Bette Lynch Husted

BETTE LYNCH HUSTED's memoir, Above The Clearwater: Living on Stolen Land, chronicles the history of Husted's family which settled near the Clearwater River in northern Idaho.

The benchland above the Clearwater River in north-central Idaho had been the home to the Nez Perce Indians until the Dawes Act opened their reservation to settlement in 1895. As a child on the family homestead, Husted says she grew up feeling the presence of the long-displaced Nez Perce.

Husted received a BA in English from the University of Idaho and an MA in English from the University of Colorado. She spent 19 years teaching high school English in White Swan, Washington, Polson, Montana, and in Hermiston and Joseph, Oregon. She then spent 13 years teaching American Literature, Native Literature, Northwest Literature, and Writing at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton.

Her essays, short stories and poems have appeared in a broad selection of anthologies, literary journals and magazines. Her essay, Salmon Run, was selected as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2000. She lives in Pendleton with her husband Dean, and for those who have already read the book in anticipation of tonight's event, she still watches birds and foxes and practices early morning T'ai Chi.

Copies of Bette Husted's memoir, Above The Clearwater published by Oregon State University Press, and her poetry chapbook, After Fire, are available at the back table.

Please welcome.

Roy Parvin

There is a paragraph in Northern California author Roy Parvin's novella Betty Hutton that may just sum up thematically the intent of his work thus far. The protagonist, Gibbs, is a troubled man with a history of finding trouble:

But it was what stood at his back, the ocean of land behind Gibbs, that pulled at him like a tide. He'd never been farther west than the eastern fringe of Pennsylvania, had never been anywhere. He'd heard about Montana, though, a place that sounded like everything hadn't yet been decided, where there still might be some time left. A cellmate had told him of the chinooks, the southerly winds capable of turning winter into spring in a matter of hours, sometimes a ninety-degree temperature swing, and it had seemed to Gibbs lying in their dank cement crib, it seemed as if such a thing as the chinooks was possible, anything was.

One has to wonder whether if, in the crucible of our current troubled times, the threadbare cliché of personal redemption in literature, let alone in real life, has become almost meaningless. Roy Parvin's well-drawn characters and elegant prose seem to hold out the promise that there are possibilities, at the very least.

Roy's name may not yet be a household name, but he seems to be moving in that direction. His work is receiving numerous prestigious awards and he was granted a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in December 2003. He splits his time between households in the Bay Area and the Trinity Alps, which provide many of the settings for his work. His book of short stories, the Loneliest Road in America, came out in 1997, and his three novellas "In The Snow Forest" was published in 2000. He is currently writing a novel.

Please welcome Roy Parvin...

Steve Sander

STEVE SANDER has appeared in various shows put on by Writers On The Edge. He was a featured author more than once and appeared in Vaudvillaineous Poets, and "The Memory Place."

STEVE SANDER'S interest in acting and performance was nurtured at the Portland Civic Theatre and as a founding member of the Columbia Theater Company in Portland. He served as the Poetry Editor for Spectrum Magazine of the Arts while making his living in a natural foods bakery, a men's clothing store, as a job counselor with the City of Portland, and as a small business owner. Sander is a poet, songwriter, guitar player and ex-New Yorker who settled in Oregon in 1971. On the closing of Cafe Lena, he said, "The past ten years have been the best twenty of our lives!"

Steve Sander is married to Leanne Grabel and they have two lovely and talented daughters.

Leanne Grabel

LEANNE GRABEL has appeared in various shows put on by Writers On The Edge. She was a featured author at the very first Yachats Writers' Series, held June 20, 1997 and has returned to the stage here as part of her writing critique group, Vaudvillaineous Poets, and "The Memory Place."

Leanne was co-founder and co-owner of Cafe Lena, the infamous literary cafe in Portland. She is the author of the books Lonesome and Very Quarrelsome Heroes , and The Family Fate Ate , and is the editor of Prison Poetry Project , a compilation of writing and photography by incarcerated violent offenders in MacLaren Youth Correction Facility. Her chapbooks include There's a Pig Running Free , Anne Sexton Was a Sexpot, The Last Weekend of Sylvia Plath, Short Poems by a Short Person, Flirtations, and The Heart .

Her poetry-based theatrical shows include One Woman Shoe, The Lighter Side of Chronic Depression, The Circus of Anguish & Mirth, and most recently, Anger: The Musical all of which have been produced on various Portland stages. She teaches poetry to at-risk teenagers in summer camps, Portland public schools and juvenile prisons.

http://www.leanegrabel.com

Elizabeth McLagan

ELIZABETH McLAGAN was a founding member of CALYX. She has also been a bookkeeper, gardener, housecleaner, writer and high school English teacher. After her son graduated from high school, Ms. McLagan returned to graduate studies and earned an MFA in Poetry from Eastern Washington University. Since then she has taught composition, creative writing and literature at Portland Community College, Cascade Campus. Ms. McLagan has also pursued research and writing in the area of minority history in Oregon. Her nonfiction publications include A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, Women and Minorities in the Construction Industry, and Notes Toward a Biography: The Papers of John Hiram Jackson. Her poems have been published in numerous literary journals, and in 1990 a chapbook of poetry was published by Howlet Press. She has won poetry awards from the Oregon State Poetry Society, Clark College, and Cream City Review, as well as the 2001 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Introjournals Award. Her full-length manuscript, Visitation in the Form of a Blue Feather, is currently in search of a publisher.

