Tag: WritingtheNorthwest.com

New WNW Post Features NW Novelist & Screenwriter Jon Raymond

Novelist and screenwriter Jon Raymond

After a brief break over the holidays, WritingtheNorthwest.com is back, and I’m pleased to start the new year with a new feature, Three Questions and a Quote, and one of my favorite Northwest writers, Jon Raymond.

Raymond is the author of an award-winning story collection, an essay collection, and four novels, including Denial (2022), a finalist for this year’s Oregon Book Award in Fiction. He has also coauthored several films, including the HBO mini-series “Mildred Pierce” and the remarkable “First Cow.” Most of his work is set in the Northwest.

Three Questions and a Quote is a new, occasional feature focused on the thoughts and work of prominent Northwest writers.

You can access the entry on Raymond here, including his thoughts on Northwest writing and links to his writings and films (plus other goodies).

New on WNW: John Okada’s NO-NO BOY, Set in Seattle, Is a Must-Read

My latest post on WritingtheNorthwest.com is about John Okada’s NO-NO-BOY, the most beautiful and devastating novel I’ve read about the American immigrant experience.

The book’s focus is the difficult return to Seattle of a young Japanese American man who went to prison rather than serve in the US military during WWII: the hostilities he faces, the kindnesses he can’t bear, and his own feelings of guilt and shame.

Click below to read my thoughts on this amazing and eye-opening book.

Set in Seattle: John Okada’s NO-NO BOY a Must-Read on the Agonies of American Immigration and Assimilation

New WNW Post: Northwest Indigenous Artist Sky Hopinka Receives 2022 MacArthur “Genius Grant”

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Sky Hopinka, Artist and Filmmaker, 2022 MacArthur Fellow, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

Head over to WritingtheNorthwest.com to read about (and watch!) the fascinating video work of Indigenous artist Sky Hopinka, who was raised in Ferndale, WA, and went to school at Portland State University.

Hopinka is one of this year’s MacArthur fellowship winners. His evocations of Indigenous culture in the Northwest subvert traditional views with fresh and sometimes disorienting approaches.

New on WNW: How a Fashion Trend Led to a Bloodbath—And How it Was Stopped

A new post on WritingtheNorthwest.com looks at the tragic slaughter caused by the late-19th C fashion trend of women wearing feathers and even whole birds on their hats.

Focused on Oregon’s beautiful Malheur wildlife refuge, the post is titled, “How a Fashion Trend Led to an Eastern Oregon Bloodbath–and How It Was Stopped.”

A local family with their harvest of swans. Image from the Friends of Malheur website.
Image from the Portland Community College website.

You can read it here: https://writingthenorthwest.com/?p=753

New WritingtheNorthwest.com Post: Portland the Spinster

Image from Clipart Library.

I just posted a new piece on WritingtheNorthwest.com. It’s about a 1917 profile of Portland, Oregon, in the national magazine Collier’s Weekly. Called “Portland the Spinster,” the article suggests the city is run by a handful of conservative FFPs (First Families of Portland) who lord it over the later arrivals.

I love reading other people’s views of places I love, and I had some fun writing about this one. You’ll find my post here.

New WritingtheNorthwest.com Post: My Review of Portland Writer Peter Rock’s PASSERSTHROUGH

The latest post on WritingtheNorthwest.com, my new website dedicated to writing about the Pacific Northwest, is my review of a strange new novel from the always-interesting Portland author Peter Rock. Here’s a part of the review:

In his last two novels—2019’s The Night Swimmers and this year’s Passersthrough (both published by Soho Press)—Rock has used a spare, allusive style to focus closely on a small number of characters in a limited situation while suggesting that there is more going on around them than they or the reader can know, some of it possibly supernatural.

This approach can create a feeling of disorientation, a sense that you’re not understanding something important to the story. But if you release your mind from the need to be certain of everything at every moment, the mood and mystery can take over, allowing you to immerse yourself in Rock’s precise and often beautiful evocations of places, experiences, and sensations.

You can read the whole review here.

Pine Pollen and Canopy Tears: An Iowa Essayist Looks at a Northwest Forest

A new post on my WritingtheNorthwest.com site looks at an essay on an old growth forest in Oregon that’s part of my friend Tom Montgomery Fate‘s new book collection, The Long Way Home: Detours and Discoveries.

The essay is full of sharp observations of the NW environment by a native Iowan, and the book takes you on trips of discovery to other places too: the Pine Ridge Reservation, the backwoods of Ontario, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Midwest backroads.

You can read my post here.

My Review of ROUGH HOUSE, a Memoir Set in the Pacific Northwest

New on WritingtheNorthwest.com: my review of Tina Ontiveros’s rough house (Oregon State University Press, 2020), a difficult but moving memoir about growing up in the damp forests of the Pacific Northwest and the dry brown land around The Dalles, Oregon.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Contrary to popular belief, you can sometimes tell a lot about a book by its title. In addition to the double meaning of physical fun and difficult circumstances, it’s significant that rough house is printed in lower case. Ontiveros is shining a light on minor characters whose stories, though filled with poverty and violence, are worth telling—and worth reading—for what they reveal about the hardships many Americans face, as well as how those Americans—especially women, like Ontiveros—find a way forward despite the odds.”

New on WNW: Norman Maclean and the Real Northwest

New on on my website WritingtheNorthwest.com: “Stories with Trees in Them: Norman Maclean and the Real Northwest.”

 An author who wrote only two books, both when he was in his 70s, just might be the quintessential Northwest writer.

Click here to read why.