pacific northwest reader spotlight #13

I keep forgetting to post my own spotlight from The Pacific Northwest Reader. What kind of failure of a furious self-promotor am I? Figured I'd give you a few paragraphs from the opening, and since that's more than most of the spotlights I've done on this book, I'm just going to shut up and let it speak for itself...

"Never mind that I moved to Oregon to find true love in a man I hardly knew. Who I’d only met through e-mail. Who was probably gay. Not to mention the whole thing about me running away from the circus. That stuff is incidental to the way I love this place. Or maybe it’s not.

"I’m the kind of perpetual tourist that comes from having spent fifteen years seeing the country but not seeing it. Most of what I saw of America was the inside of a tent. On days off from the circus, we’d hit the road to watch another circus. I was married to a man who lived and loved, worked and played, talked and thought nothing but circus. I tried to adapt. If I couldn’t see Mount Rushmore or Colonial Williamsburg, by god I was going to be happy taking a blurry picture of some historical marker from our moving car. In order to fill the great need for that something else in life, I became desperately fascinated with anything new I could lay my eyes on. Or wrap my heart around. To this day, I’m still a fascinated person. Back then I was just desperate.

"In 2003 I took a trip—not a circus trip, just a me trip—to Portland, where I saw an art exhibit. The artist painted himself in 1930s Hollywood gowns. This seemed brave and strangely sexy. I sent him an e-mail fan letter, which turned into a year’s correspondence, which turned into a decision to change everything.

"Oddly, in all my fifteen years losing my pants across the country—which is to say I was a clown —I never played Oregon. There was something comforting in this as I packed to leave my then-husband in autumn 2004, as if the Portland rains could wash away every last clinging whiff of cotton candy and elephant urine. And my old life."

[here's me in my new life, along with the aforementioned "artist"--a painting he did for his last show at froelick gallery]


les deux, acrylic on panel, stephen o'donnell, 2009

[alright, i feel kind of funny posting my own bio, but in keeping with the rest of the pnw reader spotlights, here's mine from the book...]

Gigi Little now works as In-Store Merchandising and Promotions Coordinator for Powell’s City of Books. Her short story “Shanghaied” was published in the book Portland Noir, and during her circus days, she wrote and illustrated two children’s picture books: Wright Vs. Wrong and The Magical Trunk. She and her husband, Stephen, live in Northwest Portland.

pacific northwest reader spotlight #12

You know it's going to be a good story if it has a good opening. Well... actually, that may not always be true. Why do we say things like that? But it's true in this case. Rem Ryals' (how's that for an awesome name?) essay in The Pacific Northwest Reader is an intensely personal story with an opening that grabbed me right away. Not just because it starts with a ghost story, but because when I got to the end of that section, I knew it was pointing me in a very particular way toward the rest of the piece. Artful!

"When I was a teenager I worked at a summer camp near Leavenworth, a small mountain town near the geographical center of Washington State. There, on warm summer nights, with the sweet smell of ponderosa pines in the windy air and the distant roar of Icicle Creek in our ears, we heard the story of the Leavenworth Nurse.

"She was a nurse who worked at the hospital nearby in the 1950s. Her husband was a logger, and his arm was severed in a horrible accident at the mill. He was rushed to the hospital, where he died on the operating table. In all the confusion no one made the connection that she was on duty, and the way she found out about it was that she found his arm in the Emergency Room. Just lying there, the wedding ring still on its finger, the plaid shirt hanging off in tatters. They were newlyweds, deeply in love, and in the story, in that moment, she went completely, irrevocably insane. Her hair turned sheet white and she ran screaming out of the hospital into the nearby woods. She was never heard from again. Well, at least not by anyone except small children, young teenagers, and a variety of other people unlucky enough to encounter her in the woods, where she murdered them with an ax. Also, the arm disappeared as well, leaving behind its own victim, an orderly with vicious strangulation marks around his neck. Over the coming years these two specters terrorized the surrounding countryside, killing many, leaving mysterious remains of campfires and gutted animals. Depending on who was telling the story, the Nurse was a beautiful, silver-haired rescuer of lost children, or a screaming, ax-wielding, bloodstained vision of female revenge.

"For a long time I believed this story was true. I mean, I knew it wasn't true, but it seemed to express some essential truth about these mountains, something about beauty and danger."

