Ana Maria

Death Valley: Reclaimed Homeland

2012-01-20T10:30:00.001-08:00

Last winter around this time my mom and I were trying to decide where to travel together. Some place sunny, some place we’d never been. Death Valley, she suggested. Perfect.

On the way north, from the eight-lane interstate to the two-lane highway, we marveled about how only a few years earlier, as she battled cancer, we thought she’d be gone. Now she’d get to see Death Valley before she died. We speculated about the wildflowers which might be great – or not – the wildflower watch on the Internet urged us not to get too excited. So there we were on the open road, not knowing what to expect or hope for.

Even before the trip I’d been thinking about reclamation, about hydropower and dams and how the combination of outsized vision and the communal will of New Deal America managed to reclaim so much. For better and for worse. When I was young, I harbored Ed Abbey fantasies of dams blasted to smithereens, and I am as happy as the next monkey-wrencher to see the Elwha come tumbling down. But lately I’ve grown a strange and desperate faith in reclamation in all its meanings:

To take back. To make right. To make useful.

So there we were in Lone Pine. We spent an afternoon at Manzanar, the former internment where Japanese-Americans have reclaimed their history. Then the next morning, we entered the park in all its stark grandeur, and we passed this sign:
Check out the phrase at the bottom: "Homeland of the Timbisha Shoshone." I was floored. I know enough of the sordid history of Indians in National Parks to know how uncommon such an acknowledgement is. When I opened the park map and saw that it was not merely a nice gesture, but reclamation at its most raw and right. The Timbisha Shoshone Homeland Act in 2000 had granted 300 acres in the park and more than 7,000 in the surrounding lands back to the Indians.

Since then I’ve read everything I can find about the tribe’s history and their activists like Pauline Esteves and Barbara Durham, and I’ve interviewed several of those involved in the Homeland Act negotiations including Charles Wilkinson, author of a terrific history of modern Indian movements, Blood Struggle. My obsession with reclamation has grown even bigger and more unwieldy (outsized?) moving in several directions at once … like the very best projects. But despite my best efforts, I have yet to talk to the Timbisha. I have not given up hope.

Five things a writer needs to be able to do a lot of

2011-11-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

Last week, I visited Minden Elementary School near Reno, Nevada as part of the sixth grade lecture series. The series is organized and run by a hard-working student committee that assembled a list of questions ahead of time, prepared an introduction, set up the tables and chairs in the library, and best of all, provided the treats for the occasion. Last year the series featured scientists. This year it’s writers, and I was the first. So I decided to go with the basics: How do you become a writer? What do you have to do?

I made a list for the whiteboard (which was, by the way, electronic – yikes! – luckily the committee trained me up in no time):

1. Read

What inspires you to write? the students asked. The answer: What I read. From Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was a kid to Zadie Smith last week.

2. Sit in a chair

As anyone who writes seriously can attest, this is a lot harder than it sounds. How long does it take to write a book? the students asked. Well, my first book, the novel I wrote sitting in a bean bag in second grade, The English Girl from Canada, took 10 days. Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus took five years. That’s a lot of sitting.

3. Find something you love to write about

For me, the lifelong urge to write turned to desperate compulsion when I landed in Canyonlands National Park in Utah just out of college, then later when I stumbled into Stehekin. I loved being outdoors, immersed in such beauty, loved the people I met and the adventures I had, and I wanted to write about all of it. So I did. Over and over and over again.

4. Work with other writers

After I left Minden, I headed up to Lake Tahoe to teach a private workshop on the bridge between essay and memoir writing. Six devoted writers offered each other support, encouragement, and much needed direction. All of them – all of us, I should say – marveled at how much gets accomplished when we’re around other writers rather than in our own little cubby holes.

5. Accept rejection

Back at the elementary school, this offered a great chance for guessing game. I told the students that I have, as of now, about seventy published short pieces. To get to that point, I asked, how many rejections did they think I’ve received? Hands shot up. Ten? Nope. Twenty? Nope. A hundred? Up and up and up the numbers went. (When I described this to my mother on the telephone, she said: just like The Price is Right.)

Five hundred, I said at last. I keep track. Five hundred rejections. And counting.

Of course the one obvious thing a writer must do a lot of that does not appear on the list is – duh! – write, so we spent some time on three short writing prompts that maybe the students can work into something in the days and weeks to come.

Then it was over. Time for refreshments. The only caveat was that, in order to partake of the cookies and Rice Krispie treats, the students would have to be talking about the presentation either with me or with each other. (Not, their teacher Ms. Bertolone-Smith noted, merely hanging out with their “stalemates.”) So they gathered around and asked some great questions: how to write a climax scene, whether you can work on more than one book at once, what’s different about writing fiction vs. nonfiction.

Looking back, I realize I did skip over one thing writers have to do a lot of: give readings and presentations and visit with readers. I’ve been doing plenty of that in the past year, and I have to say, the morning at Minden Elementary was one of the most enjoyable.

Excerpts, Covers, News

2011-09-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

Some nice press this month has brought some amusing, uh, juxtapositions.

An excerpt from Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus appears in the Autumn 2011 issue of Portland: The Magazine of the University of Portland. This is a fabulous alumni magazine, regularly lauded as one of the best, edited by the indominable Brian Doyle, and the excerpt, from the chapter "Heroes and She-Roes" is fabulously presented. Since it's the scene of John Lewis' speech at the 50th anniversary of the Tallahassee bus boycott, a fine portrait of Congressman Lewis accompanies the text.

This excerpt appears in an issue for which the cover story is:"Why Be A Priest?"

Meanwhile an excerpt from Potluck appears in the Sept. / Oct. issue of Utne Reader. A section of the title essay, retitled "Pass the Populism," appears in the Gleanings section of the magazine, another fine publication with a wide distribution. The excerpt was even noted by a NY Times writer in the Dining section of the paper on Sept. 13. That is, by Stehekin standards - by any standards, I suppose - a big deal!

This excerpt appears in an issue for which the cover story is:
"21st Century Sex: What Are You Looking At?"

In neither case is the excerpt related to the cover story, but the contrast tickled me no end.

Then came Oregon Quarterly where an excerpt from Potluck, "Saw Chips in My Bra" appears in the Fall issue alongside an essay by Robert Leo Heilman about the legendary woods-working co-op, the Hoedads. This time, the cover photo fit with my story a little better, just right even. The only downside was the news that long-time friend, supporter, author, and OQ editor, Guy Maynard, will be stepping down this winter. He will be sorely missed.

Meanwhile, I have new short essays forthcoming in Bellingham Review and Matter 14: Animal, and a short story for kids in ColumbiaKIDS.

And ... in the best news of the month, Test Ride was named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award in biography / memoir. A fine honor.

