Camilla Wells Paynter received her Master’s degree from the University of Washington. After being wait-listed by the Harvard School of Law, she successfully attended two other prestigious law schools in rapid succession. She eventually reconsidered her commitment to jurisprudence, and virtually every other type of prudence as well, and devoted herself to a series of mind-numbing and vaguely totalitarian low-paying jobs.
Highlights of this career include tchotchke sales, municipal code indexing, hardscape construction, medical billing compliance librarianship (it’s real), industrial paper cutter operation, dog walking, dog running and some type of administrative assistant stuff the nature of which she still can’t quite place. During this time, everyone told her she should write.
Inspired by nature and its unseen spirits, Paynter spent several years studying with a Sámi-born Lakota medicine man. She regularly receives guidance from an imaginal coyote in her dreams, the wellspring feeding much of her art, life and writing. A long-time interest in dreaming and other altered states led her to become a State Certified Hypnotherapist, and experience in guided trance enlivens both her prose and poetry. She considers herself an animist, believing that all existence is an expression of living Consciousness. Her work strives to redefine cultural narratives from a gender equitable perspective that also honors non-human animacy.
Paynter has served as society page columnist for “To Group,” an illicit inter-office email chat ring, and years ago one of her poems was published in a Midwestern journal so obscure that even she no longer recalls its name. More recently she began writing in earnest. Her poetry has since been featured in Writing in a Woman’s Voice (8 November 2023). Her first short story, “Love Nor Money,” was selected among the pre-finalists in the 2023 Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival contest. She is a member of Willamette Writers and TCB Writers’ Critique. Originally from Seattle, she currently resides in rural Oregon with her partner of over 20 years, a family of wild ravens, and the ghost of a chunky brown cat.
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Photo by Greg Cramer and Camilla Wells Paynter
CAMILLA WELLS PAYNTER 