Brenda Peterson

"If landscape is character, then Northwesterners are most like water," writes BRENDA PETERSON in Singing to the Sound.

Brenda Peterson is the author of a staggering array of books including three novels, one of which, Duck And Cover, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her nonfiction includes Living By Water, Nature and Other Mothers, and Sister Stories. She also co-edited, with Linda Hogan, the highly acclaimed anthologies, Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals, a Book-of-the-Month Club/One Spirit and Quality Paperback Club selection, and The Sweet Breathing of Plants: Women Writing on the Green World.

Plus, in the past few months, Sightings: The Gray Whale's Mysterious Journey, was published by National Geographic, and Living By Water was re-issued by Fulcrum Press. Singing To the Sound: Visions of Nature, Animals and Spirit, a sequel to Living By Water, was released by NewSage Press. Her memoir, Build Me An Ark, explores her deep connection with animals and her work for the restoration of wild wolves. Her articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Orion, Sierra, and Utne Reader.

Brenda was born in 1950 in the High Sierras of the Pacific Northwest and raised on a national forest lookout station surrounded by a million acres of wilderness. She was an editorial assistant for The New Yorker in the seventies but returned to the northwest and has lived in Seattle, Washington on the shores of Puget Sound for over twenty years.

http://literati.net/Peterson/

Linda Hogan

LINDA HOGAN, a descendant of the Chickasaw Nation, grew up in a military family that moved often although most of her childhood was spent in Oklahoma and Colorado. Her books of poetry include Eclipse, Seeing Through the Sun, That Horse a collaboration with her father, and The Book of Medicines which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Colorado Book Award. Her novels include Mean Spirit, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Oklahoma Book Award for fiction in 1990, and Solar Storms, winner of the Colorado Book Award. Her books of nonfiction include Dwellings, From Women's Experience to Feminist Theology, and the recently released Sightings

co-authored with Brenda Peterson. Linda Hogan is also the author of a textbook on poetry, several plays and numerous essays, mostly on environmental issues.

She is the recipient of the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for Seeing Through the Sun a Guggenheim grant, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Oklahoma Book Award for fiction, and the prestigious Lannan Award for outstanding achievement in poetry, an award which may not be applied for. She also won a Five Civilized Tribes Museum Playwriting Award and in July 1998, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.

When asked why she writes both fiction and poetry she replied, "With fiction I can take political issues and weave story and character around them. Not enough people read poetry."

Linda has a Masters degree in English and Creative Writing from the University of Colorado and is currently a professor in the English Department at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She served for two years on the National Endowment for the Arts poetry panel, and volunteers in wildlife rehabilitation.

Sharon Olds

Our next reader is also a writer of memoir, but not in any conventional sense; you will never see her on Oprah giving you the real lowdown on her family and her relationships. She simply refuses to talk about these things except in her poetry, which has been both hailed and deplored as intimate and pornographic, although I believe erotic is the operative word.

Another operative word is clarity. There is neither pretense nor obfuscation in her work. She does not fall into the trap that so many poets do, namely writing about life events in such a rush of personal imagery that the poems are incomprehensible to the rest of us.

Her words and intent are both entertaining and accessible.

Whether walking through a crowded airport or making love or observing children at her son's birthday, the narrative voice is deft and precise.

I really can't say enough nice things about this writer. She seems to be everything a poet should be. Not surprisingly, she has one of the largest followings of any literary poet in America. Her eight volumes since 1980 sell. Her work has been translated into seven languages for international publication and appears in over one hundred anthologi

es. She teaches poetry workshops at New York University. She was the New York State Poet Laureate from 1998 to 2000. She is just the right height. She doesn't wear make-up. I am honored to introduce her tonight SHARON OLDS.

Links:

• Sharon Olds on Wikipedia
• Audio recording (.mp3) of Sharon Olds reading from her work at the Key West Literary Seminar, January 2003
• Open letter to Laura Bush

Jennifer Lauck

What is memoir? The dictionary defines it initially as "records of facts or events in connection with a particular subject, historical period, etc., as known to the writer or gathered from special sources."

That sounds rather like what history is supposed to be. Trouble is, I can't recall a memoir that fits the description. Memory is subject to bias. There are rarely any 8 X 10 glossies with circles and arrows. On a personal level, I can't think of any incidents mutually agreed upon as historically accurate ever occurring between myself and either of my two ex-wives. I'm sure we were all hoping for the best. I still am, actually.

The second definition is a closer fit, "records ones life experiences." But memoir is not a laundry list of events in one's life. Nor is it a diary. Memoir is organized writing that is meant to make a point. Just like any other good story.