The History of Skagit Dams - Seeing Things Anew

2011-08-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

I’ve driven Washington’s Highway 20, the North Cascades Highway, for years. I used live in Rockport right along the highway, and I used to work for the national park that straddles the highway, and for one interminable summer when Laurie worked on the east side of the crest and I worked on the west, I commuted over the highway. I’ve been wowed by the mountains and soothed by the rivers, sure, sure. I’ve hiked from trailheads and watched wildlife and even taught writing at North Cascades Institute’s Environmental Learning Center on Diablo Lake. It was there, at the Learning Center, that I first thought seriously about the dams.

To reach the Learning Center you drive right across Diablo Dam. Overhead the power lines buzz. But when writers sat down to describe their surroundings, they usually wrote about birds or fish or trees or clouds. Never the dams. I was as guilty as anyone. The three dams that line the Skagit River – Gorge, Diablo, and Ross – are all more or less visible from the highway, but, in writing as in life, I’d mostly ignored them. Why? I knew the answer: because we nature-loving types have a kneejerk reaction against anything human-made. While we’re in the woods, we want to see the woods. But part of why people come to the Learning Center is to learn about things they know little about, to appreciate them anew. For me, I realized, that meant the dams.

So I was delighted this spring to see that my old friend Jesse Kennedy would teach a class at the Learning Center on the History of the Skagit Dams. Jesse can bring enthusiasm to any subject (you’d have to attend one of his defensive driving classes to believe me) and in this case, the subject could not have been more perfectly suited to him. Dr. Kennedy, who studied both ophthalmology and diesel mechanics extensively before migrating into cultural resources, described dam construction with an engineer’s precision and told the story of J.D. Ross and his battle to bring public power to Seattle with a historian’s heart. Turns out it’s a wild story with several wild subplots. Ross single-handedly fought off proponents of privatization and brought the dams in on schedule and under budget to provide more people in Seattle with more power sooner than in other American cities. Ross was also a renowned expert on lilies and tea plants, who borrowed monkeys and albino deer from Woodland Park Zoo to place on islands in Diablo Lake. The animals – along with a colorful light show and a hearty chicken meal and a ride up the dramatic cable incline used in dam construction – served as attractions for generations of city folks Ross wooed upriver for inexpensive tours from the Depression through the 1960s. When he died, Franklin Roosevelt offered space in Arlington National Cemetery, but Ross had specified that he’d prefer to lie for eternity along Highway 20 in Newhalem. A plaque at the site quotes Roosevelt who heralded Ross as one of “the greatest Americans of our time,” which is particularly impressive considering that Ross was Canadian.

When at last we visited the dams, we saw a rare sight. The dams, overfull from late snow in the high country, were spilling. The spill would be dramatic in any case – all that water, all that power – but when Jesse turned our attention to the construction, the graceful concrete arc to keep the force of the water from shaking the dam to the ground, my heart swelled the same way it does to see the larches on Liberty Bell backlit in fall. Pure beauty. And this, I realized, was why I’d come. Sometimes it takes a little knowledge to nudge you out of your ideological safety zone, a few good stories, to make you see things anew, to make you think.

These days, I’m thinking a whole lot about reclamation. More on that soon.

Rust Fish

2011-07-02T11:12:00.000-07:00

Each day before I begin to write, I try to read something, anything, that inspires me. Lately, I’ve been turning more and more often to poetry, and most recently it’s been Maya Jewell Zeller’s terrific first collection, Rust Fish. I heard her read from the collection at Burning Word festival in Leavenworth, Washington in May, and ever since then, I’ve been hooked. I want to say entranced, but it’s nothing that otherworldly or dark. Mostly, I’ve been charmed.

Rust Fish is a coming-of-age collection, more or less, and part of what Zeller does so well is conjure childhood without a hint of romanticism or regret or even ruefulness. There’s real childhood friendship (“The World at Eleven”) and real childhood meanness (“Revenge” “Serape”). There’s the chalky mouthful of powdered milk I remember so well, and there’s a sweet lullaby sung to a beloved stuffed snake, despised by her mother. Then there’s G.I. Joe come to life (my favorite line in the book: “GI Joe loved lambsweed with warm government cheese”) then GI receiving the mutilation treatment we’ve so often seen Barbie endure (“Sibling Rivalry”).

Through it all, the natural world – a distinctly Pacific Northwest version – weaves into and out of the poems the way, on the west slope of the Cascades, blackberry vines choke rotting barns. There’s skunk cabbage and balsam root and thistle, cedar and salmon and smelt, and lest you think things might stray into too-pretty description or green forest cliché, there’s the flood strewn bloated cow carcass thrown in for good measure.

Zeller’s voice is straightforward and plainly feminist (remember the treatment GI Joe got?) and unyielding without turning belligerent. She doesn’t so much confront class issues as inhabit them. Her parents owned both a tavern and a tow truck. In the last section, her poem “For a Student Come Back from the Quiet Beyond” culminates in a wrenching set of lines: “She is the student who made me cry the most./ She loves her job at a dry-cleaner’s/ where the chemicals give her hives/but her boss says she’s the best employee he’s ever had.”

Of all the aspects of Zeller’s poetry that I admire, her humility stands out the most. She’s as eager to point out irony as anyone – the new Jack in the Box on the road to Olympic National Park, say – but when she does it, with all her earnest understated passion, guess who’s in the drive thru line?

If you’re looking for inspiration, pick up Rust Fish.

On Mortenson, memoir, victims, whiners, and the sometimes sickening truth

2011-05-31T10:21:00.000-07:00

The undeserving casualties of the recent fracas over Greg Mortenson’s exaggerations in his bestselling memoirs are many: the people that donated money to his schools in Afghanistan and the schools themselves – guaranteed now to be shorter on funds than before – and the girls who attend them. Then there are readers, even the non-donators, and attendees of Mortenson’s speaking engagements who believed a story and now feel duped. But not least among them are memoirists everywhere who have taken yet another blow to their credibility.

Credibility that has long been suspect. The root of the accusations is familiar: how can any writer remember all the details? Memoirists, the naysayers point out, compress time and make-up dialogue and details. True enough. But most readers are cool with that. The truth is, often enough, the eye-rolling exasperation has less to do with how the story is told – how true exactly – than with what kind of story it is. Memoir is the genre of victimization, say the eye-rollers. The realm of whiners.

I should know. I taught memoir writing online for several years to hundreds of writers – new writers, experienced writers, rich writers and poor, good writers and bad, women and, occasionally, men – and among the shocks I had to face was exactly how widespread childhood trauma, especially family trauma, is. Not verbal abuse, but horrid physical and sexual abuse. I recoiled. I didn’t want to read it, not once and certainly not dozens of times a day, but I was awed and humbled by the guts it took for writers to relive the trauma, and it did not take me long to realize that these stories must be told. The sheer number of them makes them impossible to ignore. Victimization is not an attitude that’s gone viral. It’s a reality that’s been shoved under the carpet. Because we want it there. We want to change the subject.

