The
Port folio Portland State University · 2013
Olivia Michelle Croom
The
Port folio Portland State University · 2013
Olivia Michelle Croom
Olivia Croom croombooks@gmail.com Set in Optima and Palatino.
Contents Philosophy............................................................................. 7 Resume.................................................................................... 9 Design Samples....................................................................... 11 Hawthorne Books............................................................. 13 Book Catalog...................................................................................14
Literary Arts. .................................................................... 23 Words Matter...................................................................................24 Holiday Card...................................................................................33 OBA Readers’ Choice Award Invitation............................................34 OBA Poster......................................................................................34 Writers in the Schools 2012 Luncheon............................................36 Advertisements................................................................................37 Postcards.........................................................................................46
Small Doggies Press. ........................................................ 49 Edie & the Low-Hung Hands............................................................50
Ooligan Press................................................................... 59 Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted........................................................60 Copyright Flowcharts.......................................................................63 The Making Of Up Nights................................................................67 Book Catalog...................................................................................68
Oregon Writers Colony. ................................................. 79 Colonygram: The Zine Issue.............................................................80
Contents · 5
Philosophy My publishing philosophy centers around creating fluid communication between departments and redirecting work focus to the overall process rather than to isolated efforts. When all departments: editorial, design, marketing, and sales, communicate openly and understand what the others are doing it nurtures a collaborative effort. For me the process always comes back to the author. As a creative writing major in college, I observed in workshops that the best way to make writers produce was ensuring that they felt safe within the workshop environment and confident that they would receive constructive feedback on their writing. This translates into the publishing process. When authors feel safe with their publishers and that their work is respected, I believe that most would be more willing to trust the process and produce better work knowing that others care about it as much as they do. In my experience, the authors who seem the happiest with their publishers receive personal attention and build not only professional relationships but friendships. I believe that a lot of the difficulties in publishing start when the relationship between the editor and author stops being a priority. I think that if publishers make the process more transparent to authors and approach them as individuals rather than just content-producers, authors would trust the process more. As the big houses consolidate and combine and become even more unwieldy and impersonal, I believe small and micro presses will thrive, fulfilling authors’ artistic needs and readers’ need for well-written stories. In my career, I want to work with small presses to design beautiful books and effective marketing so their books will reach as many readers as possible.
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Resume Education MS in Writing: Book Publishing Portland State University (March 2013) Portland, Oregon BA in English: Creative Writing Minor in Technical Communication Eastern Washington University (June 2011) Cheney, Washington
Academic Honors Graduated summa cum laude Edmund J. Yarwood Dean’s Honor Student Award (2011)
Publishing and Design Experience Literary Arts • Development & Marketing Intern (2012–2013) ºº Redesigned biannual newsletter, Words Matter ºº Designed marketing collateral and advertisements that appeared in The Willamette Week and The Oregonian for special events, the Portland Arts & Lectures 2012/2013 season, the Oregon Book Awards, and Writers in the Schools Small Doggies Press • Marketing Intern (2012–2013) ºº Designed cover and interior of Edie & the Low-Hung Hands by Brian Allen Carr (January 2013) ºº Developed media map focusing on independent bookstores Oregon Writers Colony • Designer (2012) ºº Designed the winter 2013 edition of the newsletter, Colonygram Ooligan Press • Project Manager (2012) ºº Acted as author liaison, developed production schedule, coordinated interdepartmental communication, and ensured departments met deadlines for Up Nights by Daniel Kine • Developmental Editor (2012) • Designer (2012) ºº Designed short catalogs of Ooligan Press books for inclusion in the backmatter of future titles ºº Created a cover for Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted by Frances E.W. Harper (spring 2013) • Acquisitions Editor (2011–2012) Hawthorne Books • Marketing Intern (2011) ºº Updated media map, researched and updated book awards database, prepared review copies, and designed a short book catalog of notable, current, and future titles for fall 2011 ºº Titles worked on: A Very Minor Prophet by James Bernard Frost, Aftermath by Scott Nadelson, The Luminist by David Rocklin, and The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
Resume · 9
Willow Springs Editions • Love Songs for the Quarantined by K.L. Cook, 2010 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction winner ºº Designed eBook (2012) ºº Assisted with editing and design (2011) • Member of editorial team for Gnawing on a Thin Man by Ray Amorosi (2011) • Marketing Editor (2011) Northwest Boulevard, EWU’s undergraduate literary journal • Editor-in-Chief (2010–2011) ºº Responsible for administration, design, marketing, fundraising, and event planning Willow Springs, literary journal • Editorial Assistant (2009 –2011) EWU Transfer Guide (2011) • Member of a team that wrote, edited, designed, and conducted usability testing on an instructional guide for EWU Admissions’ transfer guide, which is an online tool for students transferring from other colleges Technical Communication as Problem Solving (2010) • Member of a team that edited and gave suggestions on design for this online textbook Q2 RF Remote (2010) • Member of a team that wrote, edited, designed, and conducted usability testing on an instructional guide for remotes used during interactive presentations targeted at students in large, introductory, college classes EWU Press • Intern (2009) ºº Assisted in management of manuscripts for Spokane Prize for Short Fiction, updated Get Lit! Programs’ website, updated contact database, filled book orders, and restocked returns RefWorks (2009) • Member of a team that wrote, edited, and designed an instructional guide for RefWorks, an online bibliographic tool provided by the EWU Library, and gave a tutorial to a freshman English class Taos Summer Writers’ Conference • Intern (2007)
Volunteer Experience Get Lit! Festival, literary festival in Spokane, Washington (2009–2011)
Extracurricular Experience EWU Student Research and Creative Works Symposium (2010) • Presented a creative nonfiction essay Oxbridge Academic Programs at Oxford University, England (summer 2006) Oxbridge Academic Programs at Cambridge University, England (summer 2005)
Social Media • Facebook • Goodreads
• Google+ • LinkedIn
• Tumblr • Twitter
Personal Travel Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Wales
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Design Samples
Hawthorne Books
Book Catalog During my first term in graduate school, I started an internship in Portland with Hawthorne Books. The focus of the internship was marketing and publicity, and I observed a need for some type of updated book catalog for fall 2011. This idea happened to fit in nicely with the requirements for my final project in Kelley Dodd’s Publishing Software class. I proposed an eight-page catalog to Rhonda Hughes (Hawthorne Books’ publisher) that she could include with review copies, and she agreed. I incorporated feedback from Kelley, other students in the Publishing Software class, and Rhonda. In the catalog, I wanted to showcase the beautiful book covers designed by Adam McIsaac and give a sense of their high production quality. I used a three column spread and made the covers span two columns. To help keep Hawthorne Books present in the mind of the reader, I used the Hawthorne colors to create a border on the outside edge and bottom of each page and used the logo next to the page numbers. Set in Cochin and Dante Original size: 8.5" × 11"
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HawtHorne Books Current, noteworthy, and upComing titles
2201 NE 23rd Avenue, Third Floor Portland, Oregon 97212 phone: (503) 327-8849 www.hawthornebooks.com
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2 Current Titles in the title story, a couple testing out the waters of trial separation quickly discover how deeply the fault lines of their marriage run and how desperately they want to hang onto what remains. Mining Nadelson’s familiar territory of Jewish suburban New Jersey, these fearless, funny, and quietly moving stories explore the treacherous crossroads where disappointments meet unfulfilled desire. :: “Whether he’s describing a married couple experimenting with trial separation or a young woman dealing with her father’s cancer, Scott Nadelson writes brilliantly about the many forms of ambivalence that love can take. His characters, of all ages, are wonderfully vivid. Aftermath is a sophisticated, emotionally complicated collection with an exhilarating undercurrent of danger.”
—Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street “The former Oregon Book Award Winner’s prose is elegant in its unpretentiousness. The depth of his insight is stunning. The breadth and detail of his knowledge of the ordinary lives of men and women in widely varying walks of life is astonishing.” —Jewish review
Aftermath: Stories, Scott Nadelson, fall 2011, $16.95, 288 page text + cover with 4” double scored flaps for bookmarks, Original Paperback,ISBN:978-0-9790188-6-2.
Scott Nadelson Published September 1, 2011 The characters in Scott Nadelson’s third collection are living in the wake of momentous events—the rupture of relationships, the loss of loved ones, the dissolution of dreams, and yet they find new ways of forging on with their lives, making accommodations that are
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sometimes delusional, sometimes destructive, sometimes even healthy. In “Oslo,” a thirteen-year-old boy on a trip to Israel with his grandparents grapples with his father’s abandonment and his own rocky coming-of-age. In “The Old Uniform,” a young man left by his fiancée revisits the haunts of his single days, and on a drunken march through nighttime Brooklyn, begins to shed the false selves that have kept him from fully living. And
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cott Nadelson is the author of two previous collections, The Cantor’s Daughter, recipient of the Samuel Goldberg & Sons Fiction Prize for Emerging Jewish Writers and the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize, and Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories, winner of the Oregon Book Award for Short Fiction and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. He teaches creative writing at Willamette University and lives in Salem, Oregon.
Current Titles
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David Rocklin Published October 1, 2011 In colonial India, at a time of growing friction between the ruling British and the restless Indian populace, a Victorian woman and her young Tamil Indian servant defy convention, class, and heartbreak to investigate what is gained—and lost—by holding life still. Suggested by the life and work of photographic pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron, The Luminist filters 19th century Ceylon through the lens of an English woman, Catherine Colebrook and a 15–year–old Tamil boy, Eligius Shourie. Left fatherless by soldiers, Eligius is brought as a servant to the Colebrooks’ neglected estate. In the shadow of Catherine’s obsession to arrest beauty—to select a moment from the thousands comprising her life in Ceylon and hold it apart from mere memory—Eligius transforms into her apprentice in the creation of the first haunting photographs in history. :: “An absolute spellbinder. In Victorian-era Ceylon, amidst colonial strife and natural splendor, taboo love unfolds. Debut novelist Rocklin blends the love-and-war sweep of Dr. Zhivago with the Heart of Darkness depth of Joseph Conrad. History, art, celebratory feminism, rapturous writing and true suspense—this is a staggeringly good book.” —KirKus reviews “This book is one of those few in which an author’s specific sensibilities nourish the text, as Abraham Verghese’s multigeographic heritage and his physician’s life inform Cutting For Stone and Andrea Barrett’s fiction, from Ship Fever to Servants of the Map, owes its density and savor to the botanic and historiographic facts that beguile her. David Rocklin’s The Luminist, is a weave of legend and history, science and art, politics and domesticity that are symphonic themes in the main title, the story of an enduring and forbidden friendship.” —From the introduction by Jacquelyn mitchard, author of No Time to Wave Goodbye and The Deep End of the Ocean
The Luminist: A Novel, David Rocklin, Introduction by Jacquelyn Mitchard, fall 2011, $16.95, 322 page text + cover with 4” double scored flaps for bookmarks, Original Paperback, ISBN: 978-0-9790188-7-9.
D
avid Rocklin grew up in Chicago. He graduated from Indiana University with a BA in Literature. After attending law school, he pursued a career as an in-house attorney and continues to serve as a mediator. He lives in California with his wife and children. The Luminist is his first novel.
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4 Current Titles and son replace the earlier chaos that was her life. Lidia currently teaches, writes, and is publisher of Chiasmus Press. She is also a member of Portland, Oregon’s dynamic writing group including Chuck Palahniuk, Chelsea Cain, Cheryl Strayed, and Monica Drake. :: “I’m not sure I’ve ever had such a powerful, complex reaction to a book. The Chronology of Water is astonishingly beautiful, and, as a writer, Yuknavitch is a force. Her writing hits you, hard. It rocks you. She knocked me over with passages so brilliant, so true, I had to reread them over and over until I could bear to let them go in order to move on to the next paragraph.” —Megan Zabel, Powell’s Books “This isn’t a memoir ‘about’ addiction, abuse, or love: it’s a triumphantly unrelenting look at a life buoyed by the power of the written word.” —Publishers Weekly
L The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch, April 2011, $15.95, 310 page text + cover with 4” double scored flaps for bookmarks, Original Paperback, ISBN: 978-0-9790188-3-1.
Lidia Yuknavitch Published April 1, 2011 Introduction by New York Times Bestselling Author Chelsea Cain: This is not your mother’s memoir. Lifelong swimmer and Olympic hopeful Lidia Yuknavitch accepts a college swimming scholarship in Texas in order to escape an abusive father and an alcoholic, suicidal
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mother. After losing her scholarship to drugs and alcohol, Lidia moves to Eugene and enrolls in the University of Oregon, where she is accepted by Ken Kesey to become one of 13 graduate students who collaboratively write the novel, Caverns, with him. Drugs and alcohol continue to flow along with bisexual promiscuity and the discovery of S&M helps ease Lidia’s demons. Ultimately Lidia’s career as a writer and teacher combined with the love of her husband
idia Yuknavitch is the author of three works of short fiction: Her Other Mouths, Liberty’s Excess, and Real to Reel, as well as a book of literary criticism, Allegories of Violence. Her work has appeared in Ms., The Iowa Review, Exquisite Corpse, Another Chicago Magazine, Fiction International, Zyzzyva, and elsewhere. Her book Real to Reel was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and she is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Poets and Writers and Literary Arts, Inc. Her work appears in the anthologies Life As We Show It (City Lights), Forms At War (FC2), Wreckage of Reason (Spuyten Duyvil). She teaches writing, literature, film, and Women’s Studies in Oregon.
