Category Archives: Writers Series

2011 Oregon Book Tour kicks off at Manzanita Writers’ Series Feb. 19

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).

The Visible Writer Workshop on 2/19

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 will read from his new book Mink River on Saturday, January 15

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).

Terry Brooks will read at 7pm on Saturday, October 16

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.

Stephanie Kallos will read at 7pm on Saturday, September 18

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

John Kroger to Read from Convictions on August 21st

John Kroger, Attorney General of Oregon and Author of Convictions

John Kroger will read from his book Convictions at the Manzanita Writers’ Series at 7 pm on Saturday, August 21, at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita.

Convictions, subtitled A Prosecutor’s Battles Against Mafia Killers, Drug Kingpins, and Enron Thieves, is a professional and personal memoir that won the Oregon Book Award for creative nonfiction in 2009. The book chronicles Kroger’s decade long career as an assistant U.S. prosecutor working out of lower Manhattan, where he tackled organized crime’s biggest names and lowest operatives.

Kroger is the Attorney General of Oregon. His background includes service with the U.S. Marine Corps Force Recon, a degree in philosophy from Yale University, a law degree from Harvard University, and time as a senior adviser to presidential hopeful Bill Clinton. He has worked as a federal prosecutor, and law professor.

After years of taking down mobsters he needed a break and went on a solo bike ride across the country, attending to his own spiritual needs with as much energy as he fought for the public well-being. It’s this theme that resonates throughout: maintaining his personal convictions while convicting as many criminals as possible. In the end, he lasted longer as a prosecutor than most but eