Hoffman Center Blog

Jennifer Lauck to read from her new memoir on June 18th

Jennifer Lauck will read from her new book Found: A Memoir at the Manzanita Writers’ Series event at 7pm on Saturday, June 18, 2011 at the Hoffman Center.

Found is the long awaited sequel to the 2000 international bestseller Blackbird: A Childhood Lost & Found which was featured on Oprah and an international bestseller. Blackbird was translated into 22 languages and hit the bestseller lists in London, Ireland and Spain as well as in the United States.

Blackbird was written in the voice of a little girl who attempts to make sense of a world where parents die and children fall through the cracks and are left homeless. Found is written in the voice of a confident woman determined and thus destined to find inner peace, lasting happiness and sense of the familiar.

Jennifer Lauck, with humor, clarity and urgency takes her readers on a thrilling quest that leads her first into motherhood and then into the complex spiritual traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, where Lauck discovers great masters, great teachings and the great truth of who she is. Lauck finally ends her journey when she finds her natural mother—the one who gave her life and gave her away with the hope that she would have a better life.

Lauck has published two other memoirs, a novel and a book on writing memoir. She traveled throughout Northern Europe to speak about her writing. Lauck was given the Book Sense 76 award and was featured in Newsweek, Harper’s Bazaar, Talk Magazine, People, Glamour and Writer’s Digest. She was a select USA Today pick and nominated for two Oregon Book Awards.

Before becoming a memoir writer, speaker and teacher, Lauck worked for many years in television news for ABC affiliates from Montana to Oregon. Her investigative journalism reports appeared on CNN and the ABC Nightly News

During the day on Saturday, June 18, Lauck will teach a workshop on Scene Writing for all genres from 10-3 at the Hoffman Center.  Click here to download the registration form.

Kaeli Eudy, left, Open Mic organizer with Beth Noregaard, fellow writer.

Kaeli Eudy loves to write. A Junior at Neah-Kah-Nie High School, she’s a member of the Creative Writing Club, takes every writing class available, and writes articles for the school newspaper. Asked about her favorite genre, she replies, “Poetry. And stories. Stories with a bit of mystery or a twist.”

That interest spurred her to take on organizing an All-Student Open Mic for the Manzanita Writers’ Series for her Senior Project.

The All-Student Open Mic event will be held on Saturday, May 21st at 7 p.m. at the Hoffman Center. There is a $5 admission fee, and half the proceeds will go to the Creative Writing Club.

If you’re a student, show up a little early to sign up to read. First signed up, first to read and pieces are limited to five minutes. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. If you’re a member of community, come on out and listen to original work by local students, and help make Kaeli’s Senior Project a success.

Jane Kirkpatrick to read on April 16

Jane Kirkpatrick was due to read from her latest book “A Daughter’s Walk” at the Manzanita Writers’ Series, at 7 pm, on Saturday, April 16, at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita.  But the event and her workshop on historical fiction have been cancelled due to a family medical emergency.

Jane Kirkpatrick’s works have appeared in over 50 national publications. She has written nineteen books, most based on the lives of historical women. She speaks with humor and inspiration about the power of story in our lives, at events across the country and internationally.

Her works have won national awards including the Wrangler Award from the Western Heritage Center and the WILLA Literary Award from Women Writing the West. Her novel “A Flickering Light” was named to Library Journal’s Best Books of 2009.

You can find A Daughter’s Walk, as well as a number of Kirkpatrick’s other books, at Ekahni Books in Manzanita.

PoetryFest on March 19

Poet Laureate Paulann Petersen, and fellow award-winning poets Margaret Chula, Carlos Reyes and Penelope Scambly Schott 
will participate in a Poetry Fest at the Manzanita Writers’ Series at 7 pm on Saturday, March 19, at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita.

