Martha Gies is an Oregon author whose work, both fiction and nonfiction, has been published widely over the last three decades in newspapers, magazines and literary quarterlies, including Orion, The Sun, and Zyzzyva. Her book Up All Night, a portrait of Portland, Oregon, told through the stories of 23 people who work graveyard shift, was selected by both the Oregonian and the Statesman-Journal as one of the Ten Best Regional Books of 2004. Gies is a winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project and has had a screenplay in development at Sundance Institute. She has also received grants from the Regional Arts & Culture Council and a fellowship in creative nonfiction from Oregon Literary Arts. She studied writing with Raymond Carver and Maria Irene Fornes.

Following a long involvement with migrant farmworkers, Gies scripted the film ¡Aumento Ya!, a documentary about successful labor organizing on Oregon farms. She has traveled in Central Europe and along the eastern Adriatic shore, as well as to Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala and Honduras. She has made 30 trips to Mexico, where she was a foreign observer of the 1994 federal elections, taught English in a Oaxaca barrio, and interviewed human rights workers in Chiapas.

Gies teaches creative writing at the Attic Writer's Workshop in Portland, Oregon, and led the first Traveler's Mind workshop to Mexico in 2000. For a list of her Portland classes or links to her work online, visit www.marthagies.blogspot.com