Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey, cultural and literary icon, is the author of One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion, as well as children's books, screenplays, articles, and several other novels.

Kesey grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Speech and Communications and received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to enroll in the Creative Writing program at Stanford. During his college years he volunteered at a Veterans Administration hospital in an experimental program involving mind-altering drugs.

Kesey's home-grown parties evolved into 1960s San Francisco day-glo "happenings" and "acid tests" with light shows, body painting, exotic costumes, strobe lights, eastern mysticism, sexual mayhem, and eventually a hook-up with Jerry Garcia's band "The Grateful Dead." In the summer of 1964, Kesey purchased a 1939 school bus, painted it psychedelic, and took the Merry Prankster crew on a road trip to New York. Neal Cassady (made famous as Dean Moriarty in "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac) was the driver. The rest, as they say, is history.

In recent decades, Ken Kesey has been writing, directing and performing plays including "Where's Merlin?" (toured England for the 1999 solar eclipse), and "Twister: a Musical Catastrophe for the Millennium's End." Kesey was awarded the CES Wood Retrospective Award honoring his lifetime achievements at the Oregon Book Awards ceremony in November 1999.

"I think it’s important for writers to get out there on the road and read their stuff to the audience," Kesey said. "I see performance as a "Thing." Performance is a form of publication. Performance is when you go public. And publication of literature is the point. When we go over on the coast to Newport in April to do a "Thing" in front of the public, that’s publication." — Ken Kesey.

http://www.intrepidtrips.com/

Tom Nattell

TOM NATTELL, CHARLIE ROSSITER and DAN WILCOX are friends who share the idea that poetry should be part of society rather than apart from it. Relevant, communicative and above all, honest. As they put it, "We’re trying to help more people find out how neat poetry is."

The 3 GUYS FROM ALBANY became a formal group 1993 and have performed their work throughout the Northeast and Midwest in coffee houses, bars, libraries, community centers, at colleges, and on street corners, mostly in towns named Albany.

Their Pacific Coast tour included a benefit performance for the Albany Regional Museum and West Albany High School on Thursday, a show at Café Lena in Portland last night, here in Newport tonight, Grassroots Books in Corvallis tomorrow, and at the Salem Book Bin on Monday, followed by a LIVE interview on KBOO radio’s "Talking Earth" show in Portland. Then they return home to New York.

DAN WILCOX’s poems have been published in a variety of small press magazines and anthologies. He is also a photographer who has accumulated what he refers to as the "largest photo collection of unknown poets in the world."

TOM NATTELL is an environmental and peace activist who believes in using poetry and the other arts to advance peace, justice and a sane approach to the environment. He originated and hosts Albany’s oldest continuous open mic series.

CHARLIE ROSSITER, producer and host of Poetry Motel TV, has performed on KPFA in San Francisco, at the Kent State Gathering of Poets in Ohio, the Forest Gathering of Poets in Eugene, Oregon, and he helped organize all-day readings at the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. He is also the co-creator of poetrypoetry.com, a brand new international audio poetry website. With links to major poetry sites in Australia, Canada and the UK already in place, poetrypoetry.com is aiming to become the premiere world poetry "gateway" site by leading visitors to the best sites on the globe for English-language poetry. The "3 Guys from Albany" will tape tonight’s open mike session for inclusion on this website.

3 Guys from Albany

TOM NATTELL, CHARLIE ROSSITER and DAN WILCOX are friends who share the idea that poetry should be part of society rather than apart from it. Relevant, communicative and above all, honest. As they put it, "We’re trying to help more people find out how neat poetry is."

The 3 GUYS FROM ALBANY became a formal group 1993 and have performed their work throughout the Northeast and Midwest in coffee houses, bars, libraries, community centers, at colleges, and on street corners, mostly in towns named Albany.

Their Pacific Coast tour included a benefit performance for the Albany Regional Museum and West Albany High School on Thursday, a show at Café Lena in Portland last night, here in Newport tonight, Grassroots Books in Corvallis tomorrow, and at the Salem Book Bin on Monday, followed by a LIVE interview on KBOO radio’s "Talking Earth" show in Portland. Then they return home to New York.

DAN WILCOX’s poems have been published in a variety of small press magazines and anthologies. He is also a photographer who has accumulated what he refers to as the "largest photo collection of unknown poets in the world."

TOM NATTELL is an environmental and peace activist who believes in using poetry and the other arts to advance peace, justice and a sane approach to the environment. He originated and hosts Albany’s oldest continuous open mic series.

CHARLIE ROSSITER, producer and host of Poetry Motel TV, has performed on KPFA in San Francisco, at the Kent State Gathering of Poets in Ohio, the Forest Gathering of Poets in Eugene, Oregon, and he helped organize all-day readings at the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. He is also the co-creator of poetrypoetry.com, a brand new international audio poetry website. With links to major poetry sites in Australia, Canada and the UK already in place, poetrypoetry.com is aiming to become the premiere world poetry "gateway" site by leading visitors to the best sites on the globe for English-language poetry. The "3 Guys from Albany" will tape tonight’s open mike session for inclusion on this website.