Oddly enough, it’s rarely the (mostly female) victims of horrific crimes who exaggerate or lie in memoir – I’ve never heard of a documented case – but the (mostly male) perpetrators of minor ones. James Frey lied about his the extent of his drug dealing. Ditto Malcolm X according to a new biography. Greg Mortenson apparently not only exaggerated his commitment to the village schools, but also the extent of his trespass into enemy territory and his subsequent kidnapping. Let’s face it: bad guy dramas, packed with danger and daring, tend toward excess. Whether and how to punish or prevent such excess is, I suppose, a discussion worth having.

But let’s not change the subject.

Let’s not allow courageous writers who were once victims become victims (again) by letting “Did this really happen?” morph into “Are these stories really worth telling (again)?” They are. And the most important ones may not be packed with misdeeds-turned-bravado – the street thug turned civil rights hero, the climber turned philanthropist – but with pathos and cold hard, sometimes sickening, truth.

Tribute Essay in High Country News

2011-03-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

This week I have an essay in High Country News titled "The Sign Maker" honoring Phil Garfoot, who died almost exactly a year ago. I was lucky enough to have a couple of fine Barnhart photos of Phil's signs accommany the essay, but I thought it'd be fun to include several more. Unfortunately the snow still hangs in the high country so these shots don't include many fine trail junction signs, but they give a sense of how ubiquitous and fitting they are here in Stehekin.

http://www.hcn.org/issues/43.6/the-sign-maker

Teaching, Writing, Publishing

2011-01-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

So the three are supposed to be in eternal conflict, I realize. How much time do I spending writing (duh - as much as I can), trying to publish (crucial, right?), and teaching (my passion/my paycheck)? Last semester the three dovetailed nicely and I have my nonfiction workshop at Whidbey Writers Workshop to thank. Sort of. I was afraid, as all writing teachers are secretly afraid, that teaching would sap all my energy. I was simultaneously afraid that I had demanded too much of the students - a complete draft or revision every week of the semester. So I decided I had to keep up. I had to submit a complete draft or revision of an essay to myself and/or to an editor every single week. The rule worked well because it kept me writing, and also because it kept me from fretting over creating a masterpiece every time I sat down to write. The results: 8 essays in 16 weeks. Seven of which have been published or accepted for publication. Here's one from the current issue of Mountain Gazette:

http://www.mountaingazette.com/mountain-notebook/re-entry/

Test Ride on the PNBA 2011 Book Awards Short List

2010-12-07T09:16:00.000-08:00

Just before Laurie and I left on a sprawling Thanksgiving trek that has temporarily landed us at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in Northern California for Laurie to prune a few fine old trees, I heard via the grapevine that Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus was shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association 2011 Book Awards. I didn't quite believe it, but it was true. Big news in my little world. In part because some of the other authors on the list were literary heroes of mine when I first started writing - Rick Bass, Ivan Doig - and all of them are authors I admire.

http://www.pnba.org/awardsshortlist2011.html

Additional kudos - and thanks - to Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA student Janet Buttenwieser. The PNBA folks chose to link to the interview she did with me outside Elliott Bay Books in May as introduction to the book.

http://whidbeystudents.com/nonfiction/

Mink River

2010-11-04T12:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve long admired Brian Doyle’s essays: succinct, precise, unexpected, and gorgeous. They’re chockfull of playful language, unabashed spirituality, and plain elation. It’s not as though Doyle’s unwilling to confront harsh realities. His very short essay “Leap” is the most moving response to 9/11 I’ve ever read. But more often he confronts us with joy. The last sentence of “Joyas Voladoras,” which moves from a hummingbird’s heart to a blue whale’s to a human’s, makes me weep every single time I read it:

“You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman's second glance, a child's apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother's papery ancient hand in a thicket of your hair, the memory of your father's voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.”

Still Brian Doyle’s essays did not prepare me for Mink River, his first novel. I mean, I thought I’d like it, but I didn’t think I’d like it so much that as soon as I stopped reading I’d start all over again. But that’s exactly what happened. Part of the attraction is geographic. Mink River takes place in the fictional Northwest coast town of Neawanaka and the descriptions of the rain and forest rival those in Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion. But Doyle’s novel is bigger-hearted than Kesey’s. The prose sings with echoes of Blake and Joyce, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Louise Erdrich. The story itself shimmers. Mink River isn’t just about one stubborn family; it’s about one generous, pained, magic community.

And there’s the rub. I’ve been writing essays about community for ten years at least. (The collection Potluck: Community at the Edge of Wilderness comes out in spring) I’ve tried to capture the complicated nuances, loyalties, surprises, and sorrows. Hopefully, I’ve done it in my own little way. Doyle does it in a big way. Between braided storylines, short sections from a omniscient narrator describe what every character is doing at one moment, and the parallels between them captures connectedness, over and over, better than I ever could.

I adore these sections. I adore the characters: Worried Man and Cedar who collect stories for the Department of Public Works, the strong women – Nora the wood carver, Grace the fisherman turned barkeep, Stella the barkeep turned farmer. I love Moses the talking crow, Daniel the bicycling boy, Owen the Irishman, Michael the cop, the doctor who smokes 13 cigarettes a day, one for each apostle including Matthias, and young Nicholas who moves away to attend college at Oregon State. Which brings me to my only criticism of the book: Nicholas should’ve been a Duck. Really, it’s a terrific book. Better than terrific. Read it.

Books, books, books

2010-09-26T15:42:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks, as I've been planning ahead for the courses I get to teach in the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program next Spring, I've felt the same anxiety I've felt since I was a kid whenever someone gave me a gift certificate to a book or record store, my favorite gift bar none. I obsess over the options and worry that I will make a poor choice. I wring my hands. I wander the aisles or keep updating my cart online. Finally I click to buy and hope for the best.

So now I get to choose not one or two books, but several. Not just for myself but for my students. Two courses: Craft of Nonfiction and Directed Readings in Contemporary Memoir. It's like the ultimate gift certificate. Should I choose forty books or eighty? The lists beside my desk on scrap paper kept accumulating. I emailed friends for advice, and then promptly ignored it. I honed the list over and over until it occurred to me, yesterday, that I had other work that probably needed doing, most notably firewood splitting and putting the garden to bed, but also teaching my current classes.

Anyway here's the final list for The Contemporary Memoir. Now that it's finalized, please let me know what you think so that I can start the inevitable regretting.

Two craft books for reference:

The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again by Sven Birkerts
Fearless Confessions by Sue William Silverman

Ten fine books:

Brother I’m Dying Edwidge Danticat
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City Nick Flynn
Lit Mary Karr
Autobiography of a Face Lucy Grealy
Somehow Form a Family Tony Earley
Boyhood J.M Coetzee
The Tender Land Kathleen Finneran
I’ve Heard the Vultures Singing Lucia Perillo
Jarhead Anthony Swofford
Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood Melissa Hart

With apologies to the many also-rans: Mark Doty, Alexandra Fuller, Judith Barrington, Michael Ondaatje, Danielle Trussoni, Frank McCourt, Maxine Hong Kingston, Thomas Merton. I don't suspect it bothers them to have missed the cut. But good lord does it bother me. Next time. Next time.