Noteworthy Titles
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Monica Drake Published February 1, 2007 Introduction by Chuck Palahniuk: In this darkly comic novel, Clown Girl lives in Baloneytown, a neighborhood so run down and penniless that drugs, balloon animals, and even rubber chickens contribute to the local currency. Against a backdrop of petty crime, Clown Girl struggles to find her place in the world of high art; she has dreams of greatness and calls on the masters, Charlie Chaplin, Kaf ka, and da Vinci for inspiration. But all is not art in her life: in an effort to support herself and her under-employed performance-artist boyfriend, she is drawn into the world of paying jobs, and finds herself unwittingly turned into a “corporate clown,” trapped in a cycle of meaningless, high paid gigs which veer dangerously close, then closer to prostitution. Using the lens of clown life to illuminate a struggle between artistic integrity and an economic reality, Monica Drake has created a novel that embraces the high comedy of early film stars—most notably Chaplin and W.C. Fields. At the same time Drake manages to raise questions about issues of class, gender, economics and prejudice. This debut novel is an stunning blend of the bizarre, the humorous, and the gritty. The novel resists easy classification but is completely accessible to a general audience. Clown Girl won the top Eric Hoffer Award in its category and the gold medal Storyteller of the Year “Ippy” Award from the Independent Publisher Book Awards in 2008. :: “Riffing on language and revising her jokes in nervous flurries, Nita is the most endearingly teary clown since Smokey Robinson.” —EntErtainmEnt WEEkly
Clown Girl: A Novel, Monica Drake, Introduction by Chuck Palahniuk, winter 2007, $15.95, 297 page text + cover with 4” double scored flaps for bookmarks, Original Paperback, ISBN: 0-9766311-5-6.
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onica Drake has an MFA from the University of Arizona and teaches at the Pacific NW College of Art. She is a contributor of reviews and articles to The Oregonian, The Stranger, and The Portland Mercury, and her fiction has appeared in the Beloit Fiction Review, Threepenny Review, The Insomniac Reader, and others. She has been the recipient of an Arizona Commission on the Arts Award, the Alligator Juniper Prize in Fiction, a Millay Colony Fellowship, and was a Tennessee Williams scholar at Sewanee Writers Workshop.
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6 Noteworthy Titles
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rank Meeink works as director of fan development for the Iowa Chops hockey team. He has been on the national lecture circuit for nearly a decade, speaking to various groups on the topic of racial diversity and acceptance. This is his first book.
Co-Author Jody M. Roy, Ph.D. has been studying hatred within American culture, including hategroups and hate-gangs, for the past twenty years. In addition to her work as Professor of Communication and Assistant Dean of Faculty at Ripon College, Jody serves on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Students Against Violence Everywhere. Her publications include Love to Hate: America’s Obsession with Hatred and Violence (Columbia University Press, 2002).
Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead, The Frank Meeink Story as told to Jody M. Roy, Ph.D., spring 2010, $15.95, 352 page text + cover with 4” double scored flaps for bookmarks, Original Paperback, ISBN: 978-0-9790188-2-4.
Frank Meeink and Jody M. Roy, Ph.D. Published March 1, 2010 Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead is Frank Meeink’s raw telling of his descent into America’s Nazi underground and his ultimate triumph over hatred and addiction. Frank’s violent childhood in South Philadelphia primed him to hate. He made
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easy prey for a small group of skinhead gang recruiters led by his older cousin. At fourteen, he shaved his head. By sixteen, Frank was one of the most notorious skinhead gang leaders on the East Coast. By eighteen, he was doing hard time in an Illinois prison. Behind bars, Frank began to question his hatred, thanks in large part to his AfricanAmerican teammates on a prison football league. Shortly after being paroled, Frank defected from the white supremacy movement. The Oklahoma City bombing inspired
him to try to stop the hatred he once had felt. He began speaking on behalf of the AntiDefamation League and appeared on MTV and other national networks in his efforts to stop the hate.:: “Fearless, enduring story of human fragility and strength.” —KirKus reviews “Where does hate come from? Frank Meeink’s searing memoir provides some precious clues…You’ll see how easily he recruits angry, confused teenagers to his cause. But you’ll also learn what it takes to pull people off this path and prevent others from ever walking it.” —utne reader As featured on WHYY’s Fresh Air, WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show and the History Channel’s Gangland.
Upcoming Titles
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James Bernard Frost Due April 1, 2012 A Very Minor Prophet is the story of how Barth Flynn, a barista swimming upstream against purposelessness in Portland, Oregon, becomes the faithful scribe of Joseph Patrick Booker. Booker is a dwarf preacher who serves Voodoo donuts, Stumptown coffee, and, while his congregation throws PBR cans at him, rants about George W. Bush during the height of the 2004 presidential election. Barth’s Portland is a world of bikes, zines, and cheap beer, but it’s also a confined world, full of the desperate search to find meaning. In this lonely setting, Barth passes time learning trivial details, like the dozens of Gaelic words for rain. During Barth’s quest for human connection, he meets the passionate Booker, who sees light in the gray world and strives to help people think and believe in something and to find connections with each other. Barth’s fascination with Booker becomes a friendship that comes to define his life, as he discovers himself, his city, and his budding feelings for an enigmatic bike messenger who helps distribute Booker’s gospel in the form of zines. A Very Minor Prophet is a comic novel, a gospel, an ode to great coffee, a story of great friendship, great love, and of a man waking up in Portland, Oregon, to realize his life and his story is just beginning. :: “To date only Gus Van Sant has depicted the grim, dim, greasy, cramped world of Portland, Oregon. Now James Bernard Frost has given us the best novel, ever, about this strange underground world of misfits and heroes.” —ChuCk Palahniuk, author of Tell-All “Bucking a headwind of despair, Frost pedals his verbal bicycle into the belly of the Beast, only to return bearing a brandnew Gospel illuminated with Voodoo cream and composed in the edgy vernacular of Portland’s thriving freak scene.” —Tom Robbins, author of Villa Incognito “With all the poetry and skill of a deranged art collector, James Bernard Frost
A Very Minor Prophet: A Novel, James Bernard Frost, April 2012, $18.95, 8.5 x 11, 200 page text + cover with 4” double scored flaps for bookmarks, Original Paperback, ISBN: 978-0-9833049-8-2.
has thrown the zine scene, bumper sticker theocracy, bicycle pirates, and hipster love into a coffee grinder of awesome.” —G. XavieR RobillaRd author of Captain Freedom: A Superhero’s Quest for Truth, Justice, and the Celebrity He So Richly Deserves
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ames Bernard Frost is the author of the novel World Leader Pretend, and the award-winning travel guide The Artichoke Trail. His fiction and non-fiction has been published in many places, including the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and Wired. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with the author Kerry Cohen, their four children, the rain, the freaks, and the trees. His bike is currently in disrepair.
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For further information please contact Rhonda Hughes at rhughes@hawthornebooks.com. Hawthorne Books is distributed by PGW. (800) 788-3123 | www.pgw.com 2201 NE 23rd Avenue, Third Floor Portland, Oregon 97212 phone: (503) 327-8849 www.hawthornebooks.com Book design by Adam McIsaac
Catalog design by Olivia Croom
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Literary Arts
Words Matter In April 2012, I started a Marketing & Development internship with Literary Arts. My first major design project was redesigning their biannual newsletter. On this project Evan Schneider, Communications Manager, Development Associate, and my supervisor, and I established guidelines for future marketing collateral, including typefaces, colors, and image placement. The biggest challenge with this project was the centerfold, a 17" × 11" spread that could be removed from the newsletter and become a poster. I used a four column spread, and after making the color-coding consistent and placing the images, I needed to make the columns bottom out and ensure that articles that spread across multiple columns broke off in logical places. What made this so challenging was that the newsletter was going through stages of editing during the design process, and the slightest change in the first or second column would ripple all the way to the fourth. This was the first time Literary Arts had done the newsletter in-house. Set in Rockwell, Palatino, and Gill Sans Original size: 8.5" × 11.5"
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FALL 2012
MATTER Literary Life Beyond the Classroom by Hunt Holman
Like many of the adolescents we serve,
Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools (WITS) program is changing rapidly. Our core residency program, begun in 1996 at Grant High School, continues to provide Portland public high school students with semester-long workshops taught by professional writers. Poets, playwrights, journalists, fiction writers, memoirists, and graphic novelists help students refine their skills in the fundamentals of the writing process: composing, revising, editing, and publication. Each residency culminates in a celebratory reading at a neighborhood bookstore or café, and many students are published in the annual WITS anthology. While this program remains the foundation of WITS’ engagement with our public schools, lately we have added some new tools to the kit. One flourishing program is the partnership between Multnomah County
Legendary broadcaster Tom Brokaw meets with students at the Literary Arts events space.
Library, the Library Foundation, and Literary Arts to present the Everybody Reads author at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in March. Over the past two years, nearly 1,900 students from throughout Multnomah County have received free tickets for the Wes Moore and Heidi W. Durrow lectures, as well as free copies of the Everybody Reads books, and transportation to the Schnitzer. Another successful initiative is Students to the Schnitz, which is helping teens become a regular presence throughout our Portland Arts & Lectures season. This year Literary Arts donors will give school groups 100 free tickets, free books by the respective authors, and transportation to each Arts & Lectures event. To help teens connect strong writing and creative thinking with success in the real world, we also coordinate school visits by many of our Portland Arts & Lectures authors. Last year, for example, Tom Brokaw, Abraham Verghese, and Chimamanda Adichie met with students. When nationally recognized storytelling troupe The Moth arrives next February, they will lead a schoolbased MothSHOP at Franklin High School, as they have in years past at Marshall and Benson High Schools. This weeklong intensive concludes with
Connect with Literary Arts online! » » » »
Visit literary-arts.org Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/literaryarts Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/literaryarts Get news about Oregon writers and readers: paperfort.blogspot.com
WITS Fundraiser Join us on Tuesday, October 16 at Bluehour restaurant for the annual WITS fundraiser. We will enjoy delicious food, great wine, and hear firsthand from the teens, teachers, and principals who are most affected by the Writers in the Schools program. This inspiring event celebrates student possibility and achievement. If you’d like to be involved, please contact Lydah DeBin at 503.227.2583 x106 or lydah@literary-arts.org.
students telling true stories of their own experience to an audience of their peers. WITS also offers one-day college writing workshops at three high-need schools, pairing volunteer writing mentors with 90 students to help them develop their college admission and scholarship application essays. Last year, audiences packed the 300seat Mission Theater for the first-ever continued on page 6
Words from the Director › 2 The Delve Experience › 3 Calendar of Events › 4 – 5 @LiteraryArts Begins › 6
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Words from the Director If you subscribe to Portland Arts & Lectures, there’s a moment I want you to seek out. Arrive in the lobby a little early for one of our presentations and head up to the balcony that overlooks the grand lobby of the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. At first you will observe loyal subscribers arriving to pick up tickets, meeting their friends, or having a drink at the bar. What happens next does not belong to our past, but to our present and our future. One hundred high school students will arrive. They will pour into the lobby and bring a colorful burst of energy. Many of them will look up into the high vault of that ceiling for the first time. By the end of the evening, those students will have heard an author of international renown speak about their life and work, and will have observed you, our large and engaged audience. Some of them will realize this very grand concert hall belongs to them, too. Reading and writing are not simply school activities, but values that people carry throughout their lives. But Portland Arts & Lectures and special events are just one of the ways Literary Arts serves the community. Taken together, the programs of Literary Arts reach tens of thousands of Oregonians to build and support an intergenerational community around literature. We give direct financial support to writers and bring those writers into our public school classrooms. Students are invited out of classrooms and into the concert hall. And in our new center in downtown Portland, we’re providing access to an incredible group of local writers presenting work in highly innovative ways. This year we will celebrate our finest writers at the Oregon Book Awards ceremony and crown a new crop of young poets at the second annual city-wide teen slam poetry competition, Verselandia. You will hear us on the radio statewide, and the Oregon Book Awards author tour will travel to nine towns to offer free workshops, readings, and classroom visits. So whether you are a subscriber, or a Delver, a seasoned writer or just finishing your first poem, we hope you will find something inspiring in our programming this year—something that will remind you of the incredible literary culture that is thriving in Oregon.
Literary Arts is funded in part by: Andrew Proctor, Executive Director andrew@literary-arts.org
Build community with us. Your support will help: • Send writers to teach semester-long creative writing workshops in Portland’s public high schools. Last year we reached 1,015 students in 44 different classes across the curriculum. • Support over 100 writers a year with awards and employment, and send writers on an author tour across Oregon. • Hold over 135 literary events statewide. • Reach a total audience of over 10,000 plus tens of thousands of additional people through radio broadcasts and poems posted on TriMet buses. Contributions from individuals and businesses make up 60% of our operating budget.