Margarita Donnelly

MARGARITA DONNELLY, one of the founding authors of CALYX is currently its Director. She is the recipient of the American Book Award, Literary Arts Stewart H. Holbrook Award, two CCLM Editors Awards, and a Fishtrap Gathering Fellowship for her short fiction. Her work has appeared in The American Book Awards Poetry Anthology, Small Press Magazine, Women and Aging, the Feminist Bookstore Newsletter, and Women's Press, for which she was a founding editor. She writes book reviews for the Oregonian and Women's Review of Books. She received the 1994 inaugural Distinguished Achievement Award from the Oregon State University Friends of the Library, as well as the 1990 Women of Achievement Award from the OSU Women's Studies Center. She has lectured widely, including at the 6th International Feminist Publishers Conference in Melbourne, Australia, and the Hawaii Literary Council in Honolulu. Ms. Donnelly has taught at the Centrum Writers Workshop, Bay Area Writers Conference, and at the American Library Association Conference. She served on the selection panels for the Washington State Arts Commission, Idaho Arts Commission, Oregon Arts Commission, Seattle Arts Commission, and the Cottages at Hedgebrook Women's Writing Retreat on Whidbey Island, Washington. She has also edited six anthologies at CALYX Books including their newest, A Fierce Brightness. She was born and raised in Venezuela and Spanish is her first language.

Donna Henderson

DONNA HENDERSON chapbook, Transparent Woman, produced on a letterpress from handset type, printed on fine paper and bound with string, was a finalist for the 1997 Oregon Book Award for Poetry. The title poem of this collection was first published in Calyx Journal and subsequently included in A Fierce Brightness." Her most recent chapbook, Gazpacho, contains a sequence of poems on the final illness and death of her mother, together with watercolors by her sister Darcy V. Henderson. In the past few years, Donna Henderson's poems have appeared in Fireweed, First Things, Room of One's Own, and other magazines. Her reviews and articles have been published in journals of spirituality, literary scholarship and social work. Her poem Dawn is included on the CD Alive at Dawn by pianist Diane Baxter, principal keyboard artist for Yaquina Orchestra and the Bloch Music Festival. She has received various state, national and international recognitions, including a Pushcart Prize nomination. Ms. Henderson recently completed her first full-length collection of poems, Are You With Me Here? Her photography and mixed media artwork is regularly exhibited at the River Gallery in Independence as well as in one-woman shows around the Willamette Valley. Ms. Henderson is a licensed clinical social worker with a private practice in pyschotherapy in Monmouth, teaches counseling at Western Oregon University and is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at Warren Wilson College.

Janice Gould

JANICE GOULD is a Native American poet of Koyangk'auwi/Maidu descent. She has published three books of poetry, Beneath My Heart, Earthquake Weather, and Alphabet. Her newest book, Speak to My Words: Essays on American Indian Poetry, was co-edited with Dean Rader and published by the University of Arizona Press. Her poetry and essays have been appeared in numerous journals, reviews, and anthologies. She was awarded grants for her writing from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Astraea Foundation. She earned a Ph.D in English at the University of New Mexico and currently teaches Imaginative Writing and Native American literature at Willamette University in Salem where she is an assistant professor and serves as the Hallie Ford Chair in Creative Writing.

Cole Robinson

COLE ROBINSON performs solo acoustic guitar. "Robinson's improvisational style is a fusion between organic acoustic precision and raw electric power, with overtones of American string band and East Indian raga."

COLE ROBINSON states that he has been greatly influenced by the music of Jimmy Hendrix, Miles Davis, Dave Matthews, and the Smashing Pumpkins. "I appreciate all forms of music but lately I've taken a particular interest in American string band music and East Indian raga."

Robinson studied with such notables as Dan Balmer, Tony Kaltenberg, Jeff Peretz, and Mel Brown. He has performed in numerous and varied venues including the E.M.U. Ballroom at the University of Oregon.

"I am capable of delivering a hard driving beat as well as employing the use of free time to create ambient modal soundscapes."

Lorrie Haight

EXTREME SELF-PUBLISHING!

"HOW TO MAKE A HARDCOVER BOOK AT HOME IN YOUR SPARE TIME"

A demonstration by Lorrie Haight of Long Beach, Washington.

Lorrie Haight began creating hardcover books by hand for her husband, Smitty, a fisher poet and storyteller. Ten years later, after producing hundreds of hardcover books, she began teaching the craft of bookmaking to others who were interested in both the process and self-publishing. She now gives bookmaking demonstrations at craft shows.

Lorrie has been a featured workshop instructor at the Fisher Poets Gathering in Astoria for the past few years. She is also the author of her own book of stories based on her days as an Alaska fisherwoman.

During the presentation, participants learn how to lay out written material, then fold, gather and sew the pages into sections of the book called "signatures." She demonstrates how to bind the book, measure material for the book cover, cut and glue the covers together and ultimately glue the finished books into the finished covers using starch in the hinge crease.

Handouts available at the demonstration include contact information for all book publication requirements such as ISBN and Library of Congress numbers, bar codes and copyright forms.

Lorrie Haight's video, "Lorrie's Book Making Demonstration," is available for purchase, through email: booklady@pacifier.com or call Lorrie directly at 360-642-8090.