PS - For my most recent CD purchase, in spring, I was stuck between Clem Snide and Fruit Bats, nearly paralyzed for weeks. Finally, I bought both. Big splurge. No regrets. I'll take this as an omen.

Barrie Jean Borich

2010-08-07T12:12:00.000-07:00

Here in blog-land, I return this month to my project of featuring writers I admire.

Barrie Jean Borich is the author of My Lesbian Husband, winner of the American Library Association GLBT Book Award. In preparation for a visit to her class at Hamline University this spring, I picked up the book, thinking that despite the obvious similarity - we’re both lesbian nonfiction writers - our lives and work would be wildly different.

And that’s true. I’m out the boonies; she’s in the city. I’m a former trails worker; she’s an established – and gifted – college professor. I have very few gay friends; she’s part of a large community.

Turns out none of that matters. Her book struck home with me. It’s a book about lesbianism – about identity and discovery and the joys and struggles of a long-term relationship – themes to which I can certainly relate; it’s also about family, neighbors, pets, and jobs. The language is rich and inventive and honest. The narrative structure, too, takes an original course, meandering through time while staying, well, wed, to her younger brother’s wedding and the feelings it inspires. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

My Lesbian Husband is largely about Minneapolis and various neighborhoods therein, her chosen home(s). Like the best nature writing, her descriptions brought the city, a place I’d never been when I read it, to life for me. Moreover, the way she grapples with the idea of home (especially in the fine chapter “Leaving Bohemia”) helped me understand that my own feelings aren’t as tied - or limited - to wilderness as I sometimes worry.

In a more recent essay, “Geographical Solutions” in the Fall 2009 issue of Ecotone, Borich boards the Amtrak “Empire Builder” and sets up her theme:

“… all Americans, even the most put-upon among us, might have a little bit of empire building in our makeup, some desire to refind the lost parts of ourselves through locating and owning, landing somewhere and inscribing our names.”

As she travels back to Chicago, where she grew up, she discovers that “There is a retaking that comes of reseeing.” Her work has helped me “re-see” some of my own ideas. For that, I’m grateful.

You can read “Geographical Solutions” at the Ecotone website:
http://www.ecotonejournal.com/index.php/articles/details/geographical_solutions1

For more about Barrie Jean Borich and her work, visit her website:
http://www.barriejeanborich.net/

KUOW interview

2010-07-23T15:34:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I traveled over the mountains to Seattle to tape an interview with Dave Beck on the Seattle NPR affiliate KUOW. It was a great experience - despite the late June snowfall on Snoqualmie Pass - and wildly different than the live radio interviews I've done in the past. You can hear our chat about Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus live tomorrow July 24 at noon on 94.9 in Seattle or at http://www.kuow.org/. (It will also replay a couple of times mid-week.)

Or you can listen at the link below:

http://www.kuow.org/program.php?id=20888

Book Tour in Retrospect

2010-06-16T13:58:00.001-07:00

After seven weeks of readings and one intensive Flick Creek workshop, I’m home. I’ve been home, actually, for a week. Long enough to wash clothes, pay bills, weed the garden, attend one party, run occasionally, and nap often. The thing about traveling around reading from your book is the thing about traveling around doing anything: when you’re in it, you’re in it. Now finally, I can start to take stock.

Highlights were many. I got to read in front of family and friends, including many who knew my father, at UC Riverside and at the gorgeous new Rubidoux library. Who would’ve thought, when I was growing up, that someday the fanciest place I’d read would be Rubidoux? (Well, who would’ve thought I’d be out doing readings? That's the real question.) In Los Angeles, I spent a fine evening at the landmark African American bookstore Eso Won (translation: “water over rocks”) with a small but enthusiastic group of readers. Afterwards owner James Fugate, who spent some time in Tallahassee himself in the early ‘80s and had heard much about my father’s test ride, explained that the crowd surely would’ve been bigger if we weren’t competing with the Lakers. (Never thought about that: me vs. Kobe. Scary.) In San Francisco—between readings in Berkeley, at CSU East Bay, and in the Mission District—I visited the site of my dad’s old bookstore in North Beach by bike with Laurie. In Seattle, in the new basement reading room at Elliott Bay Books, I competed with frequent flushings through the exposed plumbing overhead. The reading went on, the discussion was fun, the books all sold out.

Home for two days to plant the garden in the rain: peas, cukes, greens, carrots, broccoli, cabbage, squash. Breathe. Breathe. Back on the road.

At Annie’s Pizza in Concrete, folks showed up from Darrington, Rockport, Marblemount, Sedro Woolley, and Diablo, undaunted by a cold hard rain. Over pizza and beer, trail workers and tree planters, NPS employees and pizza chefs, old timers and newcomers, shared stories of discrimination and redemption. Laurie and I stepped out into the dark around ten to a flat tire. Having no pride, I decided to call the Auto Club. We’d just gotten a new membership from my mom for Christmas, and I knew our spare was a bugger to get off, so why not? Why not? Lots of reasons. No offense to AAA or to the surly gentlemen who arrived, stripped the bolt, and left … but that was a bunch of bullshit. The spare tire was stuck, and so were we. Luckily our old friend Ned took us home at midnight to meet his new girlfriend for the first time. In the morning, we had the added pleasure of meeting Sweet Pea, the bottle-fed lamb with the purple collar. Next time Ned and Jeanne go on vacation, I hear, they’re taking Sweet Pea. And next time I’m in Concrete in a late night rainstorm with an unfixable flat, I hope Ned’s there.

In Bellingham, another crowd of trail types crowded on metal chairs then whooped it up at a local bar from sunset to last call. But the most honored guests were the youngest: nephews Ryan and Evan at their first literary event. Who knows? Maybe they’ll grow up to be writers. Or trail workers.

On to the San Juan Islands. Somehow in twenty five years in the Pacific Northwest I’d never been. Well, that was a mistake. The scenery is spectacular, the islands bucolic, the ferry rides worth every penny. In three days, we made it to all four islands that have regular ferry service. On Lopez I did a radio interview with writer Iris Graville then read at the lovely local library, the one librarian Lou Pray has “brought into the 21st century.” Until recently, Lopezians checked out books by writing their names on 3 x 5 cards. In Friday Harbor, I sat in the back room of Griffin Bay Books with three locals and a couple who had traveled from way-distant Kenmore, Washington just to attend. Together we talked over tea about civil rights and memories, writing, politics, and life. Laurie and I camped that night on Shaw with old friends.

The very last night we landed on Orcas Island. We’d planned to camp again, but it turns out we’ve gone soft. We found a hotel room and settled in and headed over to Darvill’s, yet another fabulous independent store, and afterwards sat together on driftwood, the beach to ourselves, and watched the swallows circle and dive as night fell. It was over.

