We’re thrilled to introduce the 2024 Oregon Literary Fellowship recipients with individual features on our blog! Out-of-state judges spent several months evaluating the 500+ applications we received, and selected eight writers and two publishers to receive grants of $3,500 each. Literary Arts also awarded two Oregon Literary Career Fellowships of $10,000 each. The 2024 Fellowship recipients will be recognized at the 2024 Oregon Book Awards ceremony on April 8.
Joe Wilkins is a 2024 Oregon Literary Career Fellowship recipient. He is the author of a novel, Fall Back Down When I Die, praised as “remarkable and unforgettable” in a starred review at Booklist. A finalist for the First Novel Award from the Center for Fiction and the Pacific Northwest Book Award, Fall Back Down When I Die won the 2020 High Plains Book Award. Wilkins is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers and four collections of poetry, including Thieve and When We Were Birds, winner of the Oregon Book Award in 2017. Wilkins lives with his family in McMinnville, Oregon, where he directs the creative writing program at Linfield University.
Q&A WITH LITERARY ARTS
How would you describe your creative process?
Like most writers, I’m an inveterate notetaker and scribbler, a noticer, an eavesdropper. And I’ve always got a journal close at hand. Most mornings, when classes and meetings and house chores don’t keep me from it, I try to spend some time on our porch, cup of coffee or strong milky tea at hand, just listening and noticing and getting down the images and questions that have stuck with me over the last few days. It’s not that anything I jot down turns into something—though I do go back to my journals when I’m stuck or wondering what’s next—but that the practice itself brings my attention back to the world and to language. Then, I fire up my laptop and try to get to work. Often, I start by revising work from the past few days—reading it aloud, distilling and tinkering, trying to find the music, the heart of matter—and this propels me into the next scene, the new chapter, another poem.
Who are some of the writers who have influenced you?
Oh, so many! In high school I vividly remember finding John Steinbeck, Willa Cather, James Baldwin, and Norman Maclean. In college, in the lone poetry class I took (I was, and shouldn’t have been, an engineering major), I discovered Richard Hugo, James Wright, Gary Soto, and so many of my poets. Grad school introduced me to a host of contemporary writers wrestling with the American West—William Kittredge, Kim Barnes, Mark Spragg, and Mary Clearman Blew, among others. And Louise Erdrich, Kent Haruf, and Marilynne Robinson were huge influences as I began trying my hand at longer fiction.
What keeps you persevering and inspired as a writer?
Writing is the way I’ve figured out how to be whole and aware and caring in the world. Writing helps me know my own story and attempt to understand the crosscurrents of story all around me. If I don’t write for too long, I can feel it. My hands and heart get a little shaky. So, the writing itself keeps me going. And I find the inspiration in all kinds of things: the natural world, things my kids say, memory and history, questions I can’t seem to answer, etc.
What are you working on now?
I’ve just finished copyedits on my forthcoming novel, The Entire Sky. It’s a project that’s been many years in the making, which means I’m delighted and relieved, but also grieving having to let go of these characters! I’ve also just sent off my next poetry manuscript, Pastoral, 1994, to my editors, and we’ll be working on that over the next few months. And, well, I’m not sure what the next big thing is—I have an essay manuscript in process, which is rooted in my family’s experience living in an off-the-grid cabin along the Rogue River. I’ve also been noodling on what I think might be the beginnings of a few novels.
What is the most exciting thing about receiving an Oregon Literary Fellowship?
The validation feels really great. The chance to expand my writing community here in Oregon is wonderful. And the money means more time and more travel!
Do you have any advice for future applicants?
Be persistent. Be patient. Believe in yourself. Keep writing!
Can we find your work online anywhere?
I’ve got quite a bit of work out there and attempt to keep my website up-to-date, which you can check out here: https://joewilkins.org/writing/.
EXCERPT FROM ‘EVERY MOMENT SHINES, WHEN YOU CUT IT OPEN’
Bill slept and woke and lay there a long time alone. He conversed for an hour with a black bear come to gnash apples. He called up Henry’s ghost and had it out with him. He transported himself into the skull of one of the circling buzzards and saw all things as they were below—the many creeks and the canyon and the serpentine river, in the distance the metallic winks of cities, the shimmering lengths of roads, the dramas of want and war and ordinary selfishness. He did a lot of living, laying there all busted up like that, and near the close of day, the light gone to rosehip and gold along the ridge, Bill thought that the young man was right. It was so goddamned beautiful you could almost forget. And he almost did. He almost went and spent his last breath without thinking on his daughters. But he caught himself and willed himself back to that scrabbly little farm. He came out the door of their clapboard house and saw the one singing and spinning herself around, the dust of the dirtyard lifting about her. The other sat on the porch steps, just below him. She moved her hands through the rising dust motes, moved her hands as though she was swimming through the dust, the thick, slanted light. Both the girls barefoot, in sack dresses. The one with a splash of freckles across her nose and cheeks. The other darkhaired, like him.
JUDGE’S COMMENTS
“Written in visceral, revelatory prose, Wilkins’s short stories are a wonder. I found myself surrendering to these haunting, marvelous character studies. These stories stayed with me long after I’d read them.”
– Alexia Arthurs