Rem Ryals has worked at Village Books in Bellingham for 14 years. Born in Spokane, a graduate of Seattle University, he has also lived in Richland, Olympia, Leavenworth, Port Angeles, and Eastsound. When not escaping into the world of books, he enjoys knitting, meditation, and botany.

pacific northwest reader spotlight #11

Do you remember getting your first library card? I don't remember this at all. I do remember the wonder of a place with that many books that you could just take, and I remember harboring great terrors that I would lose a book and have to go to jail or something. Or have to tell my Mom. Who would probably have been as understanding as she was the day I came home from playing with a friend and apparently said something along the lines of, Mommy, guess what, Shannon taught me how you can sneak candy from the Minit Market.

She was very understanding, but I didn't come here to talk about my one brush with petty crime.

Here's Susan Scott's lovely library memory, from her essay "The Wilmot Memorial Library," in The Pacific Northwest Reader...

"At a very tender age - those were simpler times - I was allowed to visit the library alone, since it was so nearby. And when it was time to check my books out, I'd been instructed to explain that my grandad's card was 'there' under the glass - I could barely reach high enough to point - and I was allowed to use it. This worked well unless there was a new employee, who had not yet been introduced to the eccentric borrower down the block, let alone his very young granddaughter. The whole story had to be explained all over again and a co-worker fetched to corroborate, before I'd be allowed to leave with my books...

"Eventually, I asked one of the library ladies if I couldn't have my own card. 'Well, you could,' she said, 'but you'd have to be able to write your name.' Well, that was no problem, I quickly explained - I'd been able to write my name for ages. She looked at me skeptically, but the 4- or 5-year old girl before her could, obviously, write her name and, indeed read, so the form was duly filled out, and on my next visit to my grandparents, I skipped happily down the street to pick up my newly minted Seattle Public Library card. As it was handed over, the librarian told me I was the youngest person in town to have one!"

Susan Scott is lucky enough to have begun her bookselling career at the legendary Books & Co. in New York City, 30 years ago. She is now the manager and buyer at Secret Garden Bookshop in Seattle - but she still checks books out of the library.

pacific northwest reader spotlight #10

I'm just a day away from putting up my window display at Powell's for The Pacific Northwest Reader. Today I've been doing some printing and assembling. I always have fun putting displays together but I do have to admit, it's extra fun when a little piece of the book is my own.

A little piece also belongs to Sarah Hutton, who, in her essay elaborates on one of the defining characteristics of the Pacific Northwest. Her piece is appropriately titled Dreaming of Rain...

"I think the rain is the first thing that people think of when they think of the Northwest. What eludes most is the constantness of it. In most places, 'rain' is a finite weather pattern. You can say, 'Oh, it started raining,' and then an hour or two later look out the window and say, 'Oh, it stopped.' Just as the Eskimos have dozens of words for snow, there are dozens of words for rain here, from misting to spitting to drizzling to pouring. Each carries its own nuances.

"And even if it is not raining, the sky is often gray for months at a time. It has its own beauty in a way, the flatness of color, the shifting of clouds, the muted light, but some people just can't handle it. There was one year, early 1999 I think, where the region had had more than a hundred successive days with precipitation of some kind. Three straight months. I was talking to my mom on the phone during this period about how wretched the weather was, even by Seattle standards, and I said, 'I'm starting to understand why people jump off the Space Needle.' (I realize in hindsight this was not the best thing to say to a worry-prone mother.) A few days later, a box with 'Priority Mail' stamped all over it was waiting for me. My mom had sent me a Sun Box: Sun-Maid raisins, sun-dried tomatoes, sunglasses, sundae toppings, lip balm with sunscreen, Sunkist oranges, and some chocolates wrapped in smiling sun foil. I lined the items up on my kitchen counter like an altar. The sun finally did break through a few days later. (Coincidence?)"


Sarah Hutton graduated from Seattle University with a B.A. in English and Philosophy. She is currently the store manager and children's book buyer for Village Books in Bellingham, Washington. She still likes the rain.

[photo courtesy of bradleyolin, flickr creative commons.]

pacific northwest reader spotlight #9

One of the reasons I like that all the authors of The Pacific Northwest Reader are also either librarians or booksellers is that I believe the keepers of books have a unique perspective. One that is as rich and expansive as the stacks and stacks of books they lovingly curate, fondly promote and obsessively read.

However, I got a taste of another perspective when I spoke to Shirley Thomas, a cataloguer at the Chemeketa Community College Library in Salem, Oregon, and the writer of the book's two Oregon haikus. She just casually mentioned that she loves to distill language both in her poetry writing and her cataloguing work at the library--coding & concise description of books for online access.