There’s plenty of skepticism in the publishing world about the usefulness of a book tour. Take a peek around online and you’ll get the gist: better to have a Facebook page, better to Twitter. I suppose virtual book promotion is better if your life is already overburdened with the good wishes of critics and fans, better, too—granted—if your only concern is the bottom line. But for me, after spending five years in a room alone, more or less, rehashing some stuff that wasn’t that fun to rehash—and shaping some stuff, to be fair, that was fun to shape—going out to meet real live readers was a must, a relief, a delight.

Is it stressful? You bet. Is it tiring? Exhausting. Is it expensive? It is. But with some months of planning you can get your travel, at least, paid for by universities and libraries. In the end, you can help out a few independent bookstores and make a few connections—I came home with a stack of fine books by writers I met along the way—and, of course, you can see new places. Maybe best of all, you can see your book anew in the comments readers make, the questions they ask; often enough they find something I never knew was there. Which is how it should be. It’s not my book anymore, not really, it’s theirs. It’s yours.

Then there’s the big question. Sales? Not bad. I’ve about sold out of the first printing of Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus. That’s true. It’s also true that it was a pretty small print run. So onward I go. I oughta try to spit out a couple short essays this month, at least, to help with the bills around here. That and read a few thousand student essays. If all else fails, there’s always day labor.

Sunnyland in Spring

2010-05-04T16:40:00.000-07:00

Is there any better time to go out and about seeing new places than the spring time? I’ve been reading around the country from Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus and just can’t get over it. It’s gorgeous in Minneapolis, gorgeous in Detroit, gorgeous in California and, of course, back “home” here in Washington, for a brief laundry stop, it’s gorgeous. Everywhere there are blossoms and greenness and occasionally snow flurries to mix it up and keep you guessing.

The readings are going well. You never know quite what to expect or who will turn up. A Girl Scout troop appeared in Perris to shake my hand and talk about their favorite books. The winner by a landslide: The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Some students way up in Ely, Minnesota knew their civil rights history and were excited to delve deep into it. One young African American fellow even got to thinking he might take a minor in it as a sub-specialty. That’s pretty cool.

The next swing is all West Coast:
Thursday, May 6 at 6 pm at the University of Oregon in Eugene
Monday, May 10 at 7 pm at Eso Won Books in Los Angeles
Tuesday, May 11 at 3 pm UC Riverside
Wednesday, May 12 at 7:30 pm at Pegasus Books in Berkeley
Thursday, May 13 at 7 pm at Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco
Saturday May 15 at 2 pm at Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle

There will be a few college class visits and radio interviews along the way, too, to mix it up. Then I’ll go home for a few days, the first in six weeks, and hopefully get the garden planted. Then back out.

Test Ride continues to get some nice press.

A review from The Oregonian:
http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2010/04/nonfiction_review_test_ride_on.html

And a profile in The Riverside Press Enterprise:
http://www.pe.com/localnews/stories/PE_News_Local_W_spagna20.48cb618.html

Drop a note/comment to offer any feedback, support, or heckling. At this point, I think I’m unfazed-able.

This blog has moved

2010-04-30T21:15:00.001-07:00

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Sunnyland goes to, well, Sunnyland

2010-04-19T08:14:00.000-07:00

I had a fabulous time at Powell's on Hawthorne in Portland and at Get Lit! book festival in Spokane, Washington, and at A Book for All Seasons in Leavenworth. The spring weather - blossoms, blue sky, puffy clouds - put on a fancy show, and I got to meet and/or hang out with some fabulous writers: Diana Joseph, David Laskins, Jess Walters. Not to mention the friends who traveled a long way to listen, chat, pad the audience, cheer me on, and later eat drink and be merry!

This morning I hop on a plane to Southern California.

Readings this week are at:
CSU Channel Islands Tuesday April 20 7 p.m.
Perris Library, Wednesday April 21 6:30 p.m.
Rubidoux Library, Thursday April 22 6:30 p.m.

Looking forward to seeing some sun and some familiar faces ... some in Riverside (my home town - Perris & Rubidoux are right nearby) from way way back!

Test Ride hits the road

2010-04-08T15:56:00.000-07:00

We're getting a little April snow (snow!) in Stehekin today, and tomorrow I'm heading out to start several weeks of readings from Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus.
It'd be a delight to see you / meet you.

Next week will find me at:
Powell's on Hawthorne in Portland Monday, April 12 at 7:30 pm
The Get Lit! Festival in Spokane Friday & Saturday, April 16, 17
A Book for All Seasons in Leavenworth April 18, 1 pm - 3 pm

You can see more events on my website at:
http://www.anamariaspagna.com/events.html

Meanwhile the book has gotten some nice press.

From The Wenatchee World:
http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2010/mar/31/back-on-the-bus-ana-maria-spagna-writes-a-lost/

And an excerpt (with an excellent photo attached) in Oregon Quarterly:
http://www.oregonquarterly.com/spring2010/feature2.php

Pilgrimage

2010-02-27T15:13:00.001-08:00

I hate to admit how rarely I read a literary journal cover to cover. Pilgrimage, out of Southern Colorado, is the exception. The stories are always gripping, the writing graceful, and the perspective earnest without ever turning, you know, smarmy.

Last month I was surprised, and honored, to learn that long-time editor Peter Anderson chose one of my stories – “La Linea” – to include in the terrific anthology Telling it Real: The Best of Pilgrimage Magazine 2003-2008. When my token copy arrived in the mail, I was even more honored. There’s some great stuff in this book. If you don’t want to take my word for it, check out what the folks at Terrain.org have to say:

http://blog.terrain.org/2010/02/02/received-telling-it-real-the-best-of-pilgrimage-magazine-2003-2008/

And if you’re a writer type, consider submitting to Pilgrimage. It’s a top-notch venue:

http://www.pilgrimagepress.org/

Iris Graville

2010-02-07T17:02:00.000-08:00

Writing is a solitary art. Except when it’s not. Much as I revere Michael Ventura’s essay “The Talent of the Room,” I also know that writing is at times – sometimes at the best of times – a collaboration.

Iris Graville’s book, Hands at Work, is the perfect collaborative project. She paired with photographer Summer Moon Scriver to create 24 portraits and profiles of people who work with their hands. In it you’ll find stunning photos of a sculptor, a weaver, a car mechanic, a sign-language interpreter, a midwife, and more.

But that’s not the only collaboration at work. Iris Graville’s written profiles of the workers are thorough, respectful, understated and engaging. Why? Because in a real sense, Graville also collaborates with her subjects. On the page, she gives plenty of space to direct quotes – to the workers telling their stories in their own words – but she melds these quotes seamlessly with her own (craftily “I”-less) observation of the work. The prose is clean and tight and verb-driven, with precise attention to the objects (limestone, lug nuts, reef nets, bread dough) required to do work with your hands. She occasionally weaves in anecdotes from the subject’s past, and she focuses always on the work itself and what it means to the person doing it.

The book is flat out gorgeous, a great gift for anyone who has ever worked with her hands or admires those who do, which is pretty much all of us. And it’s won several major awards including the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association’s “Buzz Book” of 2009 and the Independent Publishers Award 2009 for Outstanding Book – Most Life Changing.