In the case of JENNIFER LAUCK and her two-volume memoir, Blackbird and Still Waters, the point seems to be that spunk may not conquer all, but is an excellent counterpoint to misfortune and adversity. Hers is a Cinderella story, except Fairy Godmother got lost on the way over and Prince Charming didn't show up until several years later. No carriage, no gown, no royal ball, and no glass slipper. Jennifer had to do it all herself. An American Cinderella with attitude.

Which has served her well. Once a grade-school dropout, Jennifer Lauck went on to carve out a prestigious career in broadcast journalism before becoming a wife and mother and the successful author of her two books. She is currently working on a novel.

www.jenniferlauck.com

Bart Schneider

Bart Schneider is the founding editor of the Hungry Mind Review of Books, now the Ruminator Review, and has written numerous book reviews for periodicals around the country. He edited a collection of essays about the American minority experience and white silence published by Crown called Race: An Anthology in the First Person in 1997. His first novel, Blue Bossa, published by Viking in 1998, was a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Prize in First Fiction and won him a $6,000 fellowship from The Minnesota State Arts Board. His newest novel, Secret Love, also by Viking, came out in March of 2001. He is the literary Director of The Loft, the nation's most comprehensive literary center, and was recently elected to the board of the National Book Critics Circle.

You have to be careful reading this story; at first glance it may seem like just another nostalgic look back at the mid-Sixties. Set in the Bay Area, the book touches on a lot of familiar icons: Jazz, Chinatown, Mario Savio, civil rights demonstrations; good old San Francisco as the most liberal city in the country. It's a time of Goldwater, Malcolm X, Cassius Clay and Lenny Bruce. After the Kennedy assassination but before Vietnam and AIDS. There's usually some self-congratulation and self-adulation written into most works by Baby-Boomers about those days, readers innocence times.

The title implies a love story, and there is one; but Schneider's real theme lies in the subtext of his main character's unexplored inner racism. Love doesn't always conquer all, and certainly not this time around.

It's a sad read but a thoughtful one, full of complex characters, with history viewed from a slightly different, if unflattering, perspective.

www.loft.org

The Dolly Ranchers

Almost from the very inception of the Nye Beach Writers Series, in fact, clear back to the time when it was the Yachats Writers Series almost six years and a hundred and twenty-some writers ago, the idea has been kicked around that we should bring some singer-song writers into the mix. After all, even if they often rely on collaboration with back-up singers and musicians and technicians, at the heart of it, singer-song writers start every new composition as writers. Even if they start new work by wandering around the house at 3 a.m. or looking out the window of the car or tour bus or whatever on their way to the next gig, mumbling or humming or whistling, sooner or later they're going to have sit down and actually grind out the words.

Now, Carla's first choice was Bob Dylan. I can just hear him saying: I'm just up here, just me, as plain old Bobby Zimmerman, poet.

We thought we might be able to sell a few tickets. So far, however, Bob's been what can only be termed as unresponsive. In retrospect, it may be a blessing. I'm not sure we have enough room here for all his bodyguards.

And, of course, there was talk of Barry Manilow. I'm not sure we have enough room here for his ego...

So we came down out of the clouds and wound up saying to ourselves, hey, who is new and fresh, with echoes of traditional, wandering troubadour open highway ethos, a dash of grunge, yet cutting edge, alt-country, all-girl with a hobo-jungle, ran-away-and-joined-the-One Railroad Circus of New Mexico, avant-garde twist of wry, Santa Fe impassioned blue-grass, high-plateau honky-tonk, chili pepper energy?

There's only one group like that. Please welcome The Dolly Ranchers...

www.thedollyranchers.com/

Ariel Gore

There is a line in an old Jimmy Buffet song that says "we are the people our parents warned us about." We laugh when we hear that because we like being part of the surprise our folks got when they realized what a tactical error they'd made by having children. And so many children. Obviously, if they'd exerted a little more restraint there wouldn't be this population bulge called the Baby Boomers. The Sixties might have just been a calmer, quieter extension of the Fifties. Things might not have gotten so crazy.

So, Jimmy Buffet needs to add another line or so to that song–- to the effect that our children are the unwarned-about people now freaking out our parents even more than we did. Issues that barely got a nod from Baby Boomers way back when are being addressed and politicized and radicalized. One of those issues is teen single motherhood.

ARIEL GORE is the founder of Hip Mama. As a single, teen-age mother, she encountered traditional negative value judgments, guilt and social stigma, but little support or positive information about being a good parent or creating a strong sense of family. Hip Mama was the progressive forum she created to address those concerns. The magazine evolved to represent progressive families of all varieties and gained national recognition. Ariel, who once debated Newt Gingrich on MTV on the subject of single parenthood and welfare, is now a sought-after authority on child-rearing. She recently moved to Portland, the "city with the highest per-capita subscription rate" to Hip Mama. She is the author of The Hip Mama Survival Guide and The Mother Trip.

