The Oregon Book Awards Author Tour brings two poets and two nonfiction writers to Eastern Oregon in July.
Roger Porter, Jennifer Lauck and Daniel Skach Mills will be appearing at the Athena Public Library (418 East Main Street) on Thursday, July 12th at 7:00 p.m.
In addition, Jennifer Lauck will be offering a free writing workshop, Writing the Scene, on Thursday from 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. at the Athena library.
The tour will continue to Baker City on Friday, July 13th. At 7:00 p.m., Emily Kendal Frey will join Lauck, Porter and Skach-Mills for an evening of readings and conversation at Crossroads Art Center (2020 Auburn Avenue). The workshop Writing the Scene will be also offered at the Baker County Library from 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. on Friday.
Workshops are free but space is limited and participants are asked to register by emailing Susan Denning at susan@literary-arts.org.
ABOUT THE WORKSHOP:
WRITING THE SCENE with Jennifer Lauck:
Scene is the foundation of memoir, fiction, short story and even essay. What are the defining aspects of a scene? What are the necessary ingredients? This workshop is an opportunity to learn how to create writing that is active, vivid and scene driven.
About the Authors Appearing in Eastern Oregon:
Roger Porter‘s book Bureau of Missing Persons analyzes memoirs written by adult children who discover their fathers have led secret lives. Jane Brox says, ” In his compelling exploration and analysis of memoirs written by those whose parents’ secrets haunt their lives, Roger Porter examines both the nature of family mysteries and the desire to clarify them.” Porter is a professor at Reed College in Portland.
Emily Kendal Frey is a poet and the author of The Grief Performance as well as several chapbooks and chapbook collaborations, including Airport, Frances, and The New Planet. The poet Carl Philips says Frey’s poems display ” a tough, deadpan, comic wisdom that I very much admire.”
Jennifer Lauck has written four memoirs, and her latest, Found, is the sequel to her book Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found. More than one woman’s search for her biological parents, Found is a story of loss, adjustment, and survival. Cheryl Strayed says, ” “Found is a powerful story about the most primal love and loss.”
Daniel Skach Mills is a poet and former Trappist monk. His book of poems, The Hut Beneath The Pines grow out of his ongoing immersion in the Portland Chinese Classical Garden.
Carl Phillips says, “these poems allow us to “shake off the dust of the world,” meanwhile quietly illuminating the tea ceremony’s role as a possible way toward the Tao, toward “letting whatever unfolds be enough.”
Local support for this tour comes from the Athena Public Library, Baker County Library, Writers Guild of Eastern Oregon and the Crossroads Art Center.
This program was made possible in part by a grant from Oregon Humanities (OH), a statewide nonprofit organization and an independent affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which funds OH’s grant program.
