The Pacific Northwest Book Award Committee recognized late author Brian Doyle with an Indie Spirit Honor for his body of work and vigorous support of independent booksellers in the Northwest and beyond. Doyle passed away in May 2017. We republish this essay that he wrote upon winning a 2016 PNBA Award in memory of his …
It was five or so years ago when I met my French translator, Philippe. We’d been corresponding by email for some time, our discussions initially consisting of questions relating to the translation of my first novel. But once the work was completed we continued the back and forth, establishing a friendship beyond professional matters. …
As a reader, I find recommendations difficult to ignore. Even when the pile beside my evening chair is in danger of toppling, something new, received at the insistence of a friend, simply must be cracked open. The same goes for gifts. While I have no trouble composting an unwanted fruitcake, or exchanging a shirt with …
Sometimes a unicorn shows up in your life and makes everything better. I wasn’t really expecting one. A few years ago, I had nearly realized an ambition I’ve had since age 12: I had scored a contract to develop a comic strip for newspaper syndication. I won that contract, in the Comic Strip Superstar contest, …
What did I think of when I learned that my peculiar collection of essays had won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award? Weirdly, not the barrels of cash and fine wines and excellent cheeses that would surely come my way, or the hordes of somber graduate students that would soon be studying my semicolons, or the …
I left my hometown in Washington at seventeen, riding the Amtrak Cascades line south to Seattle and then the Empire Builder east. My father hugged me goodbye on the gray platform. It was, as always, raining. You know what they say, Meg, he said. You can never come home again. Those words confirmed the worst …
“Where do you get your ideas?” This is probably the single most common question authors are asked. I think part of the reason is a notion—or maybe a hope—that all you need to write a book is a good idea. Alas, it’s rarely that straightforward. Almost no one has an idea for a book and sits down to …
People harbor certain assumptions about the Pacific Northwest, and they seem to get more incorrect the farther I get from home. Many folks think, for example, rain. But here in Boise we average just 12 inches of rain a year, only 6 more than Baghdad, and 31 fewer than Cincinnati. Other folks think, lumberjacks, but …
Until I was 12 years old we lived in the city, where our house was a short walk to two movie theaters that screened Saturday matinees for kids, matinees comprised largely of 1930s and 1940s westerns—I saw Roy Rogers before he came to television, saw John Wayne in his early horse operas before John Ford …
