Craig Carothers

CRAIG CAROTHERS grew up in the Pacific Northwest. His parents, both music teachers, introduced him to a wide range of music including jazz, classical and blues. Carothers also cites a number of Motown, pop and folk influences.

His song, Little Hercules, recorded for Trisha Yearwood, went Gold. Craig is now traveling the country in support of his most recent CDs, Solo and Nothing Fancy.

Craig Carothers has toured with or opened for Mose Allison, Karla Bonoff, Jonatha Brooke, Rosanne Cash, Bruce Cockburn, Paula Cole, Robert Cray, Catie Curtis, Crash Test Dummies, Donovan, Peter Himmelman, John Hiatt, Leo Kottke, Patty Larkin, Michael McDonald, Dennis Miller, Anne Murray, Danny O'Keefe, Leroy Parnell, Paula Poundstone, Boz Skaggs, Toad The Wet Sprocket, Richard Thompson, Jethro Tull, Romeo Void, Loudon Wainwright III, Tim Weisberg, David Wilcox, Warren Zevon, and many others.

To learn more about Craig Carothers, visit his website at craigcarothers.com, his last appearance at the Nye Beach Writers' Series, or on our past presenters archive.

Craig Carothers

Tonight's featured writer is Craig Carothers. We often hear about the "music" of a certain piece of poetry or prose. But Craig approaches music in his work more directly: He writes songs.

Now nationally and internationally famous, Craig started his career in Portland. He moved to Nashville in 2000, but it seems like he's almost never there. He's likely to pop up almost anywhere for a performance, whether it's solo, as this evening's show is, or with a
group of his friends for a "songwriters in the round" gig.

It's difficult to characterize Craig's music, but it has inspired an enthusiastic following perhaps comparable only to the "Dead-heads." When tonight's show leaves you wanting more, take home some music from the book table in the back of the room or catch him live on Tuesday July 19 at the Buffalo Gap saloon in Portland, where you can listen with your hands wrapped around a pretty good margarita.

It's good to have Craig back in Oregon. And it's good to anticipate some wonderful acoustic guitar and lyrics on such a lovely evening on the coast.

Please welcome Craig Carothers.

-Marianne Klekacz

CRAIG CAROTHERS grew up in the Pacific Northwest. His parents, both music teachers, introduced him to a wide range of music including jazz, classical and blues. Carothers also cites a number of Motown, pop and folk influences. His song, Little Hercules, recorded for Trisha Yearwood, went Gold. Craig is now traveling the country in support of his most recent CDs, Solo and Nothing Fancy.

Craig Carothers has toured with or opened for Mose Allison, Karla Bonoff, Jonatha Brooke, Rosanne Cash, Bruce Cockburn, Paula Cole, Robert Cray, Catie Curtis, Crash Test Dummies, Donovan, Peter Himmelman, John Hiatt, Leo Kottke, Patty Larkin, Michael McDonald, Dennis Miller, Anne Murray, Danny O'Keefe, Leroy Parnell, Paula Poundstone, Boz Skaggs, Toad The Wet Sprocket, Richard Thompson, Jethro Tull, Romeo Void, Loudon Wainwright III, Tim Weisberg, David Wilcox, Warren Zevon, and many others.

Video and Photo copyright by Carla Perry

Travis Champ

Nehalem born and bred. Travis Champ recently released a thirty-poem collection, Old Nehalem Road.

In the hearty tradition of Gary Snyder, Phillip Whalen and Walt Curtis, Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present Manzanita’s Travis Champ, and the release of his collection of poems, Old Nehalem Road.

Featuring thirty poems, all set in Oregon, Old Nehalem Road represents a remarkable literary debut for a 25-year-old poet.

As Nestucca Spit Publisher Matt Love wrote in his introduction to the book:

I first heard Travis Champ read his poetry in January of 2007, at an annual Friends of William Stafford gathering in Lincoln City. He had hitchhiked 80 miles from Manzanita to read one short poem, and when I heard it in a church that winter night, I was transfixed. It voiced the raw wet alienated stuff of what living at the Oregon Coast can do to some people—a perspective few poets had ever conveyed because they had not grown up here, as Travis had. After the reading, I asked him to send me all of his poems with an Oregon connection. I read them and knew at once I wanted to publish them.