Give today! Donation envelope enclosed
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MATTER
The Delve Experience by Caroline Petrich recently who waved at me and, seeing my confusion, called out, “Ulysses!” Ah, yes, that Delve—nice to see you, friend! Who knows who else I’ll meet in future seminars, traversing the world of the three Brontë sisters, getting lost in Samuel Beckett’s fiction, or wandering around William Faulkner’s fertile Southland.n
Upcoming Delves Works of Octavio Paz
I must confess: I’ve taken fourteen
Delve Readers’ Seminars, so I’m a bit unabashed in my enthusiasm for them. These unique and accessible seminars offer a satisfying complement to Portland Arts & Lectures, which has introduced me to many amazing living authors. It’s Delve, though, that brings legendary works to life. I relish discovering that they have something to say to me now, not to mention taking me on such memorable adventures: stepping gingerly on deck around Captain Ahab, touring Hell with Dante, spending a summer day with Leopold Bloom, and storming the Bastille with Madame DeFarge—and all in the company of fellow readers, many of whom are now friends. Literary Arts started Delve in 2005. The small seminars allow participants to study celebrated literary works unpinned and outside of the scholarly glass case. Books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin or The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass, placed within the context of the early 21st century, take on an especially potent resonance. Consider Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, which compelled my fellow Delvers and me to feel the experience of combat and how it impacts all of society, whether the theater is in Japan or Afghanistan in the War on Terror.
Delvers Carl Wilson, Lois Leveen, and Stella Voreas
Delve participants digest texts slowly through six two-hour seminars held weekly, being led by a local literary scholar who guides the discussions beyond stale review. Because of this, Delve welcomes an audience diverse in age, profession, and familiarity of literary works. What participants share is a curiosity to know more and a desire to read deeply, which inspires a rich exploration of—take your pick—novels, essays, plays, and poetry from the legendary greats like Homer and Milton to the modern brilliance of Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace. Occasionally I’ll see someone I think I know, like the guy at the theater
Literary Arts pairs with AHA! Literary Arts is excited and proud to welcome AHA! as our creative communications agency partner. On behalf of our community of writers, readers, subscribers, and donors, many thanks to Betsy Henning and the entire AHA! team.
Octavio Paz was a writer, poet, diplomat, and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1990. He was a profound, thoughtful, and brilliant intellectual who led and defined the literature and cultural scenes of Mexico. Mondays, Sept. 24 – Oct. 29 6:30–8:30pm, $185
The Poisonwood Bible
We’ll explore the richness and depth of themes of Kingsolver’s most famous novel, including colonization, religious fervor, and the complications of family dynamic. Thursdays, Nov. 1–15, 6:30–8:30pm, $100
The Beckett Trilogy
Most people know Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett for his plays, Waiting for Godot to name one, but Beckett considered himself a novelist first. The Irishman is well-known for stripping the narrative form to its bare bones. Mondays, Nov. 5 – Dec. 10 6:30–8:30pm, $185
William Faulkner
In reading The Sound and the Fury alongside The Unvanquished, we’ll see Faulkner at his most and least experimental. Though both novels are set in his imagined Yoknapatawpha County, aesthetically they seem worlds apart. Tuesdays, Nov.13–Dec. 18 6:30–8:30pm, $185
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Sept. 13 — The American Short Story
Sunday, September 9, 2012 at 7:00pm Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Sept. 9 — Ira Glass: Reinventing Radio Ira Glass is the host and creator of the public radio program This American Life. Under Glass’s editorial direction, This American Life has won the highest honors for broadcasting and journalistic excellence, including several Peabody and DuPont-Columbia awards.
Saturdays, September 8 – 29, 2012 10:00am – 12:00pm Contact Susan Denning with questions susan@literary-arts.org or 503.227.2583 x107
In this intensive, four-week workshop, students will read and discuss their worksin-progress; it is these texts that will be the primary focus of our time together. Class size limited to nine. Registration by invite only.
Sept. 8–29 — Advanced Fiction Class with Emily Chenoweth
Wednesdays, September 5 – October 24, 2012 6:30 – 8:30pm at Literary Arts
Between 1960 and 1990, John Updike wrote four novels about Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom that, read together, offer readers not only one character’s experience of 20th-century America, but also an overview of the career of one of America’s most significant writers.
Sept. 5 — John Updike: The “Rabbit” Series (Delve Seminar)
Events are added regularly. For complete and updated information visit www.literary-arts.org
Thursdays, November 1 – November
We’ll explore the richness and depth of themes of Kingsolver’s most famous novel, including colonization, religious fervor, and the complications of family dynamics.
Nov. 1 — The Poisonwood Bible (Delve Seminar)
Nov. 2012 — Writers in the Schools college essay writing workshops at Portland high schools
Friday, October 19, 2012 7:00pm Bagdad Theater
Powell’s Books and Literary Arts present David Byrne, author of How Music Works, in conversation with Portlandia writer and star Carrie Brownstein.
Oct. 19 — David Byrne
Tuesday, October 16, 2012, 11:30am Bluehour — 250 NW 13th Avenue Call Lydah at 503.227.2583 x106 if you would like to attend or host a table.
Each year, Literary Arts publishes an annual anthology of poems, prose, comics, and drama written by WITS students. In celebration of this year’s release, writers and students will share stories with new and longtime donors to raise funds in support of the WITS program.
Oct. 16 — Writers in the Schools Luncheon Fundraiser
Thursday, October 11, 2012 at 7:30pm Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
writer at the New Yorker and the bestselling author of The Nine and The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court. Toobin is also a senior legal analyst at CNN.
We will explore three of the most influen-
Jan. 15 — Contemporary Israeli Narrative: Oz, Yehoshua & Keret (Delve Seminar)
Thursday, January 10, 2013 at 7:30pm Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Portland Arts & Lectures continues with Jonathan Franzen, whose books include The Corrections, Freedom, How to Be Alone, and the memoir The Discomfort Zone. A new essay collection, Farther Away, will appear in April 2012. Freedom won the 2011 John Gardner Prize for fiction and the Heartland Prize.
Jan. 10 — Jonathan Franzen
Finalists and Fellowships Recipients will be listed at www.literary-arts.org
The Oregon Book Awards honor outstanding books by Oregon authors. Oregon Literary Fellowships provide financial support to writers and independent publishers as they initiate, complete, and develop literary projects.
Jan. 2013 — Oregon Book Awards Finalists and Oregon Literary Fellowships Recipients Announced
Tuesday, December 4, 2012 at 7:30pm at Powell’s Books — Free and open to the public
Student Anthology. Each year, Literary Arts publishes an anthology of poems, prose, comics, and drama written by WITS students.
Monday, April 8, 2013 at 5:30pm
Each year, Literary Arts hosts a dinner to celebrate the accomplishments of Oregon’s literary community. In celebration of this year’s awards, writers will read and share testimonies with donors to raise general funds in support of the OBAs. More information at www.literary-arts.org
Apr. 8 — Oregon Book Awards Fundraising Dinner
March 12, 2013 at 7:30pm Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
In partnership with Multnomah County Library and the Library Foundation, Literary Arts is pleased to host Sherman Alexie, whose books The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Ten Little Indians are the 2013 community reading project.
Mar. 12 — Everybody Reads: Sherman Alexie
Tuesday, March 5, 2013 at 7:30pm Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Portland Arts & Lectures continues with Stephen Greenblatt, who recently won both the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. He is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard and is generally considered the preeminent Shakespeare scholar in the United States today.
March 5 — Stephen Greenblatt
The Oregon Book Awards Author Tour brings finalists to bookstores, libraries, and art centers in towns throughout Oregon for readings, workshops, and conversation. We hope to see you at one of our tour readings. More information at www.literary-arts.org
Feb.– May 2013: Oregon Book Awards Author Tour
Portland Arts & Lectures season launches with Jeffrey Toobin, a staff
Oct. 11 Jeffrey Toobin
Professional writers will teach semester-long creative writing workshops at Benson, Cleveland, Madison, and Wilson High Schools. Workshops culminate in public readings at bookstores and cafés throughout Portland.
Oct. 2012 — Writers in the Schools Fall Residencies Begin
Mondays, September 24 – October 29, 2012 6:30 – 8:30pm at Literary Arts
Octavio Paz was a writer, poet, diplomat, and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1990. He was a profound, thoughtful, and brilliant intellectual who led and defined the literature and cultural scenes of Mexico.
Sept. 24 — The Works of Octavio Paz (Delve Seminar)
Thursday, September 20, 2012 at 7:30pm Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall Tickets available at Ticketmaster
Mark Bittman is one of America’s best-known and most widely respected food writers. He is also a regular on the Today Show and he has authored more than a dozen cookbooks.
Sept. 20 Mark Bittman: The Future of Food
Thursdays, September 13 – October 18, 2012 6:30–8:30pm at PCS
This Delve seminar will look into some of the foundational texts of American consciousness—the stories so familiar that they have become our myths—and ask what, if anything, we can take away from them today.
(Delve Seminar)
Join us for a celebratory reading of student work published in our 2011–12
Dec. 4, 2012 — Writers in the Schools Anthology Release Party at Powell’s Books
Friday, November 16, 2012 at 7:30pm Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Portland Arts & Lectures continues with Barbara Kingsolver, whose novels include The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, The Bean Trees, and The Lacuna. Her nonfiction includes the influential bestseller Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. Kingsolver will be in conversation with Literary Arts’ Executive Director, Andrew Proctor.
Nov 16 — Barbara Kingsolver
Tuesdays, November 13 – December 18, 2012 6:30 – 8:30pm at Literary Arts
In reading The Sound and the Fury alongside The Unvanquished, we’ll see Faulkner at his most and least experimental. Though both novels are set in his imagined Yoknapatawpha County, aesthetically they seem worlds apart.
Nov. 13 — William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury & The Unvanquished (Delve Seminar)
Mondays, November 5 – December 10, 2012 6:30 – 8:30pm at Literary Arts
Most people know Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett for his plays, Waiting for Godot to name one, but Beckett considered himself a novelist first. The Irishman is wellknown for stripping the narrative form to its bare bones.
Nov. 5 — The Beckett Trilogy (Delve Seminar)
15, 2012 6:30 – 8:30pm at PCS
Tuesday, February 7, 2013 at 7:30pm Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Imagine only having ten minutes to tell your life story. Back by popular demand, The Moth returns to Portland. This storytelling troupe sells out quickly so get your tickets early and experience one of America’s favorite podcasts in person. More information at www.literary-arts.org
Feb. 5 — The Moth in Portland
Professional writers will teach semester-long creative writing workshops at Alliance, Grant, Lincoln, MLC, Open Meadow, and Roosevelt High Schools. Workshops culminate in public readings at bookstores and cafés throughout Portland.
Feb. 2013 — Writers in the Schools Spring Residencies Begin
Wednesdays, January 23 – February 27, 2013 6:30 – 8:30pm at Literary Arts
Irish theatre experienced a renaissance with the founding of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1904. We will explore plays by John Millington Synge and Sean O’Casey, and contemporary playwrights such as Brian Friel, Conor McPherson, and Marina Carr.
Jan. 23 — Irish Theatre (Delve Seminar)
Mondays, January 21 – February 25, 2013 6:30 – 8:30pm at Literary Arts
This Delve will explore Dickens’s complex world beset with money, obsession, social climbing, and murder along with love, charity, and compassion. Our Mutual Friend is a unique mirror that Dickens holds, reflecting his times as well as ours.
Jan. 21 — Charles Dickens: Our Mutual Friend (Delve Seminar)
Tuesdays, January 15 – February 19, 2013 6:30 – 8:30pm at Literary Arts
tial contemporary authors in Israel today including Amos Oz’s The Same Sea and A.B. Yehoshua’s Mr. Mani and Keret’s short stories from The Nimrod Flipout.
Applications and information at www.literary-arts.org
Oregon Book Awards are presented annually for the finest accomplishments by Oregon writers.
Aug. 30 — Oregon Book Awards 2014 Submission Deadline
Applications and information at www.literary-arts.org
June 28 — Oregon Literary Fellowships Application Deadline Oregon Literary Fellowships help Oregon writers and publishers initiate, develop, or complete literary projects.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013 at 5:00pm Wonder Ballroom
The second annual Verselandia! is a city -wide, all high school poetry slam presented by Literary Arts and hosted by PPS high school library media specialists.
Apr. 30 — Verselandia!
Tuesday, April 23, 2013 at 7:30pm Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Portland Arts & Lectures continues with Nikky Finney, who won the National Book Award for her most recent book of poetry, Head Off & Split. Her other books include The World Is Round, Rice and On Wings Made of Gauze. She is Professor of English and creative writing at the University of Kentucky.
