A writing festival honoring Raymond Carver’s roots on the lower Columbia returns to Clatskanie on Friday and Saturday.

CLATSKANIE — In the 1982 short story “Where I’m Calling From,” Raymond Carver writes about the healing that can come about from storytelling.

This year’s Raymond Carver Writing Festival, an annual event that honors the author’s roots in Clatskanie — where he was born in 1938 — will borrow that story’s title as its theme. Over two days, the festival will welcome writers to speak on the craft and read from their own stories.

Friday’s events begin at 5 p.m. with a writers and publishers’ fair at the Clatskanie Cultural Center, followed by a reception. Speakers on Friday will include Kim Stafford, a former Oregon poet laureate, and Chad Wriglesworth, of the Raymond Carver Review. Evening poetry and prose readings will follow at several venues across town.

Others reading and presenting at the festival include Robert Michael Pyle, Joseph Green, Scott MacGregor, Michael Mills, Marianne Monson, Laura Moulton, Ben Parzybok, Ed Skoog, Mac Stripling and Justin Taylor.

Stafford returns at 10 a.m. Saturday for a conversation on writing, followed by an afternoon of workshops and participatory readings. Events conclude Saturday with an announcement of youth poetry contest winners at 4 p.m. and “Poetry and Pie,” a 6 p.m. dinner named for Carver’s favorite dessert.

Reservations are required for the dinner, which costs $20. For more details on the festival, visit www.clatskaniearts.org.