As I await the publication of my third book of short stories about Maine and northern New England, A Faithful But Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Lately Committed, I remember applying for a job in my twenties that I suspected (correctly, it turned out) would pay me for taking naps. The position involved running a …
I’ve gotten a lot of questions about inspiration since publishing Jackaby. What inspired me to write about X, Y, or Z; what do I do when I don’t feel inspired; where does inspiration come from? Inspiration is weird. Here’s my best advice on the subject. Inspiration is a marvelous thing. There are times when whole …
Dorianne Laux’s “Family Stories” from her 2000 collection Smoke is this week’s American Life in Poetry featured poem. Laux traded her University of Oregon duck pond for the North Carolina State University wolfpack in 2008, but is currently back in Oregon as part of her MFA teaching gig at Pacific University. She’s the author of five …
“If you’re looking for a quirky character, meet Blue van Meer. She’s the adoring daughter of a brilliant college professor. She and her father traipse all over the United States, exploring, learning, reading and keeping to themselves. During Blue’s senior year of high school, they move to North Carolina, where Blue, for the first time …
“Before Diablo Cody was super-famous for writing the movie Juno she was just like the rest of us post-college twenty-somethings . . . approaching our looming corporate futures feeling uncertain, slightly terrified and very bored. Her solution, however, is what makes Candy Girl unique: Cody tackles her ennui by becoming a stripper. Candy Girl is …
Mandi Harris is the self-proclaimed “fiction fashionista” at the University of Oregon Duck Store. She started there in the book department while she was an English major at the university—and has been slinging books for four years. “Being surrounded by books and working alongside people who love them has made me extremely spoiled,” she says. “Plus, …
“Tiger’s Curse is a wonderfully written page-turner by a Salem author. Set in Oregon, it features Kelsey, who is a typical 17-year-old foster child looking for summer work. She finds a job with a traveling circus and becomes intrigued with a white tiger, Ren. Little does she know what she has really gotten herself into. …
In these days of Wikileaks, oversharing on Facebook, and one-click answers from Google, library research has been relegated to the purview of yesteryear historians and diehard scholars, and the arrival of a cache of new information is often met with skepticism, or simply a big yawn. So it was somewhat surprising recently to find myself …
“My only goal in life is to move to the country, raise goats, and make cheese. So far, I am not succeeding. However, Brad Kessler made my dream a reality in Goat Song, which documents his introduction to the pastoral life. Not only is his prose to die for, but his exploration of etymology, history, …