Apr. 23 Nikky Finney
Monday, April 8, 2013 at 7:30pm Gerding Theater
Join us as we honor some of Oregon’s best writers and celebrate our 26th Annual Award Ceremony. More information at www.literary-arts.org
Apr. 8 — Oregon Book Awards 26th Annual Ceremony
Programming Begins @LiteraryArts Last September, Literary Arts moved into a
newly renovated storefront center in downtown Portland. In line with our mission, one of our main goals in relocating was to more fully engage the literary community and reach new audiences. Now that the dust has settled (both figuratively and literally), we’re happy to report that this September we’ll begin several new partnerships with other organizations, bringing unique and exciting opportunities for participation among readers, writers, and a diversity of literary talent. With the plethora of literary goings-on in Portland, Literary Arts wanted to help elevate and showcase the abundance of great work being done by so many reading series and programs across the city. Such outreach and connectivity has already had fantastic results. Last month, Paul Martone of Late Night Library interviewed Rob Spillman, an editor at Tin House Books, at the Literary Arts space, and then broadcast it online as part of the Late Night Library podcast. With a number of artistic organizations, bookstores, and art galleries near Literary Arts in Portland’s West End district, we plan to host partnership programming
throughout the fall; several of the events will coincide with First Thursdays, and all are free and open to the public. Along with another reading and recording by Late Night Library this December, Literary Arts will also present Literary Mixtape, Small Doggies, and Loggernaut. We’ll also open our doors in September for a publication release party for Oregon Literary Fellowship-winner basalt literary magazine. Jeffrey Levine of Tupelo Press, the judge for publishers fellowships last year, said, “basalt is doing gorgeous and exciting work.” The event will feature readings from the new issue’s contributors, including Greg Chaimov, Michael McGriff, Jenny Root, Ingrid Wendt, and others. In addition, we have begun to offer classes taught by Oregon Book Awards authors. This fall, Emily Chenoweth, author of Hello Goodbye, will hold an advanced fiction-writing workshop and Oregon Book Award-winning poet Carl Adamshick will teach an advanced poetry class called “Building Your Book.” These new classes at the center are limited to nine students, and registration is by permission only. More classes will be offered this winter.
Organizations interested in partnering with Literary Arts, or writers interested in registering for the workshops, should contact Susan Denning at susan@literary-arts, or 503.227.2583 x107.n
@LiteraryArts events Loggernaut featuring Coleman Stevenson, Carter Sickels & Dan DeWeese September 6 at 7:30pm
basalt Release Party featuring current contributors September 13 at 7:00pm
Literary Mixtape featuring Chloe Caldwell, Michael Heald & James Bernard Frost October 4 at 7:30pm
Small Doggies featuring Brian S. Ellis, Lidia Yuknavitch & Rick Klaras November 8 at 7:30pm
Late Night Library featuring Kara Candito & Dan DeWeese December 6 at 7:30pm
continued from page 1
Literary Life Beyond the Classroom
6
The 2011–2012 WITS student anthology (cover design by AHA!) will be released this fall.
30 · The Portfolio
Verselandia!, a district-wide poetry slam made possible through a collaboration with Portland Public Schools high school librarians and Literary Arts. Students at each school competed and three finalists from each school came together to compete at the Mission for prizes including iPads, gift cards from The North Face, and the roaring cheers of the crowd. Verselandia! was marred by one really awesome flaw: there were not anywhere near enough tickets to meet community demand. This year, as Roy Scheider’s character said in Jaws, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” and we’re thankful for the support of
Portland Monthly, Dan Wieden, and Wieden+Kennedy. Alongside these new ways to serve youth, WITS remains grounded in classrooms, partnering with high school teachers across the disciplines to offer semester-long workshops that deepen, amplify, and extend existing curriculum for writing. Literary Arts is grateful to host a uniquely vital branch of the national conversation that is our literature. The diversity of our programming helps us welcome young people into that conversation, and prepares them (and us) for the day they will lead it.n
MATTER
We thank our event sponsors Literary Arts Board Susheela Jayapal, Chair
Baker Ellis asset management llc
Betsy Amster Rick Comandich Tracy Daugherty Rebecca DeCesaro Robert Geddes Pamela Smith Hill Kurt Hutton Frank Langfitt
Phillip Margolin John Meadows Jessica Mozeico-Blair Jim Reinhart Barry Sanders Jacqueline Willingham Thomas Wood
POWERING
Strunk & White Society
An honorary society of distinguished advisors
Gwyneth Booth Bart Eberwein Brian Gard Diana Gerding Molly Gloss Ursula K. Le Guin Barry Lopez Carrie Hoops
Julie Mancini Brenda Meltebeke Diane Ponti Michael Powell Halle Sadle Steven Paul Taylor Steve Wynne
Oregon Book Awards & Fellowship Advisory Committee Tracy Daugherty, Co-Chair Pamela Smith Hill, Co-Chair Katie Anderson Nancy Boutin Karyle Butcher Julie Dixon
Cecelia Huntington Linda Leslie Michael McGregor Barry Sanders
Portland Arts & Lectures Patron Advisory Council Susan Hathaway-Marxer, Co-Chair Jessica Mozeico-Blair, Co-Chair Seth Alley Liana Colombo Rebecca DeCesaro Sue Einowski Ann Emmerson Nancy Gronowski Kristi Wallace Knight Deidra Miner
Steven Neighorn Jan Oliva Nancy Ponzi James Reinhart Reuben Rich Grace Sanders Roslyn Sutherland
Staff Andrew Proctor, Executive Director Jenny Chu Lydah DeBin Susan Denning Jennifer Fejta
Marshall Miller Mary Rechner Evan P. Schneider Mel Wells
Newsletter design by Olivia Croom
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Literary Arts · 31
NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION US POSTAGE
PAID
PORTLAND, OR PERMIT NO.1652
MATTER
Contact Us:
Phone: 503.227.2583 • www.literary-arts.org Write or visit: 925 SW Washington St, Portland, OR 97205
Our mission is to engage readers, support writers and inspire the next generation with great literature. Oregonians are passionate about books. And ideas, and great writing. Literary Arts shares this passion.
32 · The Portfolio
The programs of
Literary Arts Portland Arts & Lectures brings the world’s most celebrated writers, artists and thinkers to our community. In addition to live events that are broadcast statewide on OPB Radio, the program connects readers and writers of all ages with classroom visits and workshops.
Writers in the Schools hires professional writers to teach in Portland’s public high schools for semester-long residencies that span the curriculum, reaching 2,800 students each year. Students share their work at community readings across the city, online and in print anthologies.
Oregon Book Awards & Fellowships celebrates Oregon’s
writers. The program promotes Oregon’s literature and provides financial support to writers and independent publishers. The Oregon Book Awards Author Tour connects writers and readers throughout the state with readings, workshops and school visits.
Delve: Readers’ Seminars offers the opportunity to explore great
books with an experienced guide in the company of other dedicated readers. Seminars are lively, in-depth discussions led by local scholars.
Holiday Card 2012 holiday card Original size: 7" × 5"
Our mission is to engage readers, support writers, and inspire the next generation with great literature.
Portland Arts & Lectures brings the world’s most celebrated writers, artists, and thinkers to our community. In addition to live events that are broadcast statewide on OPB radio, the program connects readers and writers of all ages with classroom visits and workshops. Writers in the Schools hires professional writers to teach in Portland high schools for semesterlong residencies that span the curriculum, reaching 2,800 students each year. Students share their work at community readings across the city, online, and in print anthologies. Oregon Book Awards & Fellowships celebrates Oregon’s writers. The program promotes Oregon’s literature and provides financial support to writers and independent publishers. The Oregon Book Awards Author Tour connects writers and readers throughout the state with readings, workshops, and school visits. Delve: Readers’ Seminars offers the opportunity to explore great books with an experienced guide in the company of other dedicated readers. Seminars are lively, in-depth discussions led by local scholars.
www.literary-arts.org
Literary Arts · 33
(left) Oregon Book Awards Readers’ Choice Award Invitation To advertise the opening of the voting for the 2013 Oregon Book Awards Readers’ Choice Awards, I designed this insert that doubles as a bookmark for the Portland Arts & Lectures Jonathan Franzen event program. In keeping with the established guidelines, headers and important information are set in Rockwell and the body text is set in Gill Sans with the appropriate Literary Arts logo, in this case the Oregon Book Awards seal, which Evan Schneider and I designed based on previous years’ seals, at the top and the sponsor logo at the bottom.
Literary Arts & The Oregonian
Actual size (2.75" × 8.5")
invite you to cast your vote!
Readers’ Choice Award The 2013 Oregon Book Awards finalists have been announced. Read their work and cast your vote for your favorite book.The finalist with the most votes will be awarded the Readers’ Choice Award at the Oregon Book Awards Ceremony. Cast your vote online at: oregonlive.com/books Oregon Book Awards Ceremony Monday, April 8, 2013 7:30pm
Gerding Theater at the Armory Tickets at BrownPaperTickets.com
POWERING
(right) Oregon Book Awards Poster This poster commemorated the 2012 annual donors’ dinner. I used a selection of the 2012 Oregon Book Awards finalists’ covers including the The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch, the 2012 Readers’ Choice Award winner. Original size: 24" × 18"
34 · The Portfolio
Literary Arts · 35
Writers in the Schools 2012 Luncheon
Literary Arts requests the pleasure of your company at a luncheon to be held at Bluehour Restaurant on October the sixteenth at noon for the benefit of the Writers in the Schools program R.S.V.P. to Lydah DeBin 503.227.2583 or lydah@literary-arts.org
(above) Invitation to the WITS annual fundraising luncheon. Original size: 6.25" × 4.625" (below) A poem from the Writers in the Schools’ annual student anthology that was given to each guest at the WITS annual fundraising luncheon. Actual size (2.5" × 2.5") (front) (back)
Una Canción y Cuchicheo La playa
Las montañas
El mar canta la canción del verano
La nieve cuchichea el sonido del invierno
A Song and a Whisper The beach
The mountains
The ocean sings the song of summer
The snow whispers the sounds of winter
Elissa GonzalEs, Wilson HiGH scHool
36 · The Portfolio
Writers in the Schools (WITS) employs professional writers to teach semester-long writing residencies in Portland’s public high schools. In addition to getting students excited about reading and writing, WITS provides professional development for teachers, visits with world famous authors, and books, tickets and transportation for high school groups to attend Portland Arts & Lectures.
www.literary-arts.org
Advertisements For visual consistency, I designed the Literary Arts advertisements to match the guidelines Evan Schneider and I developed for the newsletter. Headers and important information are set in Rockwell and the body either in Palatino or Gill Sans. There is always a banner at the top with a Literary Arts logo and sponsor logos are lined up along the bottom. For color advertisements, I used the Portland Arts & Lectures colors, a specific set of greens, red, and grey.
Oregon Book Awards Ceremony April 8, 2013, 7:30 PM Gerding Theater at the Armory Tickets start at $10 available at BrownPaperTickets.com More information at literary-arts.org or at 503.227.2583
Hosted by
Elissa Schappell Advertisement that appeared in The Willamette Week in winter 2013 for the 2013 Oregon Book Awards Ceremony, hosted by Elissa Schappell Actual size (5.727" × 6.056")
Literary Arts · 37
Advertisement for Literary Arts’ special event Ira Glass: Reinventing Radio that ran in The Willamette Week during the summer of 2012 Actual size (5.727" × 6.056")
38 · The Portfolio
presents
Mark Bittman Author of Food Matters & How to Cook Everything
Thursday, September 20, 2012 at 7:30pm Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall Tickets start at $15, available at Ticketmaster More information at literary-arts.org
Advertisement for Literary Arts’ special event Mark Bittman: The Future of Food that appeared in the program for Ira Glass: Reinventing Radio Actual size (4.875" × 7.875")
Literary Arts · 39
Presenting the culminating event of the
2013 EvErybody rEads project
Sherman Alexie March 12, 2013 at 7:30pm | Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall | Tickets at PCPA.com
Thank you to our sponsors
Advertisement for Literary Arts’ special event Everybody Reads presents Sherman Alexie that appeared in The Oregonian in fall 2012 Actual size (5.175" × 5.25")
40 · The Portfolio
Presenting the culminating event of the 2013
EvErybody rEads project
March 12, 2013, 7:30 PM | Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall | Tickets at PCPA.com
Sherman
Alexie
Celebrate the power of books in creating a stronger community. Through a shared reading experience we will discuss issues that matter, learn from each other, and promote greater understanding. Get involved!
