Hear some of the region’s best writers share their unique perspectives on life in the Northwest when five winners of Oregon Quarterly’s Northwest Perspectives Essay Contest read their work at a free public event in the Alumni Lounge at Gerlinger Hall.

The reading, which will take place on Thursday, May 28, at 6 p.m., will be preceded at 5:30 p.m. by a reception and book signing featuring this year’s contest judge, author Lidia Yuknavitch.

Winning essays cover a variety of topics, from first-place winner in the open category “Water, Water, Everywhere,” a mystical piece about how the writer’s fear of water turned to delight, by Kristianne Huntsberger of Auburn, Washington; to “155 Days,” in which Nysia Trejo  muses, as she navigates college life in Southern California, on how much she misses the comfort and “unconditional love” of Northwest rain. Trejo won first place in the student category.

Other winning essays in the open category include “Vintage Keys,” by Drew Terhune of Eugene, which earned second place; “When the Lights Go Out,” by Sue Lick of South Beach, Oregon, a third place winner; and “Moccasin’s End,” by Autumn Depoe-Hughes,  who tied for third place.

In the student category, Trejo and second-place winner Forrest Munro, author of “A Temperate Mind,” will read their essays.

On May 27, the evening before the reading, contest judge Lidia Yuknavitch will read from her own work at the Duck Store, 895 East 13th Ave., starting at 7 p.m. Yuknavitch is the author of “The Chronology of Water: A Memoir” and “Dora: A Headcase,” as well as the upcoming “The Small Backs of Children.” “The Chronology of Water” won the 2012 Oregon Book Award Reader’s Choice and the 2012 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and it was also a finalist for the 2012 PEN Center USA creative nonfiction award.

The 2015 Northwest Perspectives Essay Contest drew more than 80 entries. The first winner in the open category will be published in the summer 2015 issue of Oregon Quarterly, and the other winners will appear in a limited-edition chapbook. The first-, second- and third-place winners also receive cash prizes.