Marc Acito

"Tonight's featured author is Marc Acito.

Marc Acito is a very funny guy. He's also a heckuva storyteller.

When I sat down with his first novel, "How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater," I wasn't sure what to expect. The Oregon Book Award sticker on the cover was promising, but I don't always agree with OBA selections. The subtitle, however, made it seem as if there was something here for everyone, so I dived in.

For some time I just romped through the novel, admiring the zany characters and strong writing, and I wondered about the plot and subplot threads spinning every which way. But somewhere shortly after page 200, the action took a sudden (and surprising) turn that wrapped all the threads together. And I started to laugh. Out loud. I laughed so hard that my husband called from the next room, "What the heck are you reading?"

"A book you'll probably like," I answered (we knew the same weird set of people in our salad days). And as soon as I discovered that the book had a real ending with a real resolution, I knew my retort was true. He's reading the book as I'm writing this, and I'm waiting for the laughing to start.

Acito's second novel, "Attack of the Theater People," continues the story of Edward Zanni and his misfit collection of friends, a little older now and trying to confront the world of adults. Acito throws in a little timely plot thread about corporate espionage.

But you can figure all of those things out for yourself. So without further ado, please welcome Marc Acito." (Intro Written by Marianne Klekacz)










http://www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/videos/view/211-Marc-Acito

http://www.marcacito.com/

Video Copyright Carla Perry

Dori Appel

Dori Appel is an Ashland writer whose poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies, including When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple and The Best Is Yet To Be, the audio recording of which was a 1997 Grammy finalist. Her recent collection of poems, Another Rude Awakening, was published in 2008 by Cherry Grove Collections.

Dori is the author of eighteen full-length plays, plus many one-acts and monologues. She was the winner of the Oregon Book Award in Drama in 1998, 1999, and 2001, and her most recent play, Hat Tricks, published by Samuel French, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in 2008. Girl Talk and Hot Flashes, both co-authored with Carolyn Myers, are also published by Samuel French.

Two full-length plays, WHEN GOD CAME TO BABYLON and I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE, are being translated into Bulgarian for presentation by director and actress Victoria Koleva to professional theaters throughout Bulgaria.

Dori Appel's official website: http://www.doriappel.com/

Kassten Alonso

Kassten Alonso was born in Seattle, Washington and graduated from Willamette University in Salem. Kassten has previously published in the Portland Mercury, Portland Monthly, and The Oregonian.

Kassten Alonso's novel, Core: A Romance, released in 2005, earned an Oregon Book Award nomination, and stands as one of the most arresting and harrowing Pacific Northwest novels to emerge in years. The novel's intense tale of obsession, betrayal, unrequited love, madness, and murder will captivate readers. After the novel's narrator becomes obsessed with his best friend's girlfriend, his already precarious hold on sanity rapidly deteriorates into delusion and violence. Alonso skillfully uses language to imitate memory and psychosis so that the reader is squarely inside the narrator's head. The result is a fiction experience unlike any other in recent memory. Kassten is currently working on his next novel.

John Amen

John Amen's debut poetry collection, Christening the Dancer, was released by Uccelli Press in 2003 and nominated for various awards, including the Kate Tufts Award, the Lenore Marshall Award, and the Brockman-Campbell Prize. His second collection, More of Me Disappears, was released in September 2005 by Cross-Cultural Communications. His poetry and fiction have been published in numerous magazines and journals, and he was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His first solo recording, All I'll Never Need, was released by Cool Midget Records in 2005. His second CD, Ridiculous Empire, was released in Spring 2007.

Amen was featured in the 2007 Poet’s Market. He is also an artist, working primarily with acrylics on canvas. Amen travels widely giving readings, doing musical performances, and conducting workshops. He founded and continues to edit the award-winning literary bimonthly, The Pedestal Magazine.

To learn morea bout John, visit his website at www.johnamen.com

Marisa Anderson

(featured with The Dolly Ranchers on April 20, 2002 and solo on June 26, 2004)

MARISA ANDERSON plays an intricate flatpick guitar, mandolin and banjo and writes the lyrics to most of songs performed by The Dolly Ranchers, an alt-country, all-girl band based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Inspired by the oral traditions of travelers, tramps, and hobos, Anderson's lyrics create a raw, dynamic and gritty old-time country sound with edgy, original tunes about train hopping, hitchhiking, the travels and travails of whisky singin' women. She cites being influenced by such disparate sources as Tom Waits, the Velvet Underground, Lucinda Williams, Patti Smith, Freakwater, Utah Phillips, and Loretta Lynn.

As part of The Dolly Ranchers, Anderson has shared the stage with such notables as Alvin Youngblood Hart, Jenny Bird, Junior Brown, Odetta, Otis Taylor Band, Queen Ida and her Zydeco Band, Spider John Koerner, U. Utah Phillips, and the Yonder Mountain String Band.

She is also a circus performer with the One Railroad Circus of New Mexico.

Anderson, with The Dolly Ranchers, has produced two outstanding CDs: Ten O'Clock Bird and Escape Artist . She has also contributed to the soundtrack for the upcoming documentary "For The Love of Dolly," about fans of Dolly Parton. Anderson is at work on her first solo record.


http://www.thedollyranchers.com

Dori Appel

DORI APPEL is the author of fourteen full-length plays, nineteen one-acts, shorts and monologues, and more than fifty published poems and stories. Her plays have been produced throughout the United States and internationally, and her poetry and fiction have been featured in dozens of magazines and anthologies including "When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple," and "The Best Is Yet To Be," the audio recording of which was a 1997 Grammy finalist.