Perhaps as equally remarkable is the story of Old Nehalem Road’s production: Champ set all the type for the book, printed its pages on a hundred-year-old press, and bound all three hundred copies of the first edition print run.

Published by Nestucca Spit Press.

Click here to order a copy of Old Nehalem Road

Walking Bridges

"Walking Bridges" authors featured at November 15 Nye Beach Writers' Series.

Seven contributors to the 70-poet compilation "Walking Bridges Using Poetry as a Compass," were featured on November 15, 2008: Jonah Bornstein, Don Colburn, Cecelia Hagen, Margaret Gish Miller, Rita Ott Ramstad, and Sandra Stone.


Sharon Wood Wortman, co-editor of the book, is also the author of "The Portland Bridge Book," which had its first and second editions published by the Oregon Historical Society Press in 1989 and 2001. "After OHS went out of the business of books, I founded my own press, took out a loan on our house, and published a third edition in 2006," said Wortman. That edition was awarded the 2007 Silver Medal from Independent Publisher. Wortman is also the driving force behind the ongoing "Portland Parks & Outdoor Recreation Bridge Walks" series held since 1991, which evolved into "Poetry and Bridge Walks" in 2006. Wortman is also involved with the 2009 Portland-Vancouver Bridges & Rivers Calendar, a fundraiser for the 100-year birthday celebration of the Hawthorne Bridge planned for 2010. Additional information about her many projects is posted at www.bridgestories.com.


Jonah Bornstein was raised in Southern California and received a Master's in creative writing from New York University before moving to Oregon in 1989, where he co-founded the Ashland Writers Conference. His published books include "A Path through Stone" and "Voices from the Siskiyous." His poem, "Night Blooming Men," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2000 and two of his poems are included in the nationally acclaimed anthology September 11, 2001, American Writers Respond. His many accolades include the Oregon State Poetry Association Prize and the inaugural Southern Oregon Prize for service to the writing community of the region.


Don Colburn lives in Portland where he is a reporter for The Oregonian. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing, he worked for many years at The Washington Post. Colburn became interested in poetry and started writing poems while on a mid-career Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. In 2006, he had two collections of poetry published: His chapbook, "Another Way to Begin," won the Finishing Line Press Prize; and his full-length book, "As If Gravity Were a Theory," won the Cider Press Review Book Award. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.


Cecelia Hagen grew up Norfolk, Virginia, and studied writing and dance at Connecticut College, later receiving a Master's of fine arts in poetry from the University of Oregon. Her work has been published in many national magazines, and in 2007, Passager magazine in Baltimore chose her as its poet of the year. Presently, Hagen teaches memoir writing and coordinates the monthly Windfall Reading Series for the Lane Literary Guild in Eugene.


Margaret Gish Miller was born in Palo Alto, California and now lives in the Willamette Valley where she is a retired English teacher. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and she has received awards from New Millennium Writings and The Writers Digest.


Rita Ott Ramstad's first book, "The Play of Dark and Light," won the 2003 Stafford-Hall Award for Poetry at the Oregon Book Awards; and her poem "Night Beach" traveled on Portland's TriMet buses and MAX trains as part of Poetry in Motion, a campaign that showcases the work of local and national poets on transit vehicles. She teaches English at the Center for Advanced Learning, a charter high school in Gresham.


Sandra Stone is the 2007 winner of the Dana Award in poetry, which is presented to an under-recognized American poet for mastery of craft, inventive use of language, and substance. Her first collection of poems, "Cocktails with Breughel at the Museum Cafe," was selected in the Cleveland State University annual manuscript competition. The following year, "Cafe" received an Oregon Book Award. Stone's work has appeared in numerous national publications and in several anthologies.