I thought that was really neat - the idea of the connection between distilling language for her poetry and distilling language in her cataloguing work. I'm always thinking in terms of the expansive, but here's a woman whose work with books is all about refinement.

Here are Shirley's two precise and lovely haikus from The Pacific Northwest Reader.

SHORE ACRES STATE PARK

Gather and commune
Vast green edge of ocean roar
Touch in quiet space

CANNERY PIER, ASTORIA

Echo time gone by
Now bounty of connections
Proof our ship came in.

Because it is an homage to independent booksellers, The Pacific Northwest Reader is only available through independent booksellers. You won't find it on Amazon. But it can be ordered online through Powell's dot com. :)

Part of the proceeds go to benefit the American Booksellers For Free Expression.

pacific northwest reader spotlight #8

Today's Pacific Northwest Reader spotlight is in honor of April Nabholz who will be giving a reading this Sunday at Grass Roots Books and Music in Corvallis! 227 SW 2nd St, Corvallis, OR. Tel: 541-754-7668. If you're nearby, stop in at 7 PM and hear her read from her lovely essay about Oregon and a mule named Honeychild.

Here's a taste:

"When my mule and I are dropped off at the Enterprise Fairgrounds, square in the northeast corner of the state, I believe there must be some mistake. We aren’t in a temperate rainforest at all; we are in the middle of a desert. I pull myself to the top rail of a fence and stare westward forlornly.

"I had been led to believe the state was lush, hilly, and green, but what I see is a thirsty, scrubby expanse of barely anything. The ground is hard and dusty, and I see scarcely a tree. As a matter of survival, I swallow my disappointment and carry hay and water to my mule.

"To the north I can see snow-peaked mountains—the Eagle Caps, I am told—and I hear that nearby is a legendary gorge that runs deeper than the Grand Canyon itself. Hell’s Canyon, they call it, and it is wilder, rougher, crueler, and more beautiful, plunging more than a mile deep into the earth from Oregon’s eastern rim. I lie awake my first night in Oregon shivering in my sleeping bag under a starving moon and starry sky."

I love the surprise of opening up to an essay about Oregon and coming upon a story about a woman and her mule. And I love that the more I read these pieces about my state, the more I see how very different, yet how very linked, they are. I knew this would be true--it's the nature of the Reader series--but I'm struck by how much.

April Nabholz grew up in rural Pennsylvania, attended Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC, and worked as a dishwasher in Montpelier, VT. After traveling to Asia post-graduation, she vowed not to leave the country again until she had seen the western half of her own homeland. She traveled to Oregon in 2008 and settled in Corvallis, Oregon, where she plays daily at Grass Roots Books and Music.

To read more of April's voice and get even more acquainted with Honeychild [there are pictures too!] check out April's blog: www.aprilandhoneychild.blogspot.com

pacific northwest reader spotlight #7

Since I'm still feeling all nostalgic for family following my night of home movies, I think my next Pacific Northwest Reader spotlight should be Judi Lohrey and her lovely musings about her grandfather. Here is an excerpt from her essay, "The Spirit of Idaho."

"Growing up in the same town with loving grandparents is a priceless experience that influenced the rest of my life. My dad's father was night watchman at the lumber mill 'above town.' He rode his horse to and from work. On Saturdays he stopped at our home and my brother and I rode on the back of his horse, Ole Darby, while grandpa walked alongside. We spent many Saturdays with Grandpa and Grandma Lohrey helping grind horseradish, clean cabbage for coleslaw, feed the chickens and gather eggs. We finished the day by watching Starlit Stairway, a talent program that originated in Spokane, Washington, and we walked home singing the sponsor's famous slogan, 'If you need coal or oil, call Boyle.' Grandpa died when I was 12 but I remember fondly that golden time of feeling so loved."

Judi Lohrey is the owner of ...and BOOKS, too!, 1037 21st Street, Lewiston, Idaho. In her spare time she loves to read mysteries, novels and local history books and volunteer for several organizations in the Lewis-Clark Valley. Judi grew up in Clearwater, Idaho, and has lived her life in Central Idaho and Southeast Washington. She had a 27-year career as a staff member at Washington State University. Following her retirement she was a volunteer in Lewiston, Idaho, and Clarkston, Washington...that is until her favorite book store was about to close for lack of a buyer. Now, she is semi-retired and enjoying life as a bookstore owner. She and her husband, Gary, live in Clarkston, Washington. They have a son, Bill, who lives in Spokane, Washington, and a son, Tim, who lives near Bend, Oregon.

