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Sunnyland goes to, well, Sunnyland

I had a fabulous time at Powell's on Hawthorne in Portland and at Get Lit! book festival in Spokane, Washington, and at A Book for All Seasons in Leavenworth. The spring weather - blossoms, blue sky, puffy clouds - put on a fancy show, and I got to meet and/or hang out with some fabulous writers: Diana Joseph, David Laskins, Jess Walters. Not to mention the friends who traveled a long way to listen, chat, pad the audience, cheer me on, and later eat drink and be merry!


This morning I hop on a plane to Southern California.

Readings this week are at:
CSU Channel Islands Tuesday April 20 7 p.m.
Perris Library, Wednesday April 21 6:30 p.m.
Rubidoux Library, Thursday April 22 6:30 p.m.

Looking forward to seeing some sun and some familiar faces ... some in Riverside (my home town - Perris & Rubidoux are right nearby) from way way back!

Test Ride hits the road

We're getting a little April snow (snow!) in Stehekin today, and tomorrow I'm heading out to start several weeks of readings from Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus.
It'd be a delight to see you / meet you.

Next week will find me at:
Powell's on Hawthorne in Portland Monday, April 12 at 7:30 pm
The Get Lit! Festival in Spokane Friday & Saturday, April 16, 17
A Book for All Seasons in Leavenworth April 18, 1 pm - 3 pm

You can see more events on my website at:
http://www.anamariaspagna.com/events.html

Meanwhile the book has gotten some nice press.

From The Wenatchee World:
http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2010/mar/31/back-on-the-bus-ana-maria-spagna-writes-a-lost/

And an excerpt (with an excellent photo attached) in Oregon Quarterly:
http://www.oregonquarterly.com/spring2010/feature2.php

Pilgrimage

I hate to admit how rarely I read a literary journal cover to cover. Pilgrimage, out of Southern Colorado, is the exception. The stories are always gripping, the writing graceful, and the perspective earnest without ever turning, you know, smarmy.

Last month I was surprised, and honored, to learn that long-time editor Peter Anderson chose one of my stories – “La Linea” – to include in the terrific anthology Telling it Real: The Best of Pilgrimage Magazine 2003-2008. When my token copy arrived in the mail, I was even more honored. There’s some great stuff in this book. If you don’t want to take my word for it, check out what the folks at Terrain.org have to say:

http://blog.terrain.org/2010/02/02/received-telling-it-real-the-best-of-pilgrimage-magazine-2003-2008/

And if you’re a writer type, consider submitting to Pilgrimage. It’s a top-notch venue:

http://www.pilgrimagepress.org/

Iris Graville

Writing is a solitary art. Except when it’s not. Much as I revere Michael Ventura’s essay “The Talent of the Room,” I also know that writing is at times – sometimes at the best of times – a collaboration.

Iris Graville’s book, Hands at Work, is the perfect collaborative project. She paired with photographer Summer Moon Scriver to create 24 portraits and profiles of people who work with their hands. In it you’ll find stunning photos of a sculptor, a weaver, a car mechanic, a sign-language interpreter, a midwife, and more.

But that’s not the only collaboration at work. Iris Graville’s written profiles of the workers are thorough, respectful, understated and engaging. Why? Because in a real sense, Graville also collaborates with her subjects. On the page, she gives plenty of space to direct quotes – to the workers telling their stories in their own words – but she melds these quotes seamlessly with her own (craftily “I”-less) observation of the work. The prose is clean and tight and verb-driven, with precise attention to the objects (limestone, lug nuts, reef nets, bread dough) required to do work with your hands. She occasionally weaves in anecdotes from the subject’s past, and she focuses always on the work itself and what it means to the person doing it.

The book is flat out gorgeous, a great gift for anyone who has ever worked with her hands or admires those who do, which is pretty much all of us. And it’s won several major awards including the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association’s “Buzz Book” of 2009 and the Independent Publishers Award 2009 for Outstanding Book – Most Life Changing.

The book is inspiring. So is Iris. As a first time self-publisher she’s already mastered the art. If you ever get a chance to hear her speak on the subject of creating your own book and taking it out into the world, it’s well worth your time. In the meantime, the book speaks for itself.

http://www.handsworking.com/

Linda Cooper

I’m no poet. So, despite having that master’s degree in the-language-I-learned-when-I-was-two, I’m not in any position to analyze poetry, much less to judge it. I don’t know exactly what makes poetry work, but I know what moves me. And Linda Cooper’s poetry moves me.

In her poems, familiar images from the natural world—leaves and rocks, insects and mosses, water and sky—suddenly have the capacity to startle me. Sometimes it’s the juxtaposition: the unlikely combination, the sound of this word with that. More often it’s a kind of seduction. I follow an idea where I think it’s going, then it takes a wild turn and evokes an emotion I didn’t even know was there: grief, exuberance, hope, fear, longing, emotions sometimes tumbling so fast, one after the next, that I feel off-balance. The experience is part-epiphany and part-healing, always a delight.

You can read examples in literary journals like Hayden's Ferry Review, West Branch, Third Coast, Willow Springs, Hubub, Elixir, Diner, Midwest Quarterly, and Redactions and at the links below.

http://weberstudies.weber.edu/archive/archive%20D%20Vol.%2021.2-25.2/Vol.%2022.3/Cooper%20Poe.htm

http://www.versedaily.org/2005/ponderousborer.shtml

http://www.versedaily.org/2005/vessellc.shtml

Wait! That’s not all! Linda Cooper is a nonfiction writer, too, and her essays have that same magic quality that her poems do with an extra-generous helping of her trademark humor. (Everyone I know who ever received one of Linda Cooper’s hilarious holiday letters has kept them to this day.) You can find her essays in Open Spaces: Views from the Northwest, and Concho River Review, and look for her collection, Echolocation, to appear sooner than later.


Little known fact (well, actually semi-well-known in some circles):
Linda Cooper also sings a mean karaoke version of “Dream On."


Steven Tyler beware!

David Oates

A couple of years ago, David Oates showed up in Stehekin looking for some quiet space in which to finish up his most recent book, What We Love Will Save Us. He’d arranged to stay in a small cabin near the river, but that wasn’t to be. Mid-visit the river rose with spring snowmelt and he ended up bunking on high ground at our place for a few days while we were out of town. Upon return, I joined him as he ventured out through the muddy slough to collect the gear he’d left in the riverside cabin. Here he is on that day, testing the waters, in his hip waders.

It’s a fitting image for David’s work. His long and prolific career, as a poet and essayist, has often taken him into turbulent waters. Whether challenging wilderness philosophy in Paradise Wild or lobbying for the crucial character of urban spaces in City Limits: Walking Portland’s Boundary (to which I contributed the short essay “A View from Teensy Town”) or always – in the forefront of his work or the not-so-distant background – telling his own story of coming out as a gay man in a strict Baptist household, his voice is courageous and steady, empathetic, and original.

What We Love Will Save Us is a collection of mostly very short essays that cover all of that terrain and more, wading into the contentious politics of the last decade – war, torture, scandal, and the rest -- and coming to the conclusion of the fabulous title: What We Love Will Save Us. “Our job is to work on what we love,” he writes. “Daily. With precision and determination.”

You can check out the title essay as it appeared originally in High Country News:
www.hcn.org/issues/332/16642

And you can read more about the book here:
http://www.whatwelovewillsaveus.com/