Paul Chasman

When I sat down with The Book of Bob, I had no idea what to expect. What I found was a skillful interweaving (I believe the term du jour is “mashup”) of themes I had previously encountered in books such as Another Roadside Attraction, Dr. Strangelove, and The Days of the Late, Great State of California. The Book of Bob has them all.

Satire and irony are two slightly different things, but Paul Chasman has clearly mastered both. He calls upon his experience as a prolific writer of letters over a four-year period to President Bush and others prominent in the political and business scenes of our modern world to pour out a little morality tale that’s certain to make you laugh, even if what you really feel like doing is crying.

I don’t think I’ll be spoiling anything for anyone by noting that the greatest weapon of mass destruction in The Book of Bob is the cockiness of the Chosen Leader of the Free Nation. For those of you who have read the book, the pun is deliberate. For those of you who haven’t, don’t miss an opportunity to pick one up tonight.

But tonight’s show, “Helluva Deal,” is more than just a reading, just as Paul Chasman is more than “just a writer.” Musician, composer, teacher, Paul brings a wealth of skills to entertain you tonight.

And I suspect when he’s finished, you’ll join me in saluting him: [clap] [snap] “Helluva deal!”
So get comfortable and ready to be entertained.

For more information about Paul Chasman: http://www.paulchasmanguitar.com
And http://www.thecarlletters.com

Introduction by Marianne Klekacz
Photo by Carla Perry

Alison Clement

Featured on June 15, 2002 and October 21, 2006

I think it's safe to say that there's nothing more American than the coming-of-age novel. We're a youth-oriented bunch. Culturally, the rest of the world seems to strive for middle-age maturity, but we keep on being the Pepsi generation no matter how gray we get, at least in our heads. Apparently there's something incomprehensibly alluring about the pain and confusion of being young, falling in love and making mistakes, long after we've actually gone on to become happily jaded and cynical.

So we have a tradition of coming-of-age novels. Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn, J.D. Salinger and Catcher in the Rye, Larry McMurtry in Horseman Pass By and The Last Picture Show. Some of you may remember Blake Nelson, who appeared here last September, author of Girl, which attained cult status among American teens for both the book and the film.

We have a writer here tonight who carries on that tradition to a new level. By dint of talent, an unerring ear, dedication to craft and unrelenting hard work, Alison Clement has found a strong and unique narrative voice to tell a simple, unembellished story about a self-absorbed young woman coming of age. Because of that incredible voice, I think Pretty is as Pretty Does will be around for a long time. A fable of the late Fifties or early Sixties, without reference to historical events, it is truly Middle Americana, but with a twist. Because you see, that's really the ghost of Moll Flanders sitting at the counter a few seats down from you at Aunt Babe's Cafe, sipping a strawberry coke on the hottest day of the summer, flipping her hair and watching every move you make, never knowing that her life is about to begin.

Alison Clement's second published novel, Twenty Questions, was the 2007 Oregon Book Award winner in fiction. The title of Twenty Questions comes from the familiar children's guessing game. The novel is about a grade-school cook who avoids being murdered through chance and becomes involved in the lives of the children at her school.

For more information http://www.alisonclement.org/

Leonard Cirino

Leonard Cirino is a prolific, opinionated, outspoken poet and essayist with twenty-four poetry books and chapbooks produced by a dozen publishers since 1987. He has devoted over three decades of his life to reading, writing, editing and publishing poetry. His book, The Terrible Wilderness of Self, published by Cedar Hill Publications, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1998. He was nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize in 2003.

He is the past editor of Pygmy Forest Press and Semi-Dwarf Review. His poems and essays about literature are widely published on Internet sites and in literary journals and anthologies.

His two most recent books are Poems of the Royal Concubine Li Xi, which won Lummox of the Year Award in 2002, and Everything Is Small From a Distance, published by Pygmy Forest Press in 2004. His books, chapbooks and broadsides are available for sale at the back table.

My poems are the way I express myself spiritually, I go deep into the dark side and the unconscious. I believe in the power of rituals, chanting, contemplation and prayer. I consider myself a mystical anarchist.