Joseph Millar

JOSEPH MILLAR’s poetry reflects his life as a telephone installer, commercial fisherman and single father. He received a Masters degreein poetry from Johns Hopkins University and is the author of two chapbooks, Slow Dancer and Midlife: (Passionate Lives: Eight Autobiographical Poem Cycles). He received a 2003 National Endowment for the Arts grant and now teaches at Oregon State.

In 1995, his poetry won the Montalvo Biennial Poetry Competition, placed second in the National Writer’s Union Competition judged by Philip Levine, and was selected by Carolyn Forche for honorable mention in the Jacaranda Review Poetry Contest. His poetry has been published in Prairie Schooner, DoubleTake, Manoa, Shenandoah, Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, New Letters and Many Mountains Moving. His first book, Overtime, was published in 2001 by Eastern Washington University.

Joseph recently gave up his job as a telephone installation foreman to teach and now works for the Oregon Writer’s Workshop, the Oregon State Poetry Association, Mt. Hood Community College and the Vancouver School of Arts and Academics.

He is at work on a full-length manuscript titled Dark Harvest, which was a finalist for the Carnegie Mellon Award and the National Poetry Series for a first book. His seminar, Poetry of The Workplace, will be available through Eastern Washington University’s Summer Writer’s Conference in Tacoma.

Dorianne Laux

Dorianne Laux, born in 1952 in Augusta, Maine, is of Irish, French and Algonquin Indian heritage. She began writing seriously in her early twenties, after her daughter was born. As a single mother, she worked as a housecleaner, gas station manager, TV Guide salesperson, cook in a sanitarium, and doughnut holer. She returned to school to earn a BA in English from Mills College in 1988 and for six years she worked in the Poets in the Schools program in Berkeley and Oakland. Eventually, she moved to Eugene to teach at the University of Oregon and is currently Associate Professor and Director of the University’s Program in Creative Writing.

Dorianne has published two collections of poetry, Awake and What We Carry, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She also co-wrote The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry which was chosen as an alternative selection by the Book of the Month Club, Quality Paperbacks and Writer's Digest. Her poem, "The Shipfitter's Wife" was chosen by Robert Bly for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 1999. Her work can also be heard on National Public Radio's "The Writer's Almanac" hosted by Garrison Keillor.

Her third book, Music in the Morning, is scheduled for publication this year. Presently she is at work on a libretto with composer Wally Brill. As for honors, Dorianne won a Pushcart Prize for Poetry and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the National Endowment for the Arts.

When asked about the confessional nature of her poetry during C.K. Tower’s interview on the Perihelion website, Dorianne replied, "I am often afraid of how much I love my daughter, how much I trust my husband, how helpless I am in the midst of my own hatred and anger, how terrified I am of death. And so, I watch for the stories that will tell these feelings and thoughts, and sometimes it's not the whole story but merely an image: a boat moored to a dock, the gesture a stranger made before walking into a room. Then I confess what that meant to me using the many and varied resistances of poetry. As soon as you begin to pay as much attention to the language as to what you are trying to say, you've set a challenge for yourself that denies the simplicity of confession."

Verlena Orr

Why would a lawyer's wife work as a social worker in an inner city? Why would she stay married for nineteen years and do dinner parties on demand, but then walk away leaving behind affluence and comfort? Why is the ex-wife of a Court of Appeals judge spending her life writing poetry? Of what benefit is knowing how to ride horses, to shoot and to square dance? The answers to these and other questions will be found in the work of Verlena Orr.

Verlena is the author of two chapbooks, I Dance September Naked in a Dream (1988) and Woman Who Hears Voices (1998). Her poems appeared in a number of national literary journals, in Graining The Mare: An Anthology of Ranch Women Poems, and From Here We Speak, an anthology of Oregon authors. She received a BA from Albertson College in Idaho in 1961, a BA from Portland State, and an MFA from the University of Montana in 1984.

She has worked as a hired girl on a farm, as a secretary, social worker, landlord, and teacher for Portland Public School Talented and Gifted Program, Poetry in the Schools, and at Portland Community College.

An orphaned adult and Idaho farm and pasture owner, she prefers dancing in sleazy bars to gardening and reading, and spends most of her time smoking and writing poems. She cooks one day per year — Idaho-style fried chicken for Ann and Rick’s annual garden party potluck.

Carlos Reyes

Carlos Reyes is an Irish-American poet and translator. His books of poetry include The Shingle Weaver’s Journal, a finalist for the Elliston Prize; Nightmarks, and A Suitcase Full of Crows. He has also published nine chapbooks including The Windows, The Prisoner, The Orange Letters, At Doolin Quay, Open Doors, and most recently a translation of Edwin Madrid’s Puertas abiertas.

