About Pilgrim

Timothy Pilgrim is a native of Montana and an associate professor emeritus at Western Washington University (WWU) in Bellingham, near Seattle.

Pilgrim taught mass media and journalism courses at WWU from the early 1990s until retirement in 2013.

Pilgrim first began teaching at Sidney (Mont.) High School with classes in English, journalism and speech and also freelanced for the local newspaper and was a correspondent for the Billings Gazette.

Pilgrim then taught college in Idaho for nearly a decade, later while completing a Ph.D.at the University of Washington in Seattle, at North Carolina and at the University of California, San Diego.

Pilgrim has more than 600 published or accepted poems by over 120 different literary journals and other publications in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and the United Kingdom.

In 2016, Pilgrim published a book of poems, Mapping water, with nonprofit publisher, Flying Trout Press.

 Seduced by metaphor: Timothy Pilgrim collected published poems  (Cairn Shadow Press), published in 2020, gathers in one volume Pilgrim’s first 400 published poems.

Pilgrim is one of three featured poets in Bellingham Poems (Flying Trout Press, 2014), and Pilgrim poems can also be found in Poetry Walk: The Second Five Years (Poetry Walk Press).

Pilgrim’s work is also included in Idaho’s Poets: A Centennial Anthology (University of Idaho Press), Weathered Pages: The Poetry Pole (Blue Begonia Press), Tribute to Orpheus 2 (Kearney Street Books), Noisy Water: Poetry from Whatcom County, Washington, and in several volumes of the Whatcom Writes Anthology.

Pilgrim is included in Best of Mad Swirl: 2023, Best of Mad Swirl: 2022, Best of Mad Swirl: 2020, Best of Mad Swirl: 2018 and Best of Mad Swirl: 2017. 

While teaching in Montana, Pilgrim wrote the introduction to Courage Enough: Mon-Dak Family Histories, Richland County, Montana, published in 1975.

Novelist and editor Carolyn Dale, Pilgrim’s wife, and Pilgrim published in 2006 a conceptually-based journalism editing text, Fearless Editing, last republished in 2017 by a division of Taylor and Francis.

See Dale’s work, especially descriptions of her two novels, Second Rising and Sylvie’s Chance and her essays in a section called “Present Imperfect” at Carolyn Dale — novelist. More information about her novels can be found at Cairn Shadow Press.

Pilgrim has a B.S. in education (major in English) from Western Montana College, an M.A. in English from the University of Montana, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Communications from the University of Washington.

Pilgrim’s doctoral dissertation was published as a book titled Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained (Ablex) in the late 1990s, and examines the effectiveness of competing newspapers which joined forces.

Pilgrim’s M.A. thesis in communications explored false light invasion of privacy by media, and Pilgrim published numerous scholarly articles and book chapters about media law, economics and privacy.

Pilgrim worked temporarily at different times as a newspaper reporter and editor, and as a correspondent, free-lancer and photographer — and in high school edited the newspaper.

Pilgrim has four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Of course, with a name like Pilgrim, Pilgrim prefers no pronouns at all.

Pilgrim’s hobbies include writing, gardening, dancing, snorkeling, fly fishing, exploring ruins and natural wonders of the U.S. Southwest — and protesting (against war, racism and misogyny; for reversing climate change, providing universal health care, ending launches of nuclear materials into space).

Pilgrim completed five marathons in previous decades but now only rides a bicycle, walks and does yoga.

Pilgrim and Dale, also a WWU emeritus associate professor, live in Bellingham, Wash.