STRENGTHENING COMMUNITY THROUGH READING!

The Everybody Reads 2012 selection is The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow.

In partnership with Multnomah County Library and The Library Foundation, Literary Arts is pleased to announce an upcoming event with Heidi W. Durrow.

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky received Barbara Kingsolver’s 2008 Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Kingsolver has said, “When I first envisioned the Bellwether Prize, I imagined all the best qualities of fiction: vivid language, compelling characters, and clear moral vision. Novels just like this one–Heidi Durrow’s breathless telling of a tale we’ve never heard before. Haunting and lovely, pitch-perfect, this book could not be more timely.”

We hope you, your friends and neighbors will join us on March 6th to hear the author discuss her beautifully exquisite story about identity and survival.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012 at 7:30 pm
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Prices: $10 – $25

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS!

For book group reservations of 8 or more please download our Group Order Form or call us at503.227.2583. Group prices reflect a 30% savings.

This is a quick note to let you know that the poetry anthology I’ve been spear-heading for three years has a publisher, and will be in print as of Nov. 11, 2011 — it’ll be available at Amazon.com (and, we think, eligible for Super Saver shipping).

This project involves six women from different parts of the US who have never met in person, but who came together in an on-line writer’s conference and kept plugging away. We are way, way jazzed at this, and I can’t wait to get my hands on my copy. Michele Graf

Stories Published Recently

“Tide.”  Qreview (September 2011).

http://qreviewonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=3&Itemid=6

“The Water Ghost.”  St. Sebastian Review 1, No. 2 (2011). 17-19.

http://www.stsebastianreview.com/SSR_Vol1_Iss2.pdf

“Dating Igor,” Off the Rocks:  An Anthology of

GLBT Writing, New Town Writers of Chicago.

Honors, Awards – Honorable Mention, July 2011 Very Short Fiction Competition, Glimmer Train.

Windfall Reading for October 2011

Eugene Public Library

Tuesday, October 18, 5:30 p.m.

Cecelia Hagen has been actively writing, editing, and teaching literature in Eugene since she graduated from the University of Oregon with an M.F.A. in poetry in 1976. Reaching out to the local writing community in almost every possible way, she joined the editorial staff of Northwest Review, where she read both poetry and fiction manuscripts, joined a poetry critique group through the Lane Literary Guild, and became managing editor of two monthly trade magazines for computer programmers. She was also the first director of the Windfall Series, starting in 2002. Hagen’s curiosity and enthusiasm for the arts has continued throughout her career: she became a member of a local jazz-dance troupe, audited art history classes at the University, and married visual artist Craig Spilman, with whom she currently enjoys taking part in tango dancing. The poems in Hagen’s first chapbook Fringe Living (26 Book Press, 1999) were described as able to “evoke a wildness and freedom that excite the spirit.” More recently she published a second chapbook Among Others with Eugene’s Traprock Books. Her first full-length collection, Entering, is published this month by Airlie Press. Presently, Hagen is working on translating Russian poetry with her brother, who is a Slavic linguist.

Chris Anderson, a native of Washington state, wrote poetry all throughgrammar and secondary school, but took a Ph.D. in English, which led to a career at Oregon State University teaching and writing nonfiction. His collection of essays Edge Effects was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in creative nonfiction in 1993. During the same period, Anderson received a master’s degree in theology at Mount Angel, which led to a second job as Catholic deacon. His book Teaching as Believing tells about this overlapping of life and career. In his academic work Anderson celebrated and developed what he called the “free/style”, in which he seeks to work towards “a written voice that seems natural and spontaneous.” His first collection of poetry My Problem with the Truth (Cloudbank Books 2003) sought to manifest these ideas. His most recent collection, The Next Thing Always Belongs, was published this month by Airlie Press, and poet/editor Tim Green says “These poems are parables, told in the impossible logic of dreams.” Anderson continues his work as a deacon, while teaching full-time at Oregon State, focusing now on the Bible as Literature, Dante, and Spiritual Autobiography.

Windfall Reading for November 2011

Eugene Public Library

Tuesday, November 15, 5:30 p.m.

“Much About the Birds and the Trees”

Poetry and prose from two authors known for their love of the natural world.

John Daniel recently won the Oregon Book Award for the second time with a collection of essays that comes out of his 23 years as a resident here. “The land has an argument to make,” he says, and he has spent time listening to the land all over the state, although he and his wife live in the country west of Eugene, where “they don’t call it rainforest for nothing.” The latest result of his years in Oregon with his wife Marilyn, is a naturalist’s memoir The Far Corner, the fifth of his collections of lyrical prose about various aspects of his life. John has also published two books of poetry, and has edited a collection Wild Song: Poems of the Natural World. Originally from the East Coast, John came to the West by way of California, where he spent time as a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (and one of the essays in the new collection is about Stegner). In Oregon he believes he has found his home, a place where “Nature has a slew of wildly various thoughts.”

Ann Staley has been both a writer and a teacher of writing for all of her adult life, and has never found itnecessary to keep the two separate. Her teaching method inevitably includes opening a notebook herself and joining her students in the assignment. Although well known in Western Oregon as one who has taught  grandmothers, fifth-graders, prisoners, graduate students and writing teachers for many years, only recently has Ann become known as a poet, especially through her explorations of ekphrastic poetry—the response of poetry to a painting. Her first full collection of poems, Primary Sources, was published this August by Booktrope Editions of Washington State, and includes many ekphrastic poems. Recently, Ann and a former student, visual artist Jenny Fowler, shared a collaborative residency in a cabin at Shotpouch Creek of the Spring Creek Project for Nature and the Written Word, where Ann wrote poems in response to Jenny’s paintings. The results of this collaboration will be exhibited at the Corvallis Arts Center’s Corrine Woodman Gallery Dec. 6-24, 2011. Ann lives in Corvallis with her husband Courtney.