-- Leonard Cirino

Please welcome to Newport, Leonard Cirino

Jan Clausen

JAN CLAUSEN was born in Oregon and attended Reed College in the late Sixties, but moved to New York in 1973 where she received Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees from the New School for Social Research. She then moved to Brooklyn and settled into a life of writing, demonstrating and activism on behalf of social justice–-especially for women.

After more than a decade of "marriage" to a woman with whom she was raising a daughter, she fell in love with a West Indian male lawyer she met on a fact-finding tour to Nicaragua in 1987. Her decision to move in with that man stunned the lesbian literary and political community and they forcefully and dramatically cast her out. The experience was, she writes,

like deliberately embarking on a sea cruise off the edge of a flat Earth.

Her story is told in the memoir Apples And Oranges: My Journey Through Sexual Identity.

Jan is a poet, novelist, liberal activist, book critic and reviewer. She has written eight additional books including the nonfiction Beyond Gay or Straight: Understanding Sexual Orientation, and the novels Sinking, Stealing, and The Prosperine Papers.

Her short fiction, articles, poetry and book reviews appear regularly in numerous magazines including Kenyon Review, The Village Voice, Ms., The Nation, Poets & Writers, and the Women’s Review of Books. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fiction fellowship.

Jan is the director of Eugene Lang College, a division of the New School University (formerly New School for Social Research) in Manhattan, where she teaches fiction and autobiographical writing. She is currently working on a book of poems, In the Dazzlegarden a novel, The Observable Moment When Things Turn Into Their Opposites.

Larry Colton

Featured on October 17, 1997 AND February 17, 2001

Larry Colton’s resume begins in 1965 when he was a professional baseball player, playing for the Philadelphia Phillies. His Major League Debut was on May 6, 1968 and he played one season. His next job was teaching English and journalism for the Portland Public School District.

Larry’s first book was Idol Time, published in 1977. The book is a profile of the Trail Blazers’ championship season. From 1984 to 1986 Larry worked as a corporate writer for Nike, then became a fulltime freelancer, and has since written over 250 feature stories for magazines such as Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, Ladies Home Journal, and The New York Times Magazine.

In 1993, his second book, Goat Brothers, was published by Doubleday. The book became a main selection of the Book of the Month Club and was optioned for a movie. The story chronicles the lives of himself and four fraternity brothers from their days at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s to their present middle age.

His third book, Counting Coup: A True Story of Basketball And Honor On The Little Big Horn, was published in September 2000 and immediately became the International eBook Foundation non-fiction book of the year. It is also in the running for a Pulitzer Prize.

In Native American tradition, a warrior gained honor and glory by "counting coup" – touching his enemy in battle and living to tell the tale. Larry spent fifteen months living among Montana’s Crow Indians to follow the struggles of a talented, moody, charismatic young woman named Sharon LaForge, a gifted basketball player and a descendant of one of George Armstrong Custer’s Indian scouts.

Larry lives in Portland and still has a day job. He works as Project Director of the Community of Writers, a non-profit organization in Portland dedicated to improving the quality of writing instruction in Oregon’s public schools.

www.communityofwriters.com

Peter Coyote

Peter Coyote is an accomplished actor who has appeared in more than sixty American and European films playing the romantic lead, villain, or lawyer. (Scoundrel and lawyer are not always the same thing.)

His first movie was Die Laughing in 1980. The most recent include Erin Brockovich, Red Letters, More Dogs Than Bones, Wednesday Woman, The Basket and A Time For Dancing, all released or broadcast on TV in 2000. His distinctive voice can be heard in TV commercials, voice-overs, documentaries, and audiobook recordings including the infamous Zen Flesh, Zen Bones followed by Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

However, Peter Coyote was a writer before he was an actor. In recent years he has been writing film scripts, introductions to anthologies such as What Book!?–Buddha Poems From Beat to Hiphop, and original essays such as his contribution to Hey Lew, a book about Beat poet Lew Welch, as well as a chapter in the book Gary Snyder: Dimensions of a Life. Peter won a Pushcart Prize in 1993 for "Carla’s Story," published in ZYZZYVA magazine, and in 1996 was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and sent daily dispatches to Mother Jones.