*

Reading Judi's bio, I was excited to learn about how she jumped in to save the life of an independent bookstore. A noble act, a labor of love. Here's to Judi for taking up the gauntlet, and to the owners of independent bookstores all over. Huzzah!


...here's Judi at the helm of her bookstore, ...and BOOKS, too! I love how the title has all sorts of punctuation in it...

pacific northwest reader spotlight #6

I guess I can no longer call these countdowns since the book has come in. I think I'll call them spotlights. Complete with an updated graphic since I'm a bit obsessed with playing with graphics.


And I'm definitely not going to be letting them fall off now that the book has come out. I've got lots more writers waiting in the wings. Including library director Colin Rea. Here's an excerpt from his essay in the just-sprung Pacific Northwest Reader:

"In 1971, then Governor Tom McCall famously told Terry Drinkwater on CBS News 'Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But for heaven's sake, don't come here to live.' Conventional wisdom says Oregonians fancy themselves as New Englanders do. They take pride in the roots that they put down and slap 'Oregon Native' bumper stickers on their Subaru's and Hybrid Hondas (yes, the greening of America has pushed aside the Volkswagen in favor of trendy Japanese bubble cars. Never mind that the new diesel VWs get better mileage...). And yet, seemingly everyone in the state moved here from somewhere else, especially from the somewhere else known as the upper Midwest. Badgers, Gophers, Buckeyes, Wolverines; all are well represented in the Willamette (rhymes with dammit!) valley and beyond. Travel south and you'll meet Californians who cashed out 3 bedroom houses in order to buy
bigger homes for half the price near our beloved Shakespeare festival. Up north, Portland attracts the young hipsters from colleges across the country who know that Seattle went limp when Cobain blew the lid off the grunge movement."

[Being a former Californian Oregonian who got here by way of that somewhere else known as the upper Midwest, I'd say Colin knows what he's talking about...]

Colin Rea is the Director of the Fern Ridge Library District in Veneta, Oregon. A former bookseller and PNBA Board member, he may be the only Oregonian to dislike the Grateful Dead. His favorite foods are
scotch and sandwiches.

pacific northwest reader countdown #5

Ladies and Gentlemen...

Meet Dinah!

She's the star of a lovely essay in the forthcoming Pacific Northwest Reader, and when you read the essay, you're going to fall in love with her.

And with the Alaska that you get to see as you walk along with Dinah and writer Annie Tupek.

Here's a taste:

"In this, the unfolding of winter, my thoughts return to the warm months, the endless summer days when the entire world is green and vibrant with life. When squirrels flick their tails and frolic through the trees, butterflies paint the air with their multitude of colors, and mosquitoes buzz and sting. I do not miss the mosquitoes.

"This winter landscape, though snow-capped, is not dead. The life is hidden, resting, waiting for the midnight sun to return. Shrews tunnel under the snow; birds fluff up their feathers for warmth and stay close to their nests. There are probably a few moose in the area snacking on whatever succulents they can find, and a myriad of other creatures smart enough to stay out of the way of a human and her dog."

[I love the idea of life hiding and resting under that forever of snow. Beautiful.]

Annie Tupek was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago. She now resides in Fairbanks, Alaska with her husband and their adopted English Mastiff. Her short work has appeared in The First Line magazine (Spring, 2007), and the forthcoming horror anthology Courting Morpheus (Belfire Press, Spring 2010). As a buyer and office assistant at Gulliver’s Books, America’s northernmost independent bookstore, her reading addiction is well sated, though she often despairs that there are too many books and not enough time for reading.

You can check out her blog at www.annietupek.com/blog/

pacific northwest reader countdown #4

Of course, how can there be an anthology of essays about the Pacific Northwest without mention of the big dude of these here parts...


Here's the very memorable opening to Matthew Simmons' "Bigfoot Calls."

"A blind man tells me that Seattle has the Bigfoot. When he tells me, I am not sure that this is entirely accurate, but feel it is best to play along."

Isn't that the best? Ladies and gentlemen, anything can happen from here.

Matthew Simmons is the author of the novella
A Jello Horse (Publishing Genius Press, 2009).
He is The Man Who Couldn’t Blog (themanwhocouldntblog.blogspot.com), interviews editor for the journal Hobart (hobartpulp.com), and a regular contributor to HTML Giant (htmlgiant.com). He lives in Seattle with his cat, Emmett.