Oregon’s sixth Poet Laureate, Paulann Petersen has five full-length books of poetry: The Wild Awake, Blood-Silk, A Bride of Narrow Escape, Kindle, and The Voluptuary, published by Lost Horse Press in 2010. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and the recipient of the 2006 Holbrook Award from Oregon Literary Arts, she serves on the board of Friends of William Stafford, organizing the January Stafford Birthday Events. (http://www.paulann.net)

Margaret Chula is a poet, performer and world traveler. In 1977 she traveled overland through Asia and Southeast Asia with her husband before settling in Japan, where she taught English and creative writing at universities in Kyoto. She has published six books of poetry. Her one-woman performance of Three Women Who Loved Love premiered in Krakow in 2003 and toured to Canada, Japan and the US. (http://www.margaretchula.com or www.margaretchula.blogspot.com)

Poet and translator Carlos Reyes lives and writes in Portland, Oregon when he is not traveling. He travels a lot, and whether he journeys to Panama, Spain, Alaska or Ireland, those experiences inspire and inform his poetry. In 2007 he was honored with a Heinrich Boll Fellowship, which gave him two weeks to write on Achill Island, Ireland. He has had fellowships to Yaddo and the Fundación Valparaíso (Mojåcar, Spain). He was poet-in-residence in 2009 at the Lost Horse Ranger Station in the Joshua Tree National Park.

Penelope Scambly Schott has published eight full-length books of poetry. Her verse biography A is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth won the 2008 Oregon Book Award for Poetry, and her most recent collection Crow Mercies (2010) received the Sarah Lantz Memorial Award from Calyx Press.

 To help you prime your own poetry, join the poets during the day on Saturday in a series of mini-workshops called Prompting New Work. Spend an hour with each of these acclaimed poets. They’ll share their favorite writing prompts. You’ll come away inspired and with new material for your work. Pick and choose, or spend time with all four; the price is the same, $40 for the day. Just download a registration form.

The series is a program of the Hoffman Center and will be held at the Hoffman Center (across from Manzanita Library at 594 Laneda Avenue.) The building will be set up in a café style with coffee/tea and snacks available. Admission fee is $5.

The Hoffman Center has been awarded a $1,500 grant from the Tillamook County Cultural Coalition to fund its Dark & Stormy Book Weekend this year. The funds will help expand the event, first held in 2009. The weekend event — featuring writing workshops and author readings — is designed to leverage the area’s reputation as a haven for writers and bring visitors to the area.

The grant will provide stipends to help recruit authors and experts, as well as additional marketing dollars to promote the event more broadly.

“Playing off one of the most famous opening book lines in history — ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ — and tying that to our obviously dark and stormy winter weather, we stand to attract writers and readers to the coast during our shoulder season,” said Kathie Hightower, co-founder of the Manzanita Writers’ Series. “That can benefit the business community at the same time it affords cultural connection between coastal and urban writers and readers.”

The grant will not cover the whole cost of the program, so additional funding will be sought from local organizations, businesses and individuals. “We will also be looking to work with local businesses to create additional related events and benefits for both visitors and local customers during that weekend,” said Vera Wildauer, Hoffman Center Board member and co-founder of the Manzanita Writers’ Series. “In 2009, several businesses jumped in to be part of the event and we hope to expand that participation this year.”

The Tillamook County Cultural Coalition is responsible for distributing Community Cultural Participation Grant program funds from the Oregon Cultural Trust.

The 2011 Oregon Book Awards Author Tour, featuring three awards finalists, will kick off at the Manzanita Writers’ Series at 7 pm on Saturday, February 19, at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita.

This first event of the 2011 Oregon Book Awards Author Tour, will feature the following three authors:

Emily Chenoweth

• Emily Chenoweth of Portland, finalist in fiction for her novel, Hello Goodbye (Random House).  The writer Alice Sebold called Hello Goodbye, “a beautiful novel about a family on the brink of loss.” Emily Chenoweth is a former fiction editor of Publishers Weekly. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Bookforum, and People, among other publications.

K.B. Dixon

 • K.B. Dixon of Portland, finalist in fiction for his book, A Painter’s Life (Inkwater Press). The Oregonian called A Painter’s Life “a slyly funny and perceptive take on creativity and the artist’s life, and a gentle skewering of the art establishment and critics.” Dixon’s work has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and journals. He has written on the visual arts for The Oregonian, and is the author of My Desk and I, a collection of short stories and The Sum of His Syndromes.

Lisa Ohlen Harris

• Lisa Ohlen Harris of Newberg, finalist in general nonfiction for her book, Through The Veil (Canon Press).The book is a collection of essays  about life in the Middle East. Harris lived in Syria and Jordan in the 1990s, and her work has been published in journals like River Teeth, Arts & Letters, and The Laurel Review.