Hundreds of his poems appeared in national and international literary journals and anthologies including most recently, Let Us Drink To the River, an anthology of river poems, and O Poetry! Oh Poesía! Poems of Oregon and Perú. His poem, "Bridge of the World," appears along with other poetry on Max Cars and Tri-Met buses through Portland’s Poetry in Motion program sponsored by Literary Arts, Tri-Met and the Poetry Society of America.

Carlos recently completed a translation of José Martí’s Escenas norteamericanas (North American Scenes), a book which will be published in Havana, Cuba. And he has translated Poemas de la isla (Island Poems) by Canary Island poet Josephina de la Torre, scheduled for publication by Eastern Washington University Press.

Reyes has been a Yaddo Fellow, a fellow at the Fundación Valparaíso (Mojácar, Spain), and received an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship for poetry. Since 1964, he has been the editor and publisher of Trash House Books, Inc. He is a founding editor of Hubbub: A Magazine of Poetry, and is currently on the editorial board of Ar Mhuin na Muice (On A Pig’s Back), a journal of Irish news, music and culture.

Richard Hoyt

Richard Hoyt is the author of twenty-one mysteries and thrillers; two under the alias of Nicholas van Pelt. His first novel, Decoys, a John Denson mystery, was published in 1980. Since then, he has published seven John Denson mysteries and eight James Burlane international thrillers.

Richard, born in Hermiston, Oregon, grew up on a small farm outside Umatilla, Oregon. His father was a moonshiner and a rodeo cowboy; his mother was manager of the school cafeteria. He has a Master of Science in journalism from the University of Oregon and a PhD in American studies from the University of Hawaii. He served as a counterintelligence agent for the United States Army and was a fellow in international editing and reporting at the Washington Journalism Center. He served briefly as a Washington correspondent for newspapers in the Pacific Northwest and was a reporter for two years for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and three years for the Honolulu Advertiser. He taught journalism and mass media courses at the University of Maryland, College Park, and for six years at Lewis and Clark College in Portland.

In researching his thrillers, I learned that he has traveled to Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, France, Morocco, Mexico, Guatemala, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Gibraltar, Canada, Jamaica, England, Portugal, Hong Kong, Brazil, the Soviet Union, the Netherlands, Spain, and Belize. His last overseas trip to he Philippines lasted over three years. In 1984, he rode Soviet trains from Nadhodka, near Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan to Finland. In 1987, he rode riverboats from the headwaters of the Amazon to the Atlantic Ocean.

Richard’s novel, Siege, won the American Mystery Award as the best espionage novel of 1987. His latest novel, Stomp, set in 1957, is an existential mystery and a coming of age story. It is largely autobiographical, based on Hoyt's growing up in Umatilla. The book deals with true love, a series of rapes, a bit of stalking, near-death train-proximity sex, a murder attempt (by the heroes), ruined lives, a body found after forty years, and the return of the exiled author in time for his appearance tonight, one more stop on an extended book tour.

Jane Glazer

Jane Glazer grew up in small-town Iowa, in a large family, among animals and books. Her father was a veterinarian; her mother an artist. Jane was widowed at 30 but went back to earn an MA in English Literature while raising three children. After a Fulbright year in Dublin, Ireland, and a two-year Peace Corps stint in South America, she taught in Eugene and Portland schools for twenty years. During that time, she began to publish her poetry in small journals.

Her first book of poems, Some Trick of Light, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards in 1994. Her work has been described as "poems of precise observation and social conscience, informed by an educated sensibility and a first-rate mind."

Poems from Some Trick of Light take us to Ireland, Russia, Italy, and Beijing. The first poems in her book are dramatic and provide description of foreign lands with painfully stark commentary. The book’s second section delves into family memories, deaths of grandparents, and the suicide of her husband. The poems are tender and unpretentious, with no trace of the melodramatic.

A second collection, Moles and Mausoleums, is ready for publication.

Kevin Sampsell

Kevin Sampsell is the force behind Future Tense Press of Portland, which received an Oregon Literary Arts grant in 1998. Future Tense is dedicated to publishing work by people often thought of as weirdoes or outsiders. As part of his promotion effort, Kevin organized the Future Tense Reading Series at Umbra Penumbra and produced a series of readings in bookstores and cafes that mixed the spoken word with music. Debuting this month, Kevin curated and hosted The Kamikaze Reading Series at the snazzy little theater and café called Raindog in North Portland.

Kevin’s own books include How To Lose Your Mind With The Lights On, The Patricia Letters, Children’s Book, Haiku You, and Invisible Radios: re-mixes, statistics, jokes, etc. A new short story collection, Stuck, is due out from Incommunicado Press in early 2000. His poems, collages and stories have appeared in many zines and journals.

Kevin is also a part-time book critic and writes reviews and articles for Plazm, Snipehunt, Anodyne, Willamette Week, Resonance, Besmirched, and Carbon 14. Plus, he works at the famed Powell’s City of Books in Portland where he schedules author appearances.

He has a four-year-old son Zach and is married to Ritah Parrish.