Peter Coyote’s first book is his memoir, Sleeping Where I Fall. This book is a candid account of life at the epicenter of, as he put it, "hellaciously good fun." The book provides insights into his life with the gorilla theatre of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Digger movement, which evolved into the Free Family. Peter writes unapologetically about his relationships with the Hells Angels, his women and children, drug consumption, plus the failures of both communal living and his experience as a stockbroker on Wall Street. Peter will be reading from his book, so I’ll fast forward to more recent history.

Peter Coyote has been a practicing Zen Buddhist for 25 years and remains a forceful political activist, especially concerning Native American rights and environmental issues. He plays the guitar, writes his own songs and sings. Copies of his audio cassette called Over The Spinal Telephone are available through his website: www.petercoyote.com. Proceeds go to indigent jazz musicians.

In March, Peter was the "Voice of Oscar." On August 23, the film ROME: Power and Glory, narrated by Peter was voted the "Best Educational Documentary" at the Third Annual DVD Entertainment Awards. The six-hour program was originally aired on The Learning Channel.

The documentary Renewable Power: Earth’s Clean Energy Destiny, also narrated by Peter, recently received the Golden Apple Award from the National Education Media Network and the Golden Eagle Award. The film provides a vision of a world transformed by solar and hydrogen energy. Next month, filming will begin on Midwives — the story of a Vermont midwife (played by Sissy Spacek) who loses a patient during a very complicated birth. The midwife is accused by the state of murdering the mother; Peter stars as the lawyer who defends her.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial will be re-released in March 2002 to mark the film’s 20th anniversary. Peter played the good-guy scientist named Keys.

The Nye Beach Writers’ Series is honored to host such a charismatic, rebellious, bawdy, notorious, explosive, controversial and eloquent author. I’ll introduce Peter Coyote by reading a quote from a speech he made to students at Grinnell College in Iowa, where he graduated in 1964.

"The mechanism by which the self is directed is called intention. Intention is, to my mind, the single most powerful force on earth available to humans. Through focusing our intention and making it fixed and immovable, we can become like a stake driven into the bed of a rushing creek, forcing the flow around us."

www.petercoyote.com

Diana Cohen

Diana Cohen was born and raised in northern New Jersey and attended Oberlin College in Ohio where she majored in creative writing and women’s studies. She moved to Portland in 1986 and has held myriad jobs in various fields including DJ, janitor, carpenter, bookstore manager, and mediator. She published her first collection of poems, Grasp: Selected Poems from the First 30 Years, in 1995.

Since then, she has been focusing on her moneymaking career, which is not poetry. She earns her living in corporate America as a fabrication technician in a microchip facility. She also recently received her associate of general studies degree, and is currently working towards a bachelors degree in management and organizational communication through Marylhurst College.

Diana has read and performed her work all over Portland including at Portland’s International Women’s Day celebration, and in other states such as at her mom's Unitarian Church in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, in New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, and at political events such as the anti-Oregon Citizens Alliance Walk for Love and Justice.

Her work has been published in Spoon River Poetry Review, Rain City Review, and three anthologies: Sister/Stranger, The Unitarian Universalist Poets, and the soon to be released Between Our Lips. She won an honorable mention in the National Billee Murray Denny Contest.

Diana has performed her poetry in the 3-woman show Dykes Using Our Mouths: Revolutionary Poetics, in Love Cabaret at Dreamswell Studio, and for The Way Back, an arts event for women healing from abuse.