Advertisement that appeared in the Portland Arts & Lectures program for Jonathan Franzen (January 2013) Actual size (4.875" × 7.875")
Literary Arts · 41
2012 2013
November 16, 2012
Barbara Kingsolver
Jeffrey Toobin October 11, 2012
Jonathan Franzen January 10, 2013
Stephen Greenblatt March 5, 2013
Nikky Finney April 23, 2013
Subscriptions start at $75 • All events at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall • literary-arts.org
Thank you to our sponsors:
Baker Ellis asset management llc
POWERING
Jeffrey Toobin Jonathan Franzen October 11, 2012 January 10, 2013
Stephen Greenblatt Nikky Finney April 23, 2013 March 5, 2013
November 16, 2012
Barbara Kingsolver Subscribe today at literary-arts.org
Baker Ellis
POWERING
asset management llc
(above) Advertisement for the Literary Arts Portland Arts & Lectures 2012/2013 season that appeared in the program for Ira Glass: Reinventing Radio Actual size (4.875" × 3.875")
(left) Advertisement for the Literary Arts Portland Arts & Lectures 2012/2013 season that appeared in The Willamette Week’s Arts Guide for 2012 Original size: 5.727" × 9.152"
Literary Arts · 43
Thank you! Because of the support of our event sponsors, table hosts, and guests, Literary Arts is excited to report that the 2012 Writers in the Schools annual luncheon raised $50,000.
Writers in the Schools serves more than 2,800 Portland high school students by teaching writing, extending literary experiences beyond the classroom, publishing student work, and coordinating student readings throughout the city.To be involved in next year’s fundraiser, please contact Lydah DeBin at 503-2272583 x106 or lydah@literary-arts.org. Many thanks to our table hosts and event sponsors:
Ray & Jean Auel, Rick Comandich, Alice Cuprill-Comas & Brenda Meltebeke, Rebecca DeCesaro, Theodore Downes-Le Guin & Jessica Mozeico-Blair, Ann & Ron Emmerson, First Tech Federal Credit Union, Diana Gerding, Betsy Henning & Jan Oliva, Kurt Hutton, Susheela Jayapal, Amy Kohnstamm, Phillip Margolin, Pacific Northwest Law, Harold & Arlene Schnitzer Care Foundation, Jacqueline Willingham, and Thomas Wood
An informational advertisement giving the results of the 2012 Writers in the Schools annual fundraising luncheon that appeared in the Portland Arts & Lectures program for Barbara Kingsolver Actual size (4.875" × 7.875")
44 · The Portfolio
Being published is thrilling for writers of any age. Publication provides writers with validation, encouragement, and exposure to a larger audience. Each year, WITS publishes an annual anthology of exemplary student work. There is a Fire / Que hay un Fuego showcases poetry, prose, drama, and comics written by high school students from all of Portland’s public high schools in 2011-2012.
“I want to share with you my joy as I got to listen to Cleveland High School students share their writing [during a Writers in the Schools reading]…It was a great experience to sit among students, teachers, writers, and friends as we all felt the emotions that students expressed.” –Marcia Arganbright, Portland Public Schools
Join us for a celebratory reading of student work.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012 at 7:30pm at Powell’s Books. Free and open to the public. An advertisement for the 2012 Writers in the Schools’ annual student reading that appeared in the Portland Arts & Lectures program for Barbara Kingsolver. Actual size (4.875" × 7.875")
Literary Arts · 45
Postcards Since the postcards are also a form of advertising, I designed them following the same guidelines as the newspaper advertisements and newsletter. The only exception is that the sponsor logos sometimes appear on the back of the postcard.
presents
Ira Glass
September 9, 2012 at 7:00 pm Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 1037 SW Broadway
Actual size (5" × 7") (right top & right bottom) Original size: 7" × 5"
46 · The Portfolio
Presenting the culminating event of the 2013 EvErybody rEads project
March 12, 2013, 7:30 PM Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Sherman Alexie Literary Arts · 47
Oregon Book Awards Ceremony Monday, April 8, 2013 at 7:30 p.m. Gerding Theater at the Armory Hosted by Elissa Schappell Tickets available at BrownPaperTickets.com More information at literary-arts.org or 503-227-2583
Actual size (5" × 7") Postcard for the 2013 Oregon Book Awards Ceremony I built the collage in the background using a sampling of the 2013 finalists’ covers.
Small Doggies Press
Edie & the Low-Hung Hands Edie & the Low-Hung Hands by Brian Allen Carr (January 2013) was the first novella from Small Doggies Press. I worked closely with publisher Matty Byloos and editor Carrie Seitzinger on design decisions. My design challenge was to balance making the prose beautiful and readable while incorporating stylistic choices from their previous books, which were both poetry, in order to keep the visual branding consistent. These choices included using the same typeface for the chapter titles that was used in the previous books and keeping the copyright page similar. I like the Small Doggies Press approach to copyright pages. While most books have minimal design on this page, Small Doggies Press uses various typefaces, sizes, and weights to make the page dynamic, a page readers might look at just for the visual interest. It is a concept I will definitely take into future projects. For the cover, Matty and Carrie commissioned an illustration by John Casey inspired by the manuscript. I took that image, originally in black and white, and added colors from a selection given to me by Matty based on discussions with the author. We went through five rounds of covers. I am glad Carrie, Matty, and the author chose this one because the knife is the only yellow object and it pops against the blue, reflecting the key role it plays in the story. Cover: title set in Eccentric and back copy in Andralis ND Interior: headers set in Hoefler Text Black SC and body in Bell Actual size (5.5" × 8.5")
50 · The Portfolio
edie & the low-hung hands
afted a truly blues. Larry
Sidney Poitier
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cent of Denis ra, and fully the violence
Other Stories
edie & the low-hung hands
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SMALL DOGGIES PRESS
a novella by
brian allen Carr Small Doggies Press · 51
edie & the low-hung hands
“In turns naturalistic and fantastic, Brian Allen Carr has crafted a truly original tale. This Texas landscape is a mix of country and blues. Larry McMurtry sings Robert Johnson. And then there’s the sword.” —Percival Everett, author of Assumption and I Am Not Sidney Poitier “This book is beautiful. You’re going to hell if you don’t buy it. I mean that. Carr is a man with magic inside his heat. Read this book and meet a man who will love you forever. Live. Live. Read Carr. You will be alive. FINALLY.” —Scott McClanahan, author of Crapalachia and Hill William
“In Edie & the Low-Hung Hands, Carr’s alternate world is reminiscent of Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro—dreamlike, haunting in its dystopian aura, and fully imagined. The humanity of his characters is never lost, despite the violence and strangeness of their existence.”
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—Paula Bomer, author of Nine Months and Baby and Other Stories
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a division of Small Doggies Omnimedia smalldoggiesomnimedia.com smalldoggiespress.com
52 · The Portfolio
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After murdering his elder brother, Marlet must flee the broken town of Victory. With his sword, our low-hung handed hero maneuvers his M D N I M Eway through a decrepit southern desert murdering blank-skinned men, being pursued by his illegitimate son, and deceiving those he encounters. All the while, Marlet holds on to his precious memories of Edie, the widowed wife of his brother.
NI M ED
SMALL DOGGIES PRESS
EdiE & thE Low-hung hands a novELLa by
brian aLLEn Carr a division of
Portland, Oregon
Small Doggies Press · 53
Small DoggieS PreSS a division of Small Doggies Omnimedia smalldoggiesomnimedia.com Edie & the Low-Hung Hands: a novella by Brian Allen Carr Small DoggieS PreSS © 2013 1St Printing. ISBN 978-0-9848744-0-8 PrinteD in the UniteD StateS of america 10 · 9 · 8 · 7 · 6 · 5· 4 · 3 · 2 · 1
Small Doggies trade paperback edition, January 2013 eDie & the low-hUng hanDS, coPyright 2013. • all rightS reServeD.
PUbliSheD by Small DoggieS PreSS, PortlanD, or. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission, in writing from the copyright owner, except for a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review or within critical articles. Small Doggies Press: www.smalldoggiespress.com Brian Allen Carr: www.brianallencarr.com Edited by Carrie Seitzinger & Matty Byloos. Cover Art by John Casey. Cover Design by Olivia Croom. Interior Layout by Olivia Croom. Type set in Bell MT Std & Hoefler Text Black Swash Small Caps
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Victory
I
held Edie’s hand at Welder’s funeral and wondered how long I should wait. I’ve never seen a mirror I liked much, and just then, the sturdiest branches on the cemetery’s broadest tree became a fixture I could string my neck from. I saw myself limp, blue and hung, swaying in the breeze, deceased, but I thought how oddly my hands would dangle as I choked out there. It seemed four months would be long enough, but of course I didn’t make it. Six days later I stood in the damp field behind their home swatting at chigger bites and slashing Johnson grass with my blade. The sunset grayed, and mocking birds sang their noise, and Edie sat in the breathy glow of a low-watt bulb on the porch, pouring something from a green-glass pitcher that hummed colorful in the light. She knew it was I standing out there and waved hello with the back of her hand. I motioned her to come off the porch, but she shook her head no. I held my arms out like Jesus, my sword aloft. “I could hold you so good,” I said, but she stood and went in off the porch. “Then why’d I do it?” I hollered as the screen door rattled closed against its frame. After that, I went slashing my way through the field.
Father served as minister of our church, and he was assassinated in the pulpit. Unlike I, he wasn’t cursed with low-hung hands. In the wake of his death, Mother sipped Sweet Janes in the holey shade of the pecan limbs, her black dress moist against her body, her brow blotted and damp, her speech flaccid in the freeness of liquor, and she’d look me over, at my arms, “I know you come from me,” she’d say, “but how are you mine?” She said once she’d traced her lineage back to the root, and there was nothing like me in it, and that, “Father, God rest him,
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hadn’t hereditary oddities in any direction. His line was pristine back to Adam. He was the most glorious of men.” Agreed, he was radiant in life, and I loved him, but after his throat was slit he got cast as saintly, and that wasn’t so. Welder, my brother, was also configured right. He was shrewd in stance as my father was. Indeed there was only one other lowhung handed man alive in Victory and he was much my junior and I knew how he came to be. I remembered the sour smell of his mother when I hoisted her heaving body upon mine. I denied everything, but the obvious signs were truly telling, and I heard people whispering when I walked by. I supposed him then twenty, and I’d caught him glancing me often. He was my image in so many of his features, and I knew someday he’d come for me.
Mother didn’t live long after my father passed. She died in a helicopter crash beyond the town’s edge. I was eleven then. I used to pretend to be the chopper that took her. I’d hold my hands like blades at my sides and spin until my faculties were robbed by dizziness and the world slunk about me, a drape of color and sound, and I wouldn’t let up, my arms cutting the humid air, filling with blood from the force and tingling with weight until my frame became unwieldy and I crumbled to the ground, scuffing my skin against the earth. If I bled, pride filled me. I hated the bad-candy smell of Mother’s Sweet-Jane breath, and I wished I hadn’t come from within her. Welder, of course, mourned her loss. He was my brother, and he got what he deserved.
How low are they hung? I can scratch my knees while standing fully erect. I’ve not measured, but I’d say my arms are half a foot longer than most men’s. But that’s not what people think when they see me. They think my hands hang low. They look down at my knuckles as though they’re pornography. It’s a condition that births inconveniences. I only drove an automobile once, back before we bombed the roads, and my shoulders cramped from
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holding my elbows up like buzzard wings, and I was only ten and the arms have since grown. Books pose a similar ache to me, and it’s near impossible to drink beer from a bottle. I strain my neck. I cock my elbows. It takes an effort to swat the gnats from my nose. But the looks folks give are the worst. They can’t look at my eyes. The low-hung hands just own their attention. Father was the architect of bombing out the roads and he was a great swordsman and feared by many. He wanted me to learn the verses too. He’d say them as he drew his sword. Those he fell knew verses of their own. From the same book, just said in different ways. Before my father, there were a hundred churches throughout the town. The average there being one church per sixty citizens. He consolidated them, as did others of his line, by dueling for congregations. The ministers would meet in DeLeon Park, and, standing in the shadow cast by a statue of a rifle-wielding confederate, would draw their sabers, whisper scriptures, make each other dead. This was always on Saturday, the day before worship, and the entirety of each church’s congregation would amass to watch the duel, in part supporting their pastors and in part coming to find out which church they would attend service at in the morning. My father became too powerful with a sword. He became thirsty for a larger flock. He was stopped by a Presbyterian who snuck from behind him and slit his throat open with a razor as my father prayed silently at the head of his congregation, the gurgle of his blood filling the pulpit—the only sound before terror hit those with their heads not bowed—and then the choir started screaming. When Welder died there were twenty churches left in Victory. There were four hundred residents. Many folks fled before the roads out were destroyed. Some, like my mother, left later—in helicopters built from scraps found in barnyards or in hot air balloons made from quilts. They could have just walked away, but I suppose that route lacked drama. Mother craved attention. You couldn’t hate them for leaving. Those who didn’t stayed out of fear. People elsewhere held bad stories of us. How would we survive among them? I couldn’t understand.