The book is inspiring. So is Iris. As a first time self-publisher she’s already mastered the art. If you ever get a chance to hear her speak on the subject of creating your own book and taking it out into the world, it’s well worth your time. In the meantime, the book speaks for itself.

http://www.handsworking.com/

Linda Cooper

2010-01-28T08:48:00.001-08:00

I’m no poet. So, despite having that master’s degree in the-language-I-learned-when-I-was-two, I’m not in any position to analyze poetry, much less to judge it. I don’t know exactly what makes poetry work, but I know what moves me. And Linda Cooper’s poetry moves me.

In her poems, familiar images from the natural world—leaves and rocks, insects and mosses, water and sky—suddenly have the capacity to startle me. Sometimes it’s the juxtaposition: the unlikely combination, the sound of this word with that. More often it’s a kind of seduction. I follow an idea where I think it’s going, then it takes a wild turn and evokes an emotion I didn’t even know was there: grief, exuberance, hope, fear, longing, emotions sometimes tumbling so fast, one after the next, that I feel off-balance. The experience is part-epiphany and part-healing, always a delight.

You can read examples in literary journals like Hayden's Ferry Review, West Branch, Third Coast, Willow Springs, Hubub, Elixir, Diner, Midwest Quarterly, and Redactions and at the links below.

http://weberstudies.weber.edu/archive/archive%20D%20Vol.%2021.2-25.2/Vol.%2022.3/Cooper%20Poe.htm

http://www.versedaily.org/2005/ponderousborer.shtml

http://www.versedaily.org/2005/vessellc.shtml

Wait! That’s not all! Linda Cooper is a nonfiction writer, too, and her essays have that same magic quality that her poems do with an extra-generous helping of her trademark humor. (Everyone I know who ever received one of Linda Cooper’s hilarious holiday letters has kept them to this day.) You can find her essays in Open Spaces: Views from the Northwest, and Concho River Review, and look for her collection, Echolocation, to appear sooner than later.

Little known fact (well, actually semi-well-known in some circles):
Linda Cooper also sings a mean karaoke version of “Dream On."

Steven Tyler beware!

David Oates

2010-01-20T11:47:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, David Oates showed up in Stehekin looking for some quiet space in which to finish up his most recent book, What We Love Will Save Us. He’d arranged to stay in a small cabin near the river, but that wasn’t to be. Mid-visit the river rose with spring snowmelt and he ended up bunking on high ground at our place for a few days while we were out of town. Upon return, I joined him as he ventured out through the muddy slough to collect the gear he’d left in the riverside cabin. Here he is on that day, testing the waters, in his hip waders.

It’s a fitting image for David’s work. His long and prolific career, as a poet and essayist, has often taken him into turbulent waters. Whether challenging wilderness philosophy in Paradise Wild or lobbying for the crucial character of urban spaces in City Limits: Walking Portland’s Boundary (to which I contributed the short essay “A View from Teensy Town”) or always – in the forefront of his work or the not-so-distant background – telling his own story of coming out as a gay man in a strict Baptist household, his voice is courageous and steady, empathetic, and original.

What We Love Will Save Us is a collection of mostly very short essays that cover all of that terrain and more, wading into the contentious politics of the last decade – war, torture, scandal, and the rest -- and coming to the conclusion of the fabulous title: What We Love Will Save Us. “Our job is to work on what we love,” he writes. “Daily. With precision and determination.”

You can check out the title essay as it appeared originally in High Country News:
www.hcn.org/issues/332/16642

And you can read more about the book here:
http://www.whatwelovewillsaveus.com/

Jerry Gabriel

2010-01-09T16:21:00.000-08:00

As promised I'm planning to spend the weeks before Test Ride appears discussing lesser-known writers I admire.

This week I start with Jerry Gabriel. His first book represents the culmination of more than ten years of work. And it paid off. Not only did Drowned Boy win the 2008 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction from Sarabande Books, the book has also been chosen a Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers" selection and is 2010 Barnes & Noble Discover Award finalist.

What I most admire about these fabulous linked stories set in rural southeast Ohio is the seamless way that landscape and longing and community combine in prose that’s honed, spare, and often, astonishingly, funny. The dialogue between the two main characters, Nate and Donnie Holland, brothers as different as day and night, is wry and affectionate, snappy and original.

In the title story, a grief-struck teenager considers geological history: “The idea that a river might change direction had captivated Samantha at a time when almost nothing sparked any real interest in her.” In “Marauders,” a whole slew of old-timers latch onto the local elementary school basketball team like rock star groupies: “We traveled like gypsies to these little towns—places called Mudsock and Comersville and just plain Water.”

You read a lot these days about a “sense of place” in writing, usually it means extra-lyrical prose about extra-pristine landscapes. (Yep, guilty as charged.) These stories evoke place plainly, and therefore elegantly. They show how places – pristine and, especially, not-so-pristine – mold us irrevocably, then shift unexpectedly. In the closing story “Reagan’s Army in Retreat,” Nate goes looking for Donnie only to stumble upon a house fire after which all that remains is a talking robot trivia game on eight track tapes stuck in the snow, a game that had once belonged to the boys. If there’s a more poignant image of loss, I can’t conjure it. And if a better book of short stories comes out this year, I’ll be surprised.

Foot dragged into the future .. uh, the now

2010-01-04T21:38:00.000-08:00

So I started a facebook fan page. http://www.facebook.com/business/dashboard/#/pages/Ana-Maria-Spagna/359334945433

And as an antidote to all this embarrassing self-promotion, starting soon, I plan to dedicate this space to some of my favorite lesser known writers. Stay tuned!

Never say never

2009-12-18T13:51:00.000-08:00

There are some topics I never figured I'd write about. Christmas is one. But things change. Here's "Christmas Naked" from the current issue of Mountain Gazette. It's not nearly as risque as it sounds. And I'm forever grateful to John Fayhee, the brilliant curmudgeonly editor at MG, who keeps throwing these unlikely topics my way.

http://www.mountaingazette.com/news/mountain_notebook/christmas_naked/

"Spawning in Mud," meanwhile, is a title that Laurie gets full credit for. An oldie of sorts, about the 2003 flood that changed things a lot in Stehekin, it appears in the current issue of Watershed journal from Brown U

Fast words, slow words

2009-12-10T07:37:00.000-08:00

For several years now, ever since we got our satellite Internet connection, I’ve been thinking about how many words I spit out each day – in emails, student critiques, press releases—and whether any of that counts as writing. The answer is sort of. But not really. It’s kind of like the difference between fast food and real food.

When my first book, Now Go Home, came out a reporter asked me how long it took me to write an essay.
“About a year,” I said.
He nearly fell over laughing.
“Is it getting any easier for you?” he asked.