Dori won the prestigious Oregon Book Award in Drama in 1998, 1999 and 2001. First, for Freud's Girls, a drama in which Freud's secrets are revealed with help from Virginia Woolf and Anais Nin. The second award was for The Lunatic Within, a revue-style comedy/drama about everyday oddities and ordinary madness. And the 2001 Drama Award was for Lost And Found, a series of one-acts related by themes of loss and recovery. The list of awards Dori has won over the plays few years is dizzying.

In August, Dori and Carolyn participated in their first poetry slam. "To our astonishment sixty people showed up at a gallery in Ashland on a Thursday night. And to our further astonishment, I took first place and Carolyn second!"

The dynamic duo just might demonstrate their slam flair in Newport. They for sure will be performing selections from the award-winning The Lunatic Within, and Lost and Found, plus from their co-authored play, Girl Talk.

To learn more about Dori, visit her website at www.doriappel.com

Diane Averill

Two of Diane Averill’s books, Branches Doubled Over With Fruit, and Beautiful Obstacles, were finalists for Oregon Book Awards. Beautiful Obstacles was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 1999, she received an Oregon Literary Arts grant in poetry. Diane’s earlier books include the chapbooks Turtle Sky and Ella Featherstone Poems: A Sellwood Sequence.

Diane is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Oregon and was an assistant poetry editor of The Northwest Review. She taught poetry writing for five years in the Talented and Gifted Program for the Portland Public Schools and is currently is a professor of creative writing, poetry and English composition at Clackamas Community College.

Her writing has been included in several compilations, including "From Where We Speak," an anthology of Oregon poets published by Oregon State University, and "Pacific Northwestern Spiritual Poetry," published by Tsunami Inc. She has work in the upcoming anthology of ghazals written by English-speaking people, tentatively called "Ravishing Disunities" published by the University of Massachusetts.

(Ghazals are two-line poems, each stanza standing on its own. Ghazals seldom exceed twelve couplets, averaging seven. The term originated in Iran in the Tenth Century based on a Persian’s verse form and was carried to India in the Twelfth Century by the Moghuls. When Persian gave way to Urdu as the language of poetry and culture in India, the ghazal gained popularity. Although the ghazal deals with the whole spectrum of human experience, its central concern is love. Ghazal is an Arabic word that literally means "talking to women."

Poetry doesn’t have to be serious business. Each of us is a beginner each time we sit down to a blank piece of paper. Keeping this in mind helps us not get stuffy.

-- Diane Averill

Judith Arcana

JUDITH ARCANA is the founding director of the Union Institute Center for Women in Washington, D.C., and a professor of literature and women’s studies in the union’s Graduate School. She has also taught at Loyola University of Chicago, Columbia College, and The Prison Project at the Illinois State Reformatory for Women among many other places. She has participated in workshops at Fishtrap, Flight of the Mind, and Ragdale Retreat for Writers and Artists and has produced videotapes on feminine sexuality for the Union Institute Center for Women.

Judith is the author of Our Mothers’ Daughters, Every Mother’s Son, and Celebrating Nelly. Her most recent book is Grace Paley’s Life Stories, A Literary Biography.

Judith is a longtime teacher of writing and literature and is a prolific writer of articles, essays and speeches about women’s issues, including abortion, mother-blaming, ethnic and racial stereotypes. Her work has been published in the US, England, and Canada. She is a poet and story writer as well with work appearing recently in Nimrod, CALYX, The Temple and Sojourner, ZYZZYVA, and Fireweed: Poetry of Western Oregon, as well as Poetry Motel, 13th Moon, Rhino, Exit 13, and the 1996 contest issue of Passager. She also had recent work in the Cleis Press anthology Nice Jewish Erotica and the Ann Landers Encyclopedia.

She states,

I write for pleasure, I write to satisfy my own desire for writing, my longing for it; I write for an audience, I want to engage that audience, I want anybody who reads or hears my work to be taken into the words, the images, their rhythm and meaning. Performing my work is important to me, a source of joy and exhilaration, and of course offers one way I can actually contact my audience. When I read, I'm like any other live performer, putting out and responding to the vibe/energy.

Diana Abu-Jaber

Diana Abu-Jaber comes from a Palestinian-American family. Her first novel, Arabian Jazz won the Oregon Book Award and was a finalist for the national PEN/Hemingway Award.

Diana received her doctorate in English literature from the State University of New York. Her short fiction has appeared recently in Story and Kenyon Review. Most recently, she wrote and produced an hour-long personal documentary for National Public Radio called "The Language of Peace." She writes book and film reviews for The Oregonian, the LA Times and the Washington Post. She is currently Writer-In-Residence at Portland State University.


She recently returned from Amman where she’d traveled on a Fulbright grant to conduct interviews with Jordanian and Palestinian women in preparation for her novel, Memories of Birth, a book based on her grandmother’s life.

She married my grandfather at age 14 and had seventeen children. When she moved into the desert with my grandfather, who was a descendant of the Bedouins, she built one of the first libraries in Jordan in her home because so many people brought books to her.

-- Diana Abu-Jaber

She also received a National Endowment for the Arts Grant while writing this book.

To learn more visit her website at www.dianaabujaber.com