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Ooligan Press
Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted In Abbey Gaterud’s Book Design class, each student chose a title that would be included in the Ooligan Classics series and designed a book cover and interior. When I read Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted by Frances E.W. Harper, I immediately thought of Face of Many Facets, a painting by Eastern Washington University art student Megan York. I knew that I wanted to use it on this project and contacted her to obtain permission. Iola Leroy is about a woman with a white father and black mother living in 19th century America who could pass for white but chose not to. I thought this painting reflected that decision and Iola’s heritage beautifully. It also helped that the lines in the painting worked nicely with the grid on the template for Ooligan Classics. At the end of the term, the class voted on a cover and interior for each title. My cover was chosen. Later on, this and two other covers designed by Book Design students from previous terms went to a press-wide vote and mine was chosen for the final publication. Set in Peignot and Goudy Old Style Actual size (5.83" × 8.27")
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ree is ep
ury nd er, an, ier
Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted
ates…
ooligan classics Frances E.W. Harper
Iola Leroy or Shadows Uplifted Frances E.W. Harper
Ooligan Press · 61
Ooligan Ooligan Classics Classics
II
Leroy, a young, beautiful mixed-race woman, is born free olaola Leroy, a young, beautiful mixed-race woman, is born free Mississippi and kidnapped after father’s death. She in in Mississippi and kidnapped after herher father’s death. She is is told that black blood and sold into slavery Deep told that sheshe hashas black blood and sold into slavery in in thethe Deep South outset American Civil War. South onon thethe outset of of thethe American Civil War. Her story follows conventions nineteenth-century Her story follows thethe conventions of of thethe latelate nineteenth-century tragic mulatto genre. Iola struggles gain freedom and tragic mulatto genre. Iola struggles to to gain herher freedom and reunite with her scattered family members, including her brother, reunite with her scattered family members, including her brother, Harry Leroy. Both and Harry identify African American, Harry Leroy. Both sheshe and Harry identify as as African American, refusing to pass for white, though it would make their lives easier refusing to pass for white, though it would make their lives easier during one most violent times American history. during one of of thethe most violent times in in American history.
Cover Cover art art by Megan York by Megan York Cover design Cover design by Olivia Croom by Olivia Croom
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Frances E.W. Harper Frances E.W. Harper
Fiction| |$9.95 $9.95 Fiction
Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted
Andlives livesofofmen menand andsouls soulsofofStates States And Werethrown thrownlike likechaff chaffbeyond beyondthe thegates… gates… Were Darknessshows showsususworlds worldsofoflight, light, Darkness Wenever neversaw sawbybyday. day. We
II
Copyright Flowcharts For my final project in Intellectual Law and Copyright, Dr. Michael Clark asked me to redesign a series of flowcharts outlining the concepts of unprotected speech, the First Amendment, and free speech. My approach to these flowcharts was “copyright with crayons.” I wanted the flowcharts to be approachable, usable, and attractive. The main challenge was keeping all the elements, like color and cell shape, consistent across all three charts. For example, in the First Amendment Overview chart, “No First Amendment Claim,” “Intermediate Scrutiny,” “Strict Scrutiny,” “Time, Place, & Manner Test,” and “O’Brien Test” are all on the same level, but color-coded to match with the related concept. Along with that, any cell that contains a definition, like “writing, speaking” under “Pure Speech” on the Free Speech chart, is oval while any cell that contains a question is square with black type. By creating visual consistency, the user can easily find and follow the path to the answer. Set in Futura Original size: 8.5" × 14"
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Unprotected Speech Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech. Interpretation invokes theories of non-speech
Marketplace of Ideas
Self-governance
Self-fulfillment
theories of non-speech Fails to serve First Amendment purpose
Action, not utterance
Utterance inflicts injury
giving rise to categories of unprotected speech Subversion
Incitement
advocacy tending toward lawlessness
advocacy of specific imminent unlawful action
Solicitation & Threats
Fighting Words
Functional Speech
Defamation
concrete threat / urging others to commit a crime
provoking an immediate breach of peace
speech as instrumental rather than expressive
inflicting injury with obloquy & false facts
Hate Speech
inflicting injury with obloquy & suppressing debate
words as triggers of action (no opportunity for corrective speech) Chaplinsky R.A.V. *
Brandenburg
related unprotected speech (based on non-communicative impact)
Obscenity
prurient speech lacking any redeeming social value all 3 theories of non-speech
Mitchell
Miller
hate crimes are not speech; OK to enhance penalty (this theory is still developing) related
harassment
computer code
child pornography
“Speech Act” theory holds that communication occurs only when a speaker intends to produce understanding in the hearer (per context or conventional meaning); other verbalizations (e.g. commands) are instrumental, and may be treated as action.
tendency (even as refined with clear & present danger test) is too abstract and subjective, especially when lawlessness never occurs
punishing “false facts” (no such thing as false ideas) tends to suppress robust political debate, especially of “public figures” with access to media
These categories are no longer considered unprotected speech
*unprotected speech can be proscribed, but only if the state interest is related to the reason the speech is unprotected in the first place
but see
libel of private persons Design by Olivia Croom
hurtful speech may nonetheless contribute to the political debate, and can be countered by more speech (usually) see also
intentional infliction of emotional distress
First Amendment Overview speech: includes utterances and other actions with an expressive component
Is the activity speech? If so, what kind?
Mixed Speech / Action
Pure Speech
Unprotected Speech
Lower Valued Speech
Obscenity
Erotic/ adult
Fighting words
Profanity
Incitement of imminent lawlessness
Commercial speech
Does the speaker intend to communicate?
Fully Protected Speech
Does the audience understand that speaker is communicating?
special cases
Prior restraints
Is government regulation of mixed or symbolic speech aimed at expressive or non-expressive components?
Forced speech
Libel of private persons
No First Amendment Claim
Intermediate Scrutiny
Where does the law restrict speech?
Private property
Trad’l public forum
Does the law survive yes heightened scrutiny? yes no
Limited public forum
Viewpoint discrimination no
Violates First Amendment
Strict Scrutiny
no Secondary Effects Doctrine
Nonpublic forum
forum analysis
Is denial of access reasonable? difference is not always clear
yes
Subject Matter Discrimination
Symbolic Speech
Restriction on Activity
Prohibition on Activity
Time, Place, & Manner Test
O’Brien Test
Is the regulation content neutral?
Does gov’t have power to regulate? yes no
yes
Is it narrowly tailored?
Does the regulation advance an important state interest?
to serve a significant state interested, and
Is that interest unrelated to the suppression of speech?
leave open alternative avenues of communication? yes no
Is the incidental effect on speech no greater than necessary?
Satisfies First Amendment
yes
Design by Olivia Croom
Free Speech 1.
First determine the kind of speech involved. If there is no expressive element, regulation does not raise any First Amendment problems.
No expressive component
Pure Speech
Mixed Speech/Action
Symbolic Speech
Not a First Amendment issue
e.g. writing, speaking
e.g. leafleting, demonstrating
Does the speaker intend to communicate? Does the audience understand that this is an expressive act?
Go to Step 3
2.
Determine whether regulation is directed at a speech or at a non-speech element.
Tests to determine whether regulation is anti-speech or non-speech
Activity is restricted
Apply Time, Place & Manner Test
Non public forum or other’s private property
One’s own property
No right of access; speech can be prohibited
Trad’l public forum
Is the regulation content neutral?
no
yes
Does the regulation target Is it the “secondary narrowly effects” of adult tailored yes speech?
no 3.
Determine the standard of review that will be applied to content based restrictions No viewpoint discrimination within unprotected class, except for same reasons that category is unprotected
no
Activity is Prohibited
special case
Employee Speech
Where is the speech taking place?
On a matter of public concern?
Limited public forum
Does employer’s need for efficiency outweigh employee speech rights?
Viewpoint discrimination?
to serve a significant state interest
no
Unprotected speech
Subject matter discrimination is permitted & leaves open alternative avenues of communication? yes
Does gov’t have power to regulate in this manner?
no
yes Does the regulation advance an important state interest?
no
yes Is that interest unrelated to the suppression of speech?
no
Is the incidental effect on speech no greater than necessary?
no
yes Satisfies First Amendment
Violates First Amendment
no Lower valued speech
Obscenity
Erotic/ adult
Fighting Words
Commercial speech
Incitement
Libel of private persons
Almost none
O’Brien and TP&M don’t usually apply to pure speech because any interference is anti-speech
Apply O’Brien Test
yes no
yes
Anti-speech regulations require a high level of justification. Non-speech regulations, a lower level of justification.
Mid-level Design by Olivia Croom
Fully protected speech
All other speech
Special cases
Vagueness Overbreadth
Strict scrutiny
Does reg’n advance a compelling state interest in the least restrictive way?
Prior Restraints Forced Speech
Super strict scrutiny
The Making of Up Nights The following is my contribution to the Making Of for Up Nights by Daniel Kine. During my first term working for Ooligan Press, I was an acquisitions editor and the first reader of Up Nights, then titled Out of the Light. Reading Daniel Kine’s proposal (which consisted of the first 60 pages of the manuscript) was the kind of experience every acquisitions editor and reader hopes for. I knew within the first page that we had something special. Becoming so attached to a project so early on proved nerve-racking. In order for the book to be published by Ooligan Press, it had many more steps to go through within the acquisitions department, followed by editing, design, marketing, and sales if it was accepted. After hearing my immediate enthusiasm for the proposal, Casey Woodworth, the acquisitions manager at the time, requested the entire manuscript and I greedily read it and talked at length in acquisitions meetings about both the timeliness and timelessness of Daniel’s novel. The next step was having three other acquisitions editors read the manuscript, and if they agreed it deserved further consideration, the acquisitions managers would read it, then the entire department. After Daniel’s manuscript made it through the acquisitions process, a handful of us assisted Casey in putting together the pitch for Daniel’s manuscript that would be presented to the entire press. I helped find comparative titles already on the market. For this Casey and I had to look for books that fell within certain parameters that closely related to Daniel’s manuscript and the approach Ooligan Press would take, specifically other books from small presses that were no more than three years old, in paperback, and by a young male author. My recommendations included A Simple Machine, Like the Lever by Evan P. Schneider (Propeller Books, November 2011) and I Am Death: Two Novellas by Gary Amdahl (Milkweed, May 2008). The pitch was definitely the tensest part of the process. Everyone at Ooligan Press has a voice in the acquisitions process when a manuscript makes it this far, and it comes down to a vote whether we publish the manuscript or not. Passions can (and did) run high. Ooligan Press voted to acquire Daniel’s book, and I applied for the project manager position immediately. As a project manager, I attended the contract signing, making everything official; developed the production schedule, which is the time line for the entire book, from acquisitions through sales, and where we established deadlines for the various departments; introduced Daniel to the editing manager, Isaac Mayo; and developed the budget, all with my co-manager Lacey Friedly. The biggest challenge in those early months was discussing a title change. “Out of the Light” brought up some strange results in Internet searches that we feared would hurt the book’s marketing down the road and many felt that the title did not strongly reflect the story. Adding to this challenge was Daniel’s relocation to London and his immersion in the developmental edits coming from Isaac and the editing department. As project managers, we wanted him to focus on the editing but the title change had a finite deadline related to purchasing the ISBN numbers. After
Ooligan Press · 67
discussions with Isaac, who took suggestions from the editing team, and a few carefully timed Skype meetings, Daniel agreed on renaming Out of the Light to Up Nights, which was one of his titles from a previous draft. One of my favorite parts of being a project manager was watching the design department develop the covers for Up Nights. I attended the design department meetings, and it was wonderful seeing how Daniel’s story inspired people. All the designers were required to read the manuscript before submitting covers, an important and absolutely necessary part of the design process. There were probably fifty mock-covers shown to the members of Design before it came down to the final covers. The final three covers were incredibly different, and, similar to the pitch process, it came down to a press-wide vote. Everyone attending the vote was asked to read the manuscript and the cover design brief. The cover design brief is a document filled out by the project managers and the marketing department that gives basic information (the size of the book, author, and genre), a brief description of the book, main themes, key visual elements, and clichés to avoid. I love the cover, designed by Brandon Freels, that was chosen. My final official act as a project manager was participating in the presales call. In this conference call, the project managers, Abbey Gaterud, and our representative at Ingram (Ooligan Press’ distributor) talked about Up Nights and its potential audience with national sales representatives, essentially convincing them why the book deserves attention. It brought back all my initial feelings. I had watched Up Nights, a story I was passionate about from the first reading, go from a proposal in acquisitions to a polished, edited manuscript with a beautiful cover that I was now getting to pitch to fellow book people from all around the country. I helped guide Up Nights through the publishing process for nearly a year, and capping it off with the successful presales call reminded me why I wanted to be a publisher. Up Nights is exactly the type of book I want to work on in my career, timely and timeless.