Annie Callan

Annie Callan was born in Dublin, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Portland State University, then received an MA in Poetry from Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars.Her novel, Taf was published in November 2001. She also teaches classes in the Pacific Northwest and in Ireland, by invitation. Her book of poems, The Back Door was published in 1995 by Trask House Press. Her memoir Swimming at the Joyce Museum, won the 1997 Siobhan fellowship for Literary Nonfiction from the Heekin Foundation. Annie won the Academy of American Poets Award, the William Stafford Poetry Fellowship, and an award from Portland PEN Women as well as many other writing prizes. She has been writer-in-residence at the Hedgebrook Writers Retreat for Women, at Sitka Center for Art & Ecology, and spent last winter in the Wallowa mountains as Fishtrap’s Writer in Residence. Her poems, stories and essays have been published in literary quarterlies and journals in the US, Canada, Wales and in Ireland.

Annie has been a writing instructor at Portland Community College, University of Portland, the Northwest Writing Institute of Lewis & Clark College, Catlin Gabel, Marylhurst and other schools in the Portland area. She has also taught at Dublin City University and Scripps College in Claremont, California. She has been a guest lecturer at Oregon Chautauqua and for the Oregon Council for the Humanities and participated in the Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools Program at Grant High School, Vancouver School for Arts and Academics; Riverdale School and at Elder Hostel Women’s Writing Groups. She works as a freelance journalist and consulting editor for Glimmer Train Press.

http://anacallan.com

Vaudevillainous Poets

SUSAN BANYAS
J. STUART FESSANT
JOHN DOOLEY
CARL HANNI
STEVE SANDER
LEANNE GRABEL
WALT CURTIS

Featured June 12 & 13, 1998

SUSAN BANYAS is a mom/artist who co-founded the eclectic SO&SO&SO&SO and Dreams Well Studio in Portland. Her work synthesizes movement, language, and visual art into performance art, short stories, theatre, and her recently released CD of monologues and music "Soul Stories." She is writing and directing a theatre piece "The Memory Place" opening in December at Dreams Well starring Leanne Grabel, Steve Sander, Wendy Westerwelle, Gregg Bielemeier, and Elizabeth Tschaler.

J. STUART FESSANT, whose alternative language is actually saxophone, can be found during the day involve din digital audio and sound design at one of Portland’s leading recording studios. Stuart worked as the accompanist and sound designer for all of the Leanne Grabel’s shows, and can be heard on several recordings, including the cassette Neurotransmission released in 1996. Always listening, Stuart derives great joy listening to his 2-year-old daughter Simone and her mother Lisa.

JOHN DOOLEY is one of the more uproarious and talented of the Portland, recently selected for Portland’s national slam team. His poems have appeared in numerous publications, as have his witty stories, illustrated chapbooks and commentaries. His band, The Hydropods, has performed up and down the West Coast and released a well-received CD in 1996. John’s poetry readings are legendary and tend to tickle even the psyche.

CARL HANNI, a member of the original Portland national slam team and the author of Night Shift, a very well received book of poetry released in 1996, lives in Portland where he works in the music business. He produced the "Talking Rain: Spoken Word and Music from the Pacific Northwest" CD in 1994, and has been known to floor audiences with his incisive, lethal, hilarious poems that move from the gothic and noir to the pagan, psychedelic, apocalyptic and just plain pissed-off.

STEVE SANDER, who has played Job in "JB" and George in "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf" on Portland stages, is a songwriter, actor, poet, and the co-creator of Café Lena, Portland’s premier poetry café since 1991. Steve was instrumental in the organization of the Columbia Theatre Company, has performed in myriad theatrical and musical performances, and appears every morning as the breakfast cook extraordinaire at Café Lena.

LEANNE GRABEL has been writing and performing poetry in collaboration with a variety of talents over the past twenty years in Portland. She wrote and performed three poetry-based theatrical shows in the past five years: "One Woman Shoe," "The Lighter Side of Chronic Depression," and "The Circus of Anguish & Mirth." She has published several books of illustrated and regular poetry, including Short Poems by a Short Person, Flirtations, and The Last Weekend of Sylvia Plath. She co-founded Café Lena and is the mother of two fabulous daughters with Steve Sander.