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure I wanted it to get any easier. The long process of writing, revising, then writing some more, was, I thought, the whole point. Every writer I knew and admired had spent years on a single essay or story. Maybe not every single essay or story, but still …

Truth is, five years later, the process is easier for me. Essays come faster. Sometimes in less than a week. But the books I love the most simmered for a long time. And the writers I admire the most are the ones who have stuck at it for years. They’re not necessarily bestselling authors, but they are real writers, who have what Michael Ventura calls the “Talent of the Room.”

http://www.michaelventura.org/writings/LA4.pdf

That is, I suppose, what I aspire to.

Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus cover art

2009-10-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

So here's the cover for the book. The photo is from the Florida State Archives and is, actually, from the Tallahassee bus boycott. The rider whose face is most clear is Reverend C.K. Steele, the stalwart leader of the protest.

Of course, I would have loved for the cover to show an interracial pair, one black rider and one white, but that would have been far too dangerous for a photo op. In fact, in 1959, two years after my dad and his friends rode integrated, a group of student activists in Tallahassee planned another test ride. They decided that it would be safe for black riders to take seats in the front of the bus, though it happened rarely, but that white and black students riding together would only invite violence. They were right, of course. In 1961, when integrated Freedom Riders rode south on a Greyhound from Nashville, violence materialized at every turn, most famously on Mother's Day when an angry crowd in Anniston, Alabama threw gas-soaked rags through the bus windows screaming: "Fry the goddamn niggers." Most of the angry crowd, men and women, were still wearing church clothes.

One last footnote on the cover art: I heard a speaker on design this summer mention that orange is the second-worst color choice for a book cover, behind only purple. Then again orange does bring out that Sunnyland irony.

Know a good bookstore?

2009-10-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

So here's the cover copy for Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus including the generous blurbs from two of my favorite memoirists, Kathleen Finnearan and Danielle Trussoni.

The info represents my makeshift press kit as I begin to scour the landscape for places that will invite me to come read from or talk about the book next year. I'm not picky. I'll visit a school, church, library, book group. If you can think of a venue, feel free to pass this stuff on, and/or to drop me a note about my schedule.

Of course independent bookstores are the best. When Now Go Home came out I was terrified to go out reading. Me from the boonies, on leave from trail crew. What should I wear? How should I act? From the minute Laurie and I walked into the first independent bookstore, I could tell it didn't matter a whit. Independent bookstore people were my tribe. They were kind and genuine, engaged and engaging, and always appreciative if occasionally quirky. I've been dismayed lately to find how many of those great little stores (and some big ones like Black Oak Books in Berkeley) have gone out of business in five years. Yikes!

Here's the info:

http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Test-Ride-on-the-Sunnyland-Bus,674635.aspx

Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus chronicles the story of an American family against the backdrop of one of the civil rights movement’s lesser-known stories. In January 1957, Joseph Spagna and five other young men waited to board a city bus called the Sunnyland in Tallahassee, Florida. Their plan was simple but dangerous: ride the bus together—three blacks and three whites—get arrested, and take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Fifty years later Ana Maria Spagna sets off on a journey to understand what happened and why.
Her journey complicated by the fact that her father never spoke of the Sunnyland experience and died unexpectedly when she was eleven, Spagna travels from her remote mountain home in the Pacific Northwest to contemporary Tallahassee, searching for the truth of the incident and her father’s involvement. She seeks out the other bus riders, now in their seventies, and tries to make sense of their conflicting stories. Her odyssey becomes further troubled by the sudden diagnosis of her mother’s terminal cancer.
Winner of the River Teeth Literary nonfiction prize, Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus deftly weaves cultural and personal history, memoir and reportage, in this fascinating look at a family and a nation’s, past.

“Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus stands as a magnificent testament and tribute to the lives of many people— Ana Maria Spagna’s parents, the many patriots of the Civil Rights Movement, and the citizens of communities far and wide, large and small. Her surprising story renewed my awe in the interconnectedness of all of our lives and affirmed that the current championing of hope in our country is a hope deserving of all its fervor.”—Kathleen Finneran, author of The Tender Land: A Family Love Story

“Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus is an absorbing story of a daughter’s search to understand her father’s involvement in the civil rights movement. While Ana Maria Spagna’s ability to capture the nuances of her father’s life is impressive, it is the wonder and persistence she brings to her tale that make this such an engaging book. Any daughter who has puzzled over the mystery of her heritage will love Spagna from the get-go.”—Danielle Trussoni author of Falling Through the Earth

Living on Glacial Time and NAR

2009-09-16T13:23:00.000-07:00

Check out the feature about my trip to the almost-glacier in the current books/essays issue of High Country News.

http://www.hcn.org/issues/41.16/living-on-glacial-time

The process of writing/editing the piece with the help of HCN editor Jodi Peterson was wicked fast by the literary publishing standards (truly glacier-paced) I'm used to, and utterly enjoyable.

Speaking of literary publishing: I also have an essay ("Caucus") in the current issue of the venerable journal North American Review. Only problem is, it's apparently too venerable to have an active website. So, again, I hope anybody who's interested can chase down a hard copy.

The blue September sky in Stehekin is to die for. If I get my work done today -- hell, even if I don't -- I'm going windsurfing on the lake.

Whidbey Writers Workshop

2009-08-27T14:08:00.000-07:00

So I headed off for a few days to teach on Whidbey Island in their unique MFA program (http://www.writeonwhidbey.org/mfa/) and came away, frankly, blown away. The students, the teachers, the setting were all superlative. I’d expected to find serious dedicated writers, but I didn’t expect their generosity and humility and good humor. I’d expected some nice views, but I didn’t expect to get weepy from the sound of waves lapping on the sand.

Each morning I’d walk the beach from the dorms to rehearse my hour-long presentations over and over to myself—this my own hang up, my own version of OCD; I have to do it before bookstore readings, too—and I’d watch seabirds against the blue blue Sound and the green forested Olympics on the horizon. Each afternoon, I’d speak. (Phew, got that over with!) Then each evening, I’d hang out with the writers and try to soak in as much good energy as I could.

One night I got to spend some time with Jason, my old trail crew buddy, who’s working out there on historic preservation projects. When he gave me the grand tour, including sunset from a driftwood beach with seals flapping just offshore, I understood why we don’t see him on the east side as often as we used to.

Meanwhile, from in Stehekin, Laurie reported that smoke settled hard from wildfires in B.C. Mosquitoes and yellow jackets grew plentiful and cranky, and zucchinis in the garden got predictably out of hand: one per five-gallon bucket. Now I’m home, and the brush is brown and the wind is hot, and the pickup truck we barged downlake cost more to fix than I made at Whidbey, a lot more. Still, I’m thinking that if they ask me back, I’ll go. In a heartbeat.

Garden, outhouse, lightning, not-quite-a-glacier, and some books

2009-08-07T15:55:00.000-07:00

Summer is in full swing in Stehekin. The past couple weeks have included a fabulous 20-mile day hike to Pyramid Peak, a night camping at 6500’ watching lightning strike 360 degrees around us, and windsurfing with our friends, Ron and Vicki, to celebrate their brand new land purchase. (“The hard part is over,” said Ron. Ha ha.) Today alone included garden chores—harvesting way too many cukes, zukes, basil, cilantro, spinach, peas, and jalepenos and planting peas and curly cress (What is curly cress? We don’t know. Just happened to have the seeds)—picking up our weekly gallon of organic milk from our neighbors with a cow, commenting on about thirty student memoirs, then digging a new outhouse hole.