Book Catalog I designed this book catalog of Ooligan Press books for inclusion in the back of Alive at the Center (Ooligan Press, spring 2013). Versions also appeared in Close is Fine (fall 2012) and Up Nights (spring 2013). Set in Goudy Old Style Actual size (5.5" × 8.5")
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369 Neuberger Hall 724 SW Harrison Street Portland, Oregon 97201 Phone: 503.725.9748 | Fax: 503.725.3561 ooligan@ooliganpress.pdx.edu | ooliganpress.pdx.edu Ooligan Press is a general trade publisher rooted in the rich literary tradition of the Pacific Northwest. A region widely recognized for its unique and innovative sensibilities, this small corner of America is one of the most diverse in the United States, comprising urban centers, small towns, and wilderness areas. Its residents range from ranchers, loggers, and small business owners to scientists, inventors, and corporate executives. From this wealth of culture, Ooligan Press aspires to discover works that reflect the values and attitudes that inspire so many to call the Northwest their home. Founded in 2001, Ooligan is a teaching press dedicated to the art and craft of publishing. Affiliated with Portland State University, the press is staffed by students pursuing master’s degrees in an apprenticeship program under the guidance of a core faculty of publishing professionals. Ordering information: Individual Sales: All Ooligan Press titles are available through your local bookstore, and we encourage supporting independent booksellers. Please contact your local bookstore, or purchase online through Powell’s, Indiebound, or Amazon. Retail Sales: Ooligan books are distributed to the trade through Ingram Publisher Services. Booksellers and businesses that wish to stock Ooligan titles may order directly from IPS at (866) 400-5351 or customer.service@ingrampublisherservices.com. Educational and Library Sales: We sell directly to educators and libraries that do not have an established relationship with IPS. For pricing, or to place an order, please contact us at operations@ooliganpress.pdx.edu.
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Write to Publish annual publishing conference hosted by
http://ooligan.pdx.edu/w2p/ Write to Publish is unlike any writing conference you’ve previously attended. Instead of focusing on the craft of writing, we explore the process of getting published. The panels will host a variety of authors who will speak about their own experiences in publishing. These topic-led discussions are intended as an “industry mingle” with a Q & A. The authors will focus on the ups and downs, challenges, and triumphs they experienced in their careers. Local vendors from the publishing industry will also be present, sharing their knowledge and services with conference-goers. Write to Publish is about empowering you as a writer so that you are one step closer to getting published. Get ready to spend a day having your questions answered and seeing how you, too, can become a published author.
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Alive at the Center {Portland} {Seattle} {Vancouver} poetry | $18.95 | 178 pages | 5½” x 8½” | softcover ISBN: 978-1-932010-79-7
The Pacific Poetry Project’s first volume, Alive at the Center, aims to capture the thriving poetic atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest. It concentrates on the three major cities that define it—Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, B.C. This anthology, compiled and edited by an outstanding poet from each city, is a cultural conversation among the unique urban communities whose perspectives share more than just a common landscape. Alive at the Center features distinctive, contemporary poets who speak to the individual spirits of these Pacific Northwest cities. Also available as a three volume set Ooligan Press • Portland, Oregon • ooligan.pdx.edu
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Alive at the Center
Poetry from the Pacific Northwest Available April 2013 poetry | $9.95 | 5.5” x 8.5” | softcover
Portland ISBN: 978-1-932010-57-2
Seattle ISBN: 978-1-932010-55-8
Alive at the Center is also available in three smaller, city-specific volumes, which contain only the poetry selections from that city. Perfect for showing city pride or as souvenir gifts, these volumes capture the essence of each city using the voices of some of their most prolific and outspoken poets. Each city-specific volume has been designed with its own unique cover, making these books collectable outside of the main anthology.
VancouVer ISBN: 978-1-932010-53-4
Ooligan Press • Portland, Oregon • ooligan.pdx.edu
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Close Is Fine a short story collection by Eliot Treichel fiction | 168 pages | $14.95 5½" x 8½" |softcover | ISBN: 978-1-932010-45-9
Like a Polaroid snapshot, this finely wrought collection of short stories gives us a brief glimpse into the quirky and complex lives of rural town inhabitants. As the characters struggle to define their individuality and reconcile their ideals with ordinary life, we are witness to their unique self-discoveries. At times mournful and haunting, this story collection celebrates the nobility of simple life, of striving and failing without ever losing hope. Ooligan Press • Portland, Oregon • ooligan.pdx.edu
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Available May 2013 from Ooligan Press
Up Nights a novel by Daniel Kine fiction | $13.95 | 200 pages 5” x 8” | softcover | ISBN: 978-1-932010-63-3
Up Nights is a classic road novel for a new generation. Kine uses direct, unrelenting prose to tell the semi-autobiographical story of Arthur, a college-aged American male navigating his fractured existence alongside a childhood friend, Francis, their one-time mentor, Bill, and Bill’s on-again-off-again girlfriend, Vita. They seek experiences that make them feel alive, struggling through empty relationships, their own addictions, and brushes with the law. Ooligan Press • Portland, Oregon • ooliganpress.pdx.edu
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American Scream: Palindrome Apocalypse by Dubravka Oraić Tolić poetry | $14.95 240 pages | 6” x 9” | softcover ISBN: 978-1-93-201010-7 Utopia—we all want our own, but who pays for it and at what price? Croatian poet Dubravka Oraić Tolić’s delivers a masterful, thought-provoking answer with exquisite language and imagery in the epic poem American Scream. Complementing American Scream is Palindrome Apocalypse—a palindrome that is artful in both technique and story—presented side-by-side with the Croatian original to preserve its visual effect. Together, Oraić Tolić’s poems explore dark themes of social and individual selfishness in pursuit of dreams and the unintended consequences of those efforts; examine the tension between a nation’s dream of freedom and the outworking of that dream; capture the heart of pre- and post-war Croatia, yet speak universally of the pain of bringing one’s visions to life.
Dot-to-Dot, Oregon by Sid Miller poetry | $13.95 88 pages | 6” x 9” | softcover ISBN: 978-1-93-201029-9 Sid Miller explores seven routes from the coast to the mountains, from inner-city Portland to the Idaho border. Dot-to-Dot, Oregon, a collection of fifty poems, travels through the cities, towns, and monuments of Oregon. Using these locales as a background, three voices narrate the author’s loving but critical relationship with the state he calls home. “Connect the dots? If you do you’ll discover some strange and wonderful constellations superimposed over familiar topography… Dot-to-Dot is a lyrical and, at times, a dark and hilarious guide to the blue lines (secondary roads) of the Beaver State. So before you head out to Shoetree (Don’t look for it on a highway map.), Nyssa (a damsel in metaphysical distress?), or some other exotic location in the Beaver State, take a look at Sid Miller’s new book or, better yet, take it with you on your rambles.” — Carlos Reyes Ooligan Press • Portland, Oregon • ooliganpress.pdx.edu
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Killing George Washington by Anne Jennings Paris poetry | $13.95 120 pages | 6” x 9” | softcover ISBN: 978-1-93-201030-5 Killing George Washington tells the story of the American frontier as it moves west. Anne Jennings Paris, in a collection of narrative poems, imagines the voices of the forgotten historical figures of Lewis Wetzel, a notorious Indian killer; York, the slave who accompanied Lewis and Clark; Charity Lamb, Oregon’s first convicted murderess; Ing Hay, a Chinese immigrant who made a name for himself as a doctor; and Mary Colter, an architect who helped shaped the western landscape. Exploring the American consciousness, these poems question our shared heritage through the personal stories of legends.
Oregon Stories Edited by Ooligan Press poetry | $16.95 272 pages | 6” x 9” | softcover ISBN: 978-1-932010-33-6 This collection of 150 personal narratives from everyday Oregonians explores the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of the people who live in this unique state. Oregon Stories shows why people cherish this state and why Oregonians strive to keep Oregon unique and beautiful while celebrating its rich history and diverse opportunities. Drawn from the Oregon 150 Commission’s Oregon Stories web site project—in which a variety of citizens submitted personal stories that will resonate with any Oregon resident—this book collects the stories and histories of the people that make this place home. The subject of these stories varies widely—some authors tell detailed family histories, while others describe exciting travels throughout Oregon’s beautiful landscape. This book features local contributors who reside in different communities all over the state, resulting in a publication truly representative of Oregonians as a whole. Read much more about the Oregon Stories project as part of the Oregon 150 Official Sesquicentennial Commemoration at the main website. Ooligan Press • Portland, Oregon • ooliganpress.pdx.edu
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You Have Time for This: Contemporary American Short-Short Stories Edited by Mark Budman & Tom Hazuka fiction | $11.95 135 pages | 5” x 7½” | softcover ISBN: 978-1932010176 Love, death, fantasy, and foreign lands, told with brevity and style by the best writers in the short-short fiction genre. You Have Time for This satiates your craving for fine literature without making a dent in your schedule. This collection takes the modern reader on fifty-three literary rides, each one only five hundred words or less. Mark Budman and Tom Hazuka, two of the top names in the genre, have compiled an anthology of mini-worlds are as diverse as the authors who created them. Contributing writers include Steve Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal and Candy-freak; Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt; Robert Boswell, author of five novels including Century’s Son; Alex Irvine, author of A Scattering of Jades; L. E. Leone who writes a weekly humorous column about food and life for the San Francisco Bay Guardian; Justine Musk, author of dark-fantasy novels including Blood Angel; Susan O’Neill, writer of nonfiction and fiction with a book of short stories Don’t Mean Nothing; Short Stories of Vietnam; Katharine Weber author of several novels, her most recent is Triangle. From Buddha to beer, sex to headless angels, there’s a story here for everyone. In You Have Time for This you will find: flash fiction from forty-four authors, works from across the globe, highly regarded authors from all types of genres, fresh work from emerging writers, fifty-three stand alone pieces that tie the world together. Enjoy. You have time for this. “A really good flash fiction is like a story overheard at a bar—personal, funny, dangerous, and sometimes hard to believe. You Have Time For This distills those qualities and many others into quick tall tales by writers who are as talented as they are magical.” —Kevin Sampsell, author of Beautiful Blemish and publisher of Future Tense Publishing
Ooligan Press • Portland, Oregon • ooliganpress.pdx.edu
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Oregon Writers Colony
Colonygram: The Zine Issue I first met James Bernard Frost, Executive Director of the Oregon Writers Colony, at the launch of his book A Very Minor Prophet (Hawthorne Books, April 2012). After months of talking at various literary events and after seeing Literary Arts’ newsletter, Words Matter, he asked me if I would design a special zine-themed edition of the Oregon Writers Colony newsletter, Colonygram. His request presented a lot of design challenges. I love working with color, so making an entire newsletter dynamic in black and white was daunting. The only experience I had with zines was hearing people talk about them while attending readings at the Independent Publishing Resource Center and reading Jim’s book, which is written partly in zines. I had to research zine layouts and figure out how to give each page a cut-and-paste feel while showcasing Asher Craw’s illustrations and keeping the design clean. To attain this, I used a two column layout with some spacing variation on the centerfold spread. Keeping as close as I could to my grid, I was able to place a lot of objects and separate components that aligned consistently, lending harmony to the busy spreads. Set in TypeWrong and Futura Original size: 8.5" × 11.5"
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Vol. 28 No. 1 Winter 2013
How the Oregon Book Club Was Born ne of the beauties of the way our founders have run the
OOregon Writers Colony is that they always made room for
new ideas. Chance conversations became workshops. Coffee with a friend became a contest. A writing group meeting became the Colonyhouse itself. At the OWC you could think up anything and just do it. There’s always been a spirit of yes to the Oregon Writers Colony, and it was in this spirit that we launched the Oregon Book Club. The idea started simple—we wanted to create a new membership bonus for our members who contribute more than the standard membership amount. We thought of something writers like—books—combined it with our mission, and came up with an idea. The Oregon Book Club, a new membership level where we send a book a season to higher paying members. The books would be written by Oregon authors, newly published, and would be dominated by work from small houses, helping fulfill our mission to support writers at all stages of their development. Something strange happened, though, once we launched our new membership perk. We realized our small idea was actually a big one. Since we began the Oregon Book Club we’ve gotten amazing responses about the program. It’s filling a gap—a way for local authors to compete with the publicity machines of big New York houses and 99-cent books on Amazon. We’ve gotten submissions from authors, accolades from the community, and interest from funders. Our inaugural book club choice is by an Oregon author, published by an Oregon publisher, and set in Oregon. Dan DeWeese teaches 5th grade basketball at Buckman Elementary and English at Portland State University. You won’t find Dan on Facebook, trying to be the loudest self-promoter. You won’t find him engaging audiences at the Schnitzer. You might not even find his book at a bookstore. But you’ll find Dan’s work here. And it’s really good.
In This Issue Oregon Book Club . . . . 1 From the Executive Director . . . . 2 Sylvia Beach Conference . . . . 3
Workshops . . . . 4–6 Colonyhouse Happenings . . . . 6 Poetry Prize Winners . . . . 7
We have plans to expand the Oregon Book Club in 2013. We have a fantastic coordinator, the former bookseller and author Alexis Smith. Amber Keller, the Author Coordinator for Wordstock, will also be lending us a hand. We’ll be talking to bookstores about carrying Oregon Book Club books, granting organizations about funding publicity for local authors, and our non-profit partners about growing visibility for the program. We’re excited about this nascent idea and hope you’ll sign up as an Oregon Book Club member. It’s all in the organic spirit of our founders—saying yes and watching things grow.
Sign Up Members can add the Oregon Book Club to their memberships on our website at www.oregonwriterscolony. org/membership. Receive four books over the course of a year for $59.