WALT CURTIS is Portland’s "Unofficial Poet Laureate." His novel, Mala Noche, was originally published in 1977 by Joel Weinstein of Mississippi Mud. A decade later Gus Van Sant selected Mala Noche for his directorial debut and created the film that launched his anti-Hollywood movie-making career. Mala Noche, the novella, has just been republished — 20 years later — along with other essays in the new 1997 BridgeCity Books edition, Mala Noche & Other "Illegal" Adventures.

"I am a romantic realist." Curtis writes on page 1. "My name is associated with notoriety. However, I have written some pretty poems about friendship and the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. In other words, as a poet, I’m not a total failure!"

Mala Noche, the book, provides real names and real photos of real people. Curtis is honest with his readers. He wants us to know! He wants us to understand his love! He wants us to LIKE him! (He uses a lot of exclamation points in this book!)

Walt has written and published twelve small-press books including Angel Pussy, the Erotic Flying Machine, The Sunflower, The Roses of Portland, Mad Bomber’s Notebook, Journey Across America, Perckerneck Country, and Salmon Song. A 65-minute performance documentary called "Walt Curtis, Peckerneck Poet" was recently produced and directed by Bill Plimpton. Walt was filmed in Portland, at the Clackamas County Fair, Café Lena, and Willamette Falls. The film also features various denizens of the poetic underworld, Walt’s red ’63 Valiant, and an exceptionally beautiful sketch of naked mud-wallowing along the Clackamas River. The film was shown at festivals in Fall and Winter 1997.

Walt has been hosting a poetry show on KBOO radio for twenty-five years and is the secretary of the Oregon Cultural Heritage Committee.

Rebecca Cohen

My love of stories well-told comes from my family where no incident was too small to make a good story. My father, a Danish immigrant, raised me on Hans Christian Andersen. My mother, an elementary school teacher, read to me daily until I could read for myself. With no television, we were always sharing our reading aloud. These roots gave me the background to develop the skills necessary for carrying on the oral tradition.

My career is that of a children's librarian, but my avocation is storytelling. With story well told, history, values, and consciousness are passed on in such a way that they remain available for use when needed. In my work with children, stories told orally prove invaluable for developing listening and cognitive skills, which are the foundation of speech and reading.

The stories I will tell in Yachats are from the Yakonan-speaking people who once lived on this coast between Heceta Head and Cascade Head. The stories were written verbatim from tellings by Alsea George and William Smith. Both men were very old at the time and the Yakonan language was from their childhood. The written works are often repetitive and rambling. What I have done is make these stories "listenable" for the current generation of Lincoln County dwellers. I do this work with the permission of Siletz tribal members and money I receive from these tellings will be used to enhance the tribal library.

A Lincoln County native, Rebecca Cohen has been telling stories in the oral tradition for over 20 years. She currently works as a Youth Services Librarian at the Newport Public Library.

Robin Cody

ROBIN CODY grew up along the rivers surrounding Portland, his family moving frequently in the search for financial survival. Robin graduated from Yale, taught at the American School of Paris, in France, then returned to Oregon and became Dean of Admissions for Reed College. He decided, in 1984, to be a writer and penned many feature articles for Northwest Magazine of the Sunday Oregonian. One of those stories won the Western Writers of America’s Silver Spur Award for short non-fiction in 1986.

As a freelance technical writer, Robin joined the Bonneville Power Administration’s Writer’s Pool. One assignment was to write a children’s booklet explaining the Columbia River. The research for that book encouraged Robin to spend a summer solo canoeing from the mouth of the Columbia to the Ocean. A trip that took 82 days. Voyage of A Summer Sun, the book written as a result of that trip, won him an Oregon Book Award.

Voyage of A Summer Sun is historical, giving the geological history of the Columbia. Yet it’s personal, really him, Robin Cody, paddling down and looking through his own particular eyes. He declares he wasn’t an environmentalist when he began his trip and he wasn’t one when he finished it. But he comments on how the dams destroyed the area’s Indians, wild fish runs, and the small towns which were flooded when the water backed up.

Robin’s first book, Ricochet River, a novel, was published by Knopf in 1992.