BEE LAVENDER joined Hip Mama in 1997 as managing editor. Former teen mom, activist and writer, she has launched new projects such as Mamaphonic and Girl-Mom, an online resource for teen parents. Ariel and Lavender are co-editors of Breeder: Real-Life Stories of a Generation of New Mothers, 36 essays from some brave new mamas.

www.hipmama.com

www.foment.net

Suzanne Lummis

One of my favorite quotes comes from a fellow named T.S. Eliot, who once said about writers, "Hacks imitate, artists steal" which, while acknowledging the fact that all new work is connected with what has come before, doesn't define the distinction between artistic plagiarism and artistic recycling.

Obviously, the first is only about a superficial re-rendering of established work, but the second is really about the wholesale theft, absorption and creation of new work from old. West Side Story from Romeo and Juliet.

Nearly every film and pulp Western, Shane, The Magnificent Seven and True Grit, all from the Sixth Century Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf.

Tonight we have with us a poet who is not only a fan of T.S. Eliot, but also of Raymond Chandler and fairy tales and the misty, dark, cruel-streets-of-the-city genre known as noir.

Not only Director of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival, actress, playwright, performance artist and founder of the high-spirited, text-driven troupe Nearly Fatal Women, but also a thief in the highest artistic sense, her work and words crisp and not only teeming with irony and humor, wisdom and spirit, but pure magic... mercy... I want to have her baby.

www.cortlandreview.com (Issue #16)

www.thedrunkenboat.com (Spring 2001)

www.poetix.net/closeup.htm

Tom Spanbauer

Featured on June 19, 1998 and March 16, 2002

For me, the term "dangerous writing" conjures up the following: I have a sudden inspiration, a snippet of something flashes through my mind, a line or two that I don't trust myself to remember. I want to get it down on paper before it dissolves, so I start frantically looking for a pen or a pencil and a piece of paper, you know an old lunch sack, an envelope, anything, just to get that fragment jotted down before it leaks out of my brain, and then, the damn pen won't work, or the wax paper sandwich wrapper I found won't take the ink, and just as I find an old collection notice that's perfect, some joker overreacts and honks his horn, though I'm barely straddling the centerline, but the way he's carrying on you'd think I was totally in his lane and we were bound for glory. He waves jovially enough as he passes, but I do notice he's not using all his fingers...

To be honest, that's not what Tom Spanbauer means when he refers to "dangerous writing," also the name of his legendary writing workshops. Rather, he is referring to the act of being honest with oneself on paper. On the surface, that may not seem like a dangerous or even daring act. But it is. When the words one believes to be the truth about oneself are actually written, they take on a power that is no longer exclusively controlled by the writer. The spin that could be applied when the ideas were merely in a person's mind or coming out of a person's mouth melt away. The words lay the heart bare for all to see. Those words become a separate entity, an unflinching, unvarnished document of the self.

Tom Spanbauer writes unflinching, unvarnished novels. It's a tough enterprise to take on, especially when the subject is homosexuality in the over-mythologized Old West, as seen in his 1991 cult classic, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon. And it apparently doesn't get easier with time or practice. Ten years have passed between books. He says of his recent epic, In the City of Shy Hunters, a fictionalized chronicle of the decimation of gay culture in New York City during the early years of the AIDS epidemic: "Writing this book almost killed me."

Larry Brooks

You know, the question often comes up: what does a person do after his five-year career in pro-baseball with the Texas Rangers fizzles because of an arm injury, followed only a few years later by the disappointing discovery that he was not really cut out to be a stockbroker, and compounded by seventeen years in the industrial-hype trenches, writing scripts and brochures for an expanding audiovisual production company that catered to the likes of Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz Credit Corporation, Cargill and a slew of other Fortune 1000 firms, steadfastly clawing up the corporate ladder rung by rung to Executive Creative Director and partner in one of the largest corporate communications firms in the west, only to see the firm sold out from beneath him?

Does he become an emotional basket-case, a bar-fly or simply join a monastery? Not on your autographed John Grisham. In the face of incredible odds, he quietly dusts off the old word-processor and writes thrillers. And sells 'em.

Tonight, the Nye Beach Writer's Series presents one of the most currently successful writers in the state. With over 200,000 copies sold of his first novel, Darkness Bound, since publication by Onyx Books in October of 2000, and a second book, Pressure Points, just released by Onyx in December of 2001.