She has spent more than thirty years seeking accountability for cancers, birth defects, and radiogenic disease in those who, like her, grew up in the shadow of Hanford, the Nevada Test Site, and other Manhattan Project and Cold War atomic weapons production and testing sites throughout the US and globally. Her new novel, an atomic age hero’s journey entitled Then Came the Summer Snow, was recently released by Moonshine Cove Press.  

An Austin, TX transplant and lifetime environmental advocate, Kay Smith-Blum has resided in Seattle for more than four decades. The recent upheaval over leaking nuclear waste tanks at the Hanford site in Washington state compelled her to write a Hanford story in a way that would educate and entertain readers, resulting in her debut novel, Tangles. A companion short story to Tangles is featured in the 2024 anthology, Feisty Deeds: Historical Fictions of Daring Women, which Smith-Blum co-edited. Smith-Blum works out her writer’s block in her sons’ gardens and the nearest lap pool. To learn more, please visit KaySmith-Blum.com.

Karen Dorn Steele is an environmental journalist known for breaking the story of nuclear experiments causing potential public health damage at the Hanford Nuclear Site. During her tenure with the Spokesman Review, she broke the story about the Green Run test, in which the U.S. government released radioactive gases in 1949 over areas surrounding the Hanford Site. Subsequently, she covered the Hanford Downwinder Litigation, in which residents living around the Hanford Site from the 1940s through the 1960s sued the federal government for the health complications, such as cancer, that they suffered from as a result to the exposure to radiation from Hanford. In 2018, Dorn Steele was awarded the Watershed Hero Award from the Center for Environmental Law and Policy. 

Having grown up in Eastern Washington, James Patrick Thomas began advocating for nuclear disarmament in 1981 as a member of the Bethlehem Peace Pilgrimage, a 6700-mile walk across the U.S. and nine other countries. Upon his return from Bethlehem in late 1983, he spent the next quarter century investigating radioactive pollution from the production and testing of nuclear weapons, mostly focused on the Hanford Site. This included advocating for Hanford downwinders. He has twice visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Jim has a master’s in religious studies from Gonzaga University. His new memoir Atomic Pilgrim: How Walking Thousands of Miles for Peace Led to Uncovering Some of America's Darkest Nuclear Secrets is available from Latah Books. 

About the moderator:

Dr. Ann Le Bar is a History Professor and Director of EWU's History Program. Her research interests include early modern European history, cultural/intellectual history, German history, and teaching tough subjects through archival sources.

Aunties Bookstore and Latah Books will be on-site selling their books.

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