This week a new essay “The Seam” appears in Under the Sun. You can pick up a copy if you’ve got a (really) good bookstore in town. Or you can order one at the website: http://www.tntech.edu/underthesun/ Next week, a shorty about my ambivalence about being a writer called “The Dictionary Reader” will appear on the back page of High Country News (http://www.hcn.org/issues/41.14/the-dictionary-reader). Meanwhile, I weaseled my way around the fact that Jon Riedel and I didn’t make it onto the Easton glacier like we were supposed to last month. We got close, so I called the piece “Glacier’s Edge” and SueEllen Campbell graciously accepted it for her forthcoming, hugely ambitious, book The Face of the Earth.

Recent reading: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, Blindness by Jose Saramago, Lush Life by Richard Price, Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi, and Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. Next up: I Want to Take You Higher: the Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone. I can’t wait.

A couple of shorties

2009-06-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

So, whenever I'm frustrated at the keyboard - which is, of course, often enough - or inspired or frankly, in need of cash, I start work on a short essay. I love the form, how it forces you to condense your thoughts, to hoard your words, and mostly to get to the damned point. Sometimes these shorties (usually around 900 words) start out as much longer pieces, five or six times as long. Sometimes they just come out in a mad rush.

One downside to the process is that by the time I've condensed my thoughts and sent the essay off, and then, maybe, it gets published, a whole lot of time has passed. Such was the case with this one, which I wrote a year or so ago when our dear friend Wally was just beginning to seem sick. Wally died three weeks before it came out. Which is starting to seem like a disturbing pattern, since the short essay I wrote about our cat Daisy last year ended up coming out the week she died. Maybe I need to write on a lighter subject. Anyhow, if writers got to dedicate little 900 word ditties, this one would be for Wally ... and for Mike and Nancy Barnhart who took such good care of him toward the end of his life.

"Natural Comfort"

http://www.hcn.org/issues/41.10/natural-comfort?src=feat

This next one started out much longer, and the long version gives more credit where credit is due to our local volunteer fire chief, Bob Nielsen, who had the idea for the weekly work parties and who has been the driving force behind them. So this one's for Bob ... and for the regular Monday night gang.

"Just Right Here"

http://www.oregonquarterly.com/summer2009/old_oregon.php#fire

Test Ride wins River Teeth contest

2009-06-02T08:21:00.000-07:00

My book Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter's Civil Rights Journey was named 2009 winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Contest. The book will come out next year from University of Nebraska Press.

The book honors my father and others that acted courageously during the 1956 Tallahassee bus boycott and also my mother who has shown remarkable courage in her long battle with cancer. The fact that she -- along with several of the "foot soldiers" from the Tallahassee movement -- will be able to read the book is a prize in itself, one that's both humbling and gratifying.

Life after Molokai

2009-04-22T15:25:00.000-07:00

So how much writing can you pack into one week on a remote and gorgeous island in the Pacific? A whole lot, as it turns out, if you’re dedicated enough. I’m not. But the eight writers who joined me for the first annual Molokai writing workshop at Teresa Graham’s lovely home (http://www.hawaiivillamolokai.com/) buckled down at the keyboard for hours on end, and came up with some real gems. This, on top of readings, discussions, and workshops. Oh, and not to worry, there was still time for swimming, exploring the island (a little) and drinking wine (a lot!)

Now I’m back home in Stehekin, putting away skis, cutting next year’s firewood, getting ready to plant the summer garden, and trying to buckle down with my own writing (rewrites on Test Ride, a handful of new essays, that elusive young adult novel) before the busy season kicks into full swing.

Events on the horizon include the June workshop at Flick Creek, Making Stories Move, a trip to a glacier in July with geologist Jon Riedel (you can check out Jon’s glacier monitoring program at: http://www.nps.gov/noca/naturescience/glacial-mass-balance1.htm)
and three days teaching at the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA program’s fall residency http://www.writeonwhidbey.org/mfa/residencies.htm

Almost Spring

2009-02-03T16:47:00.000-08:00

The sun is out in Stehekin – big news this gray winter! – and the pace of life is beginning to pick up for Laurie and me. Laurie’s begun early season pruning in the apple orchard, and I’ve got two memoir classes going at Gotham Writers’ Workshop, as well as a daily stint with the fine young writers at the Stehekin School. This year, they each picked a town on the U.S. map blindfolded and wrote historical fiction set in that town. So I’ve been reading some very cool stories about places as diverse as Atlanta, Georgia, Council Bluffs, Iowa and Silver City, New Mexico.

Last weekend, I also had the chance to read from my new memoir Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus for about twenty five of my Stehekin neighbors at an annual event sponsored by Arts and Humanities of Stehekin. It was a much-needed confidence boost for me to have such a supportive and enthusiastic crowd show up. The icing on the cake, for all of us, was seeing tiny new snow flakes fall in the headlights as we crept back home along the lakeshore.

In writing news, the new anthology Wild Moments: Adventures with Animals of the North (University of Alaska Press) includes an essay of mine, “The Woman Who Gardens with Bears.” I also have a short memoir – a love story, no less, called “The Fall Line” – in the current (Feb. 09) issue of Mountain Gazette. Check it out if you live where you can find a hard copy. The website http://www.mountaingazette.com/ is usually about a month behind.

St. Mary's College and Real Work

2009-01-03T18:26:00.000-08:00

Greetings everyone!

It's been a busy fall/early winter. I spent November as the Artist-in-Residence at St. Mary's College Maryland. This offered me the chance to catch up with my old friend Jerry Gabriel (www.jerrygabriel.net) and his wife, poet Karen Leona Anderson. We had a great time walking along Cheasapeake Bay, seeing eagles and swans, having bonfires on the beach, and cutting and splitting firewood, East Coast-style (oak, maple, pine, gum ... gum???). I also enjoyed getting to spend time with students at St. Mary's -- young, eager, earnest writers. And the best part of the deal: I found the time more productive than I ever would have imagined, finishing up two long essays that may be the capstones to a new collection.

Here's an article from the St. Mary's student newspaper about my reading in late November: http://www.smcm.edu/pointnews/artsandentertainment/articles/issue69-6/voices-artist-redefines-home.html

After the residency, Laurie and I visited my brother in NW New Jersey and even ventured into NYC for the first time ever. We adored Brooklyn, especially the Botanic Gardens. Laurie has a new ambition to work there as a volunteer pruner. If anyone has connections, drop a line. If you have any doubts about her qualifications, you can check out this recent rant -- I mean, essay -- from High Country News: https://www.hcn.org/issues/40.21/real-work

anamariaspagna.com is up!

2008-11-06T23:22:00.000-08:00

More information coming soon.