Imagine for a moment if Ernest Hemingway were to wash up on the shore of Cannon Beach, greeted by the sounds of seabirds and a crisp, salty breeze in the shadow of Haystack Rock. How might he react to this stretch of coast?

A news release from the Cannon Beach Library offers some suggestions. He might “tell stories and knock back a bourbon at the Driftwood Inn; recount how a boy reeled in a seagull; discuss fishing with a youngster at the library or describe how a 12-step program member took flight as a crow.”

No one knows for sure, of course, but 11 writers will offer takes on the question at the library’s Writers Read Celebration, now in its fifth year. Short stories, poems, essays and haikus will be shared, most at the library and a few online.

Selections, which will be read at 7 p.m. Friday, include short stories “The Passing Visitor” by Darrell Clukey, of Cannon Beach; “Nothing’s Going to Happen” by Eve Marx, of Seaside; “Castaway” by James Tweedie, of Long Beach; and “The Young Boy and the Seagull” by Marc Inlay, of Longview. Poems will include “Salmon Prophet” by Scott Starbuck, of Vancouver; and “Eel Grass” by Jennifer Nightingale, of Astoria. It’s a good excuse to find time to wash up on Cannon Beach.