[i think emmett is a lovely name for a cat.]

pacific northwest reader countdown #3

Writing my essay about Oregon for The Pacific Northwest Reader, I felt I got to know my home more intimately--or perhaps got to recognize just how intimately I knew this place. Now along comes Karen Munro's essay for the same state, for the same book, and I see an Oregon I knew but never knew. One place is a million places seen through a million sets of eyes. And how amazing--and heartbreaking--to get to see Oregon through Karen's unique eyes and heart.

For the heartbreaking, you'll have to read the whole essay.

For a taste, here is a paragraph from "Land of Oz":


"For people like me, Oregon, like Oz, seems like a place to wander for a while. A fascinating, frustrating place, a place that offers fields of poppies and cities made of emerald, but nowhere to put down roots. Elton John had it right: you can follow the yellow-brick road in search of a heart, a head, or whatever it is you're looking for—but sooner or later, you're going to have to click your heels together and come back to the real world. You're going to have to make your peace with imperfection, and decide whether you can live with things as they are."

Karen Munro is the Head of the University of Oregon Portland Library & Learning Commons in Portland, OR. She has an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has published stories in Grain, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere.

You can check out her blog at http://munrovian.wordpress.com

pacific northwest reader countdown #2

[i suppose for it to be an actual countdown it needs to do two things:

1. count down to an actual, set date

2. count down

but i'm ok with doing things backwards.]

Alright, I wanted to include an image of a train to go along with this very vivid paragraph from Melanie Colletti's essay in the Pacific Northwest Reader, but today Blogger won't let me upload any photos. Ah well, Melanie's beautiful description is more than enough to put that train in your head.

So here, to give you a second taste of the Pacific Northwest Reader is an excerpt from "Alaska Steam."

"Number 73 was alive, breathing smoke, spewing steam, plodding diligently up the steep grade of the pass. The engineer tended to her every whim, gently adjusting gauges, constantly alert. The history of the cars, the engines, and the route itself, was overwhelming. It seemed impossible to absorb it all but I tried, even riding on my days off. I can put myself there, in the first few miles of tracks, whenever I like. I hear the whistling of metal on metal when the cars come around a bend, the rattle of the wheels over seams in the track, the fluctuations in the tone of the engine as we accelerate or slow down. From the deciduous trees along the river next to the tracks, to the famous cantilever bridge and tunnels, to the perfectly placed pick-axes and horse skulls near the summit, I can remember nearly every inch of track, and the way the flowers and clouds looked depending on the season. I couldn’t imagine what the pass would have been like before the construction of the railroad. And to be honest, I didn’t want to. The tracks and the trains seemed to belong there."

Melanie Colletti is a librarian at the Denver Public Library’s Community Technology Center, but she continues to daydream about Skagway and the White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad.

pacific northwest reader countdown #1

As we head toward the release date of The Pacific Northwest Reader, I thought it would be fun to post a quick taste of some of the essays that will be in the book. The book is part of a really lovely series. [Info on its origins and on the first title in the series, not to mention my own musings on what I would have written had I done a piece for the Great Lakes Reader (because with the whole circus clown thing, heck, I'd have material for nearly the whole country) here.]

The Pacific Northwest Reader covers Oregon, Idaho, Alaska and Washington. For our first taste, here's a snippet from "Washington ID" by David K. Wheeler:

"Between Leavenworth and Wenatchee are stretches of road populated by apple trees with white skin and gnarled branches, the heart of Washington’s apple country. Washington has been leading the country in apple production since the 1920s. Once, while rafting the Wenatchee River, our guide pointed to some irrigation ducts just visible near the peaks of the surrounding hills. “We call that the apple juice pipeline," he said. “You know Tree Top?” The six of us in the raft nodded. I’m sure he meant it was for irrigating the apple orchards, but I couldn’t help but imagine gallons and gallons of apple juice being pumped around the state. Now, every time I pass through the sprawling Wenatchee valley, I think of that—that, and the unassuming chic of agri-tourism."

David K. Wheeler is a former bookseller at Village Books in Bellingham, Washington, as well as a writer. His work has been published in literary journals such as The Wanderlust Review and Jeopardy Magazine. He is currently working on his first novel and contributes to the Burnside Writers Collective at www.burnsidewriters.com

David also has his own blog. You can check it out here.

More snippets to come.