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Letter from the Executive Director Things have gotten a little weird at the Oregon Writers Colony. We have some of the same amazing workshop instructors: Jan Bear will be offering an Internet Marketing for Writers class in January, and Lori Lake will be teaching a craft class in March. But we also have new people: Lidia Yuknavitch is our featured speaker at the Sylvia Beach Conference. She’s an award-winning author with burning prose who regularly appears in bookstores in a swimsuit. In March, Joshua Mohr will be coming to town to teach a workshop on using characters to drive plot. Mr. Mohr’s novel Some Things that Meant t he World to Me was an Editor’s Choice on the New York Times bestseller list. He also happens to be a tattooed San Franciscan who writes characters with names like No Eyebrows. But then, maybe things have always been different at the Oregon Writers Colony. After all, what other literary organization owns a Steiner cabin on the Oregon Coast with roots for door handles? We hope you’ll attend some of the workshops and conferences this winter by both our regular and new workshop leaders. There’s something crackling in the air around the OWC—come catch some of that energy and channel it into your writing. We also hope you’ll let us know what you think of this unique design for the Colonygram, illustrated by zine publisher Asher Craw, designed by book design master’s student Olivia Croom, and edited by Erica Steckl. In an effort to welcome younger members to the OWC, we’ve decided to experiment with the look and feel of the newsletter. It’s definitely something to store in the archives. A thousand words a day,
James Bernard Frost
Mission Statement Oregon Writers Colony offers support to writers in all stages of their writing careers, from novices to published authors.
The Oregon Writers Colony would like to thank the following people and organizations for their support:
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Sylvia Beach Spring Conference April 19th-21st, 2013 Sylvia Beach Hotel, Newport, OR With Award-Winning Author Lidia Yuknavitch and Donadio & Olson Agent Carrie Howland
ide words and waves at our 26th Annual Spring
RConference, which features author-led workshops on voice and on-the-body writing, and a chance to pitch your manuscript to an agent. Your weekend includes fantastic meals, the inspirational ambience of the Sylvia Beach Hotel, and workshops and lectures by two rising literary stars.
Lidia Yuknavitch is the author of the memoir The Chronology of Water and the novel Dora: A Headcase as well as three books of short stories and a critical book on war and narrative. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Ms., The Iowa Review, Zyzzyva, The Rumpus, BOMB, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an Oregon Book Award, a Pacific Northwest Bookseller’s Award, and grants from Poets and Writers, Literary Arts Inc., and Oregon Literary Arts. She lives and teaches in Oregon and is the creator of chiasmus press.
Carrie Howland is a literary agent at Donadio & Olson, where she represents literary fiction and narrative non-fiction. Carrie is a member of the Association of Authors’ Representatives and writes for its newsletter. She speaks at various writing conferences throughout the year and also volunteers annually as a judge for the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Carrie holds a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Albion College. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Sign Up Online or mail-in registration forms, the schedule for the weekend, as well as information about cost, can be accessed on our website at www.oregonwriterscolony.org. Conference rates vary based on room choice. Individual, couple, and shared accommodations are available. Sylvia Beach rooms all have a literary theme; to view your choices, visit the hotel website at www.sylviabeachhotel.com. Off-site registration for the conference will be made available once the hotel has been filled.
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Workshop: Internet Marketing for Writers January 26th, 2013 10am-5pm, Writer’s Dojo SESSION 1: 10am-1pm Planning Your Writer’s Website If you’re an author, you need a website. But it’s a daunting task, and it’s hard to know where to start. Get answers to important questions such as: • How do I choose a domain name I can live with for the long haul? • How can I choose a design that will connect with my audience? • How can I organize information so that readers will stay beyond that critical first five seconds? • How can I talk to the search engines so that they’ll send traffic my way? • How do I write so that web readers stick around? Jan Bear helps authors rule the age of digital publishing. New media, new ways of communicating, and new marketing methods make it possible to get your book into the hands of your ideal audience. She explores authors’ strategies and opportunities in the wake of the digital publishing revolution. Visit her website at MarketYourBookBlog.com.
SESSION 2: 2pm-5pm Blogs and Social Media for Writers You probably use social media. Maybe you’ve started a blog. But how do you turn it into a tool? How do you use it for good—that is, the good of your art? This course will delve into a variety of social media, and discuss best practices for using each one to manage your “brand” and market your work, without selling yourself out (or selling yourself short). We’ll discuss: • To blog or not to blog? Whether or not you should keep your own space on the blogosophere, and how often you should tend it. • The Little Bear Rule of Facebook. How much is “just right”? • Toot toot! Why you should toot your own horn, and how to do it gracefully. • Getting raw, but not bloody. How to find the line between seeming real and oversharing. • Kick it off! Using Kickstarter for passion and profit.
Sign Up Both online and mail-in registration forms are available on our website at www. oregonwriterscolony.org.
Sarah Gilbert spent years writing and launching blogs for first-of-their-kind social media companies, including a three-year stint with AOL. She has been published in Oregon Humanities magazine, the Water~Stone Review, and elsewhere. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and received a ‘Notable’ in Best American Essays 2012 for her piece “Veteran’s Day.” She is editor-in-chief of Stealing Time, a print literary magazine for parents.
Cost Single session: $70 for members and $110* for non-members; Two sessions: $125 for members and $165* for non-members *Non-member prices include a one-year OWC membership.
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Creating Dynamic Characters with Lori Lake March 9th, 2013 10:00am-5:00pm, Tabor Space Characters are at the heart of all compelling fiction. Whether you’re writing commercial fiction or the Great American Novel, the techniques of character development and characterization are critical to your success. But how do we bring these imaginary creations to life on the page? We’ll explore how the best characters are expressed and revealed, and the approaches you can use to help you deepen and expand your leads, antagonists, and secondary characters through a series of writing exercises and discussion. Bring along the story people you are currently working on—or come prepared to envision and develop new ones. Lori Lake is the author of two short story collections and ten novels, including four books in The Gun Series and two in the recently launched Public Eye Mystery Series. Her crime fiction stories have been featured in anthologies such as “Silence of the Loons,” “Once Upon A Crime,” “Women of the Mean Streets,” and “Writes of Spring.” Lori taught fiction writing at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis for seven years, and has presented workshops and classes at numerous conferences and writers’ gatherings. Cost Members: $95; Non-members: $135* *Non-member price includes a one-year membership to the Oregon Writers Colony
Using Character to Drive Plot with Joshua Mohr March 22nd, 2013 1:00-4:00pm, Writers Dojo
Sign Up Online and mail-in registration forms are available on o u r w e b s i t e a t w w w. oregonwriterscolony.org. Attendees should bring a brown bag lunch.
The best plots aren’t controlled by an authorial presence but spring from the characters themselves. The writer is behind both, but by training ourselves to think our protagonists are sovereign beings, we become better prepared to traverse what I call “plarachterization”—the intersection between plot and characterization. This seminar for both fiction and non-fiction writers will be geared around character decision making, the causality between plot points, and how to keep a reader flipping pages. We’ll also explore specific tactics for constructing a present action and how to fold in backstory. We will do in-class exercises that emphasize the necessary “trial and error” it takes for an author to familiarize herself with her players and their plights. Joshua Mohr is the author of three novels, most recently “Damascus,” which The New York Times called “Beat-poet cool.” He’s also written “Some Things that Meant the World to Me,” one of O Magazine’s Top 10 reads of 2009 and a San Francisco Chronicle best-seller, as well as “Termite Parade,” an Editors’ Choice on The New York Times Best Seller List. His new novel, “Fight Song,” will be published February 2013. Cost Members: $70; Non-members: $110* *Non-member price includes a one-year membership to the Oregon Writers Colony
Sign Up Online and mail-in registration forms are available on o u r w e b s i t e a t w w w. oregonwriterscolony.org.
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Mentor in the House Weekend with Jen Violi March 22nd-March 24th, 2013 Colonyhouse, Rockaway Beach, OR Author and book coach Jen Violi will be offering private one-on-one editorial consultations as part of our Mentor in the House weekend program, with a focus on young adult fiction. Writers seeking a professional eye on their YA projects should consider this unique opportunity to work closely with an accomplished fiction writer and coach. For the weekend, Ms. Violi will live and write at the Colonyhouse, and will be available for personally tailored hour-long consultations with each retreat participant. In addition to plenty of writing time, an optional Saturday night sharing allows participants to workshop their writing in a relaxed atmosphere with the mentor and other retreat-goers. Jen Violi is the author of Putting Makeup on Dead People. She also wrangles manuscripts and mentors writers, helping them to bring forth the books they were meant to write. Cost $150: Members; $190: Non-members* *Non-member price includes a one-year OWC membership.
Sign Up Online and mail-in registrations are available on our website at www.oregonwriterscolony.org. Price includes shared lodging at the Colonyhouse. Participants are expected to provide their own food and bedding. A communal meal may be arranged with the consent of the mentor.
Colonyhouse News
inter and early Spring is a wonderful time to go to the
WColonyhouse. Stormy weather is the perfect time to hunker
by the fireplace and write—or you might catch that magical February week of clear skies and empty beaches. We have openings for a variety of options for both guided and private writing retreats. Mentor in the House weekends allow you to write under the guidance of a mentor, while Writers Week is a time for individuals to write in the presence of other writers at low cost. We also have many open dates in which to plan a private retreat for yourself or your writing group. Marlene Howard coordinates the Colonyhouse, and is available for inquires at marlenehow@comcast.net.
Member News Ted Magnuson’s novel was published in October by Cascade Saga Press. The Bouchard Legacy is a coming of age story set in St. Louis, MO in the 1960s and ’70s.
Samantha Ducloux Waltz’s story, “Christmas Magic,” was included in the paperback edition of Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Gift of Christmas.
Sue Parman’s short story, “The Spirit Bird,” was published in The Grove Review (Vol. 3, No. 2).
Carolyn J. Rose has published Sea of Regret, the sequel to her suspense novel An Uncertain Refuge, which takes place at a wildlife rehabilitation center on the Oregon Coast.
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Elizabeth Bolton Poetry Prize Winners
First Place Winner
Third Place Winner
Familiar Skeletons
Miasma
In the way of hermit crabs, my Emily has just changed shells again—she took up the hollow of Thoreau who had died
November’s wind blows at the gate Mid-morning Math, she clumps in late. Her mother’s heels with pointy toes. Snot glissading from her nose.
She taps her old shell with claw and antenna—does not take a step without touching the conch that held her for so long.
No socks to bundle blue-tinged skin. Mud-splattered knees, scab-covered shins. Ripped fingernails engulfed in crud, One scuffed-up elbow oozing blood.
Soon, she moves back in— preferring to tote old baggage.
Long, tangled, ropy flaxen hair Falls over eyes that vacuous stare. Blind but not blind. Dense or dumb? She rubs her crusty eye with thumb.
Barb McMakin
Her azure satin dress, a wreck, Hangs slack and filthy from her neck. Mid-calf it falls, ripped at the waist. Stained pilgrim collar trimmed in lace.
Second Place Winner Indescribable Things Blessed is the concave of your wrist, sharp plane of your shoulder blade, blessed are the equations of emptiness in the hollows of elbow and knee, the sinusoidal dip and curve of each vertebrae resolving itself upwards. Blessed is the soft vector of your hair sweeping across your face, the freckles graphed across cheekbones, blessed is the bow of your lip describing lower lip. Blessed are the words they speak, sign and symbol. Blessed is the uprush and pause of air into lung, the rhythm of heart, cathode flash of electrical flash sparking nerve to fingertip, blessed are the clockwork constructions of bone, joint fitted into joint, blessed are your eyes, that color, that infinity, the long bright fall
Our teacher sits her by the grate, No punishment for being late. She smiles at us. Our hearts are stone. We do our math, leave her alone. At recess time she wants to play. We laugh at her and run away. Confused, she chases us. Stops. Stands, But we ignore her outstretched hands. Ghosts like her leave soon, we know. We hoard our love, dispense more woe. She is not there, nor her despair. Our hearts on hold, she turns to air. Karen Keltz
Morgan Azinger
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Oregon Writers Colony
Board of Directors Sarah Gilbert, President Marlene Howard, Vice President Rae Richen, Treasurer D’Norgia Price, Secretary Brad Bortnem Kerry Cohen Linda Leslie Judy Massee Martha Miller Judy O’Neill Tom Snethen Cowli Villiardos Bob Zimmer
Staff
James Bernard Frost, Executive Director Laurel Hermanson, Communications Coordinator Gloria Harrison, Director, Mentor in the House Program Alexis Smith, Director, Oregon Book Club
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Resource Council Val Brooks Larissa Brown Carol Cole Frank Galea Dian Hilliard Lori Lake Rachel Uris George Wright
Masthead
Erica Steckl, Editor Olivia Croom, Designer Asher Craw, Illustrator
Contact Us
Oregon Writers Colony P.O. Box 15200 Portland OR 97293-5200 Messages: (503) 714-5374 Email: info@oregonwriterscolony.org