The Port Townsend Friends Quaker Meeting House is following its poetry reading in January with another session of book readings, this time by authors published by the Jefferson County-based Empty Bowl Press.

The two books are focused on Southeast Alaska, with Kurt Hoelting reading from his recently released “Apprentice to the Wild,” while Tele Aadsen reads from her award-winning “What Water Holds.”

Aadsen is a commercial fisherman, writer and lapsed social worker who was born in Alaska, while Hoelting grew up by the shores of Puget Sound, working summers as a commercial fisherman and wilderness guide in Alaska for 50 years.

Aadsen’s essay collection, “What Water Holds,” concerns her experience as a salmon troller in Southeast Alaska, while Hoelting’s “Apprentice to the Wild” charts the path from his early encounters with wildness and risk in Alaska to his embrace of Zen practice, as “a gateway to the wild within,” which led more recently to him holding a peace vigil in Ukraine.

Aadsen noted that she “finds home in seasonal migrations,” from ocean summers on the outer coast of Lingít Aaní in Southeast Alaska, aboard the fishing vessel Nerka with her sweetheart, Joel, to land winters in the Coast Salish territory of the Skagit Valley.

Hoelting, a graduate of the University of Washington and Harvard Divinity School, is an ordained minister, Zen student and “mindfulness teacher” who served for many years as the head guide for Inside Passages, leading mindfulness-based sea kayaking expeditions in the Tongass region of Southeast Alaska.

“My book started as a letter to my grandchildren,” said Hoelting, who makes his home on Whidbey Island. “I wanted to paint a picture of what it is that I’ve loved, and to keep alive moments that are precious to me.”

Hoelting views “Apprentice to the Wild” as a “spiritual autobiography,” whose recurring themes include embracing risks rather than “trying to barricade them from our lives,” which he sees as fitting for the “adventure stories” he recounts in his book.

“Someone might wonder why they should be willing to allow risk in their lives,” Hoelting said. “Especially with the huge degrees of uncertainty and turmoil in modern times, it’s important to open ourselves to that uncertainty, versus attempting to overcome it. Uncertainty can be our ally instead of our adversary. None of us knows what the future holds, so there’s a wisdom in the willingness to not know what you can’t know.”

Hoelting also hopes his writing, and his reading at the Friends Meeting House, offers lessons on “how to sustain our capacity for joy,” and “the resilience of gratitude,” because “we can’t just deal with the challenges ahead by setting our jaws with determination. We have to leave room for humane connections.”

In his book’s later essays, Hoelting shares his journey toward healing, following the deaths of his two sons, and explores what it means to become “an elder” in changing times.

“I’ve had to rethink what’s required to be an elder, because again, we need to be willing to embrace risk on behalf of future generations’ welfare,” Hoelting said.

Holly Hughes of Empty Bowl Press is looking forward to “a lively conversation” at the readings, with Aadsen and Hoelting sharing three 10-minute readings back-to-back on related subjects.