The Oregon Book Awards winners will be announced April 25, 2011, at the Oregon Book Awards ceremony in Portland. The Oregon Book Awards, a program of Literary Arts, are presented annually for the finest accomplishments by Oregon writers who work in genres of poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, drama and young readers’ literature.

The Oregon Book Awards Author Tour brings finalists to public libraries, community arts centers and independent bookstores around the state. Local support for this tour comes from the Manzanita Writers Series.

The second hour of the evening will be our popular Open Mic for local and visiting writers to read their original work. Local writers are of course welcome to bring whatever 5-minute original piece they would like to share but for those who want a writing prompt, the prompt for February is “winning.”  Nine writers can sign up at the door to read; first come, first to read.
Writers interested in reading should check out the Open Mic guidelines  and come prepared to read your original piece of work in five minutes or less.

The series is a program of the Hoffman Center and will be held at the Hoffman Center (across from Manzanita Library at 594 Laneda Avenue.) The building will be set up in a café style with coffee/tea and snacks available. Admission fee is $5. Check out the 2011 schedule online or contact Kathie Hightower, 503-739-1505; kathie@jumpintolife.net).

To be a writer, maybe you thought all you had to do was be brilliant, talented and creative.

It turns out you also have to be VISIBLE.

Join us for a one-day high energy workshop to learn why raising your visibility — bringing you and your work in front of more readers — is so important for all writers, from beginners to veterans. This workshop offers a wealth of practical tips for writers who want to position themselves and their work in the public eye.

Lauren Kessler, Author and Professor at the University of Oregon

Tom Hager, Author

 Lauren Kessler (www.laurenkessler.com) and Thomas Hager (www.thomashager.net) – who between them have written 18 books – will detail and demystify the elements of what is known as “platform building” — creating a name, identity and presence for yourself and gaining visibility for your work.  From the simplest of strategies like email signatures and business cards to the promising (and challenging) online world of websites, blogsites, author pages, Twitter and virtual book tours, from old-fashioned face to face networking to the brave new world of social media, you’ll get a crash course in VISIBILITY and leave with a do-able to-do list.

 Sign up early. Tom and Lauren’s workshops tend to fill up fast. Registration forms at http://hoffmanblog.org/manzanita-writers-series/workshops-2011-2.

 Tom Hager is the author of six nonfiction books and the former publisher of the University of Oregon Press. His most recent book, The Alchemy of Air, was named a “Best Book of 2008″ by Kirkus Reviews, and is a national finalist in Border’s “Original Voices” award program.

 Lauren Kessler is the author of 12 books, including 6 works of narrative nonfiction.  Her newest book, just released, is My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, A Daughter, A journey through the Thickets of Adolescence.  She is also the author of Pacific Northwest Book Award and Oregon Book Award winner Dancing with Rose; Washington Post bestseller Clever Girl; Los Angeles Times bestseller The Happy Bottom Riding Club and Oregon Book Award-winner Stubborn Twig, which was chosen to be the book for all Oregonians to read on the occasion of the sesquecentennial.

 Date: Saturday, February 19, 2011

Time: 10-3.

 (includes a 45-minute break for lunch. Bring a bag lunch or pick something up locally during the break)

Location: The Hoffman Center in Manzanita (across from Manzanita Library at 594 Laneda Avenue.)

Cost: $50

For further information contact Kathie Hightower, 503-739-1505; kathie@jumpintolife.net.

Brian Doyle, photo by Jerry Hart

Brian Doyle will read from his latest book and first novel Mink River at the Manzanita Writers’ Series at 7 pm on Saturday, January 15, at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita.

Mink River is set on the Oregon coast, specifically the fictional village of Neawanaka, bringing a town to life through the jumbled lives and braided stories of its people.
 
The fantastical blends with the natural in this tapestry of small town life that profits from the oral traditions of the town’s population of Native Americans and Irish immigrants.
 
Here’s how one fellow Northwest author describes the book.
“If my high-hearted friend Brian Doyle is trying to avoid the nickname ‘Paddy,’ his wondrous Oregon Coast novel is the wrong feckin’ way to go about it. … I’ve read no Northwest novel remotely like it and enjoyed few novels more. Of an Irishman’s Oregon I am nothing but glad to have wandered, Mink River sings and sings.” –David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and The River Why.
 
Those who heard Doyle read from his book The Grail at the Manzanita Writers’ Series in 2009 know that we are all in for an entertaining evening.
 
Doyle is also author of Wet Engine and five collections of essays.  His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, American Scholar, Orion and in the Best American Essays anthologies of 1998, 1999, 2003 and 2005.  He is editor of Portland magazine, the publication of the University of Portland, in Oregon.
January also kicks off a new element of the Open Mic section of these monthly events. For those who are interested, we are adding a suggested theme each month as a possible writing prompt to inspire new work. This month’s theme is “Life in a Small Town.” Local writers are of course welcome to bring whatever 5-minute original piece they would like to share. Nine writers can sign up at the door to read; first come, first to read.
 
Writers interested in reading should check out the Open Mic guidelines and come prepared to read your original piece of work in five minutes or less.
 
The series is a program of the Hoffman Center and will be held at the Hoffman Center (across from Manzanita Library at 594 Laneda Avenue.) The building will be set up in a café style with coffee/tea and snacks available. Admission fee is $5. (Further information and the 2011 schedule are available here, or contact Kathie Hightower, 503-739-1505; kathie@jumpintolife.net).

Bestselling author, Terry Brooks

Terry Brooks will read from his latest book Bearers of the Black Staff at the Manzanita Writers’ Series at 7 pm on Saturday, October 16, at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita.
 
Bearers of the Black Staff, released August 24, 2010, quickly reached #5 on the New York Times Bestseller list. Bearers of the Black Staff is the first of two in a new set subtitled Legends of Shannara. 
 
Brooks has written 25 New York Times bestselling novels in the past 30 years. His groundbreaking The Sword of Shannara became a runaway best-seller in 1977. It was the first fantasy novel to be listed on The New York Times trade paperback bestseller list, where it remained for over five months.
 
Brooks received his undergraduate degree from Hamilton College, where he majored in English Literature, and went on to earn his graduate degree from the School of Law at Washington & Lee University.
 
The Sword of Shannara took him seven years to finish as he wrote it in time squeezed out of his law practice. After publishing his first three Shannara novels, even though he was hesitant, Terry quit his practice of law to pursue a full-time writing career.
 
Following the author reading and Q&A, the popular Open Mic session will provide opportunities for the audience to hear nine local writers read from their original work. Interested writers sign up at the door to read; first come, first to read.
Writers interested in reading should check out the Open Mic guidelines at hoffmanblog.org <http://hoffmanblog.org> and come prepared to read your original piece of work in five minutes or less.
 
The series is a program of the Hoffman Center and will be held at the Hoffman Center (across from Manzanita Library at 594 Laneda Avenue.) The building will be set up in a café style with coffee/tea and snacks available. Admission fee is $5.

Author Stephanie Kallos

Stephanie Kallos will read from her book Sing Them Home at the Manzanita Writers’ Series at 7 pm on Saturday, September 18th, at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita.

 Before coming out of the closet as a writer, Kallos had a varied work history which included many years as a musician and a long career in the theatre as an actress and teacher of voice, speech, and dialects. Her short fiction has received a Raymond Carver Award and a Pushcart Prize nomination. Her first novel, Broken for You, was published in 2004; it was chosen by Sue Monk Kidd as a “Today Show” book club selection, and received the Washington State and PNBA Book Awards. Her second novel, Sing Them Home, was published in 2009. A Pacific NW Independent Booksellers bestseller, it was selected as a January ’09 IndieNext title.

 As Nancy Pearl, Seattle head librarian, author of Booklust, and NPR Book reviewer says: “Sing Them Home is simply wonderful. It’s a welcome tonic to those of us who look back with great longing to Anne Tyler’s early novels. . . . that is, those of us hungry for books with quirky, flawed, yet realistic and beloved characters who leap off the page into our arms and refuse to leave. I didn’t want Sing Them Home ever to end.”

Following the author reading and Q&A, the popular Open Mic session will provide opportunities for the audience to hear nine local writers read from their original work. Interested writers sign up at the door to read; first come, first to read.

Writers interested in reading should check out the Open Mic guidelines and come prepared to read your original piece of work in five minutes or less.

 The series is a program of the Hoffman Center and will be held at the Hoffman Center (across from Manzanita Library at 594 Laneda Avenue.) The building will be set up in a café style with coffee/tea and snacks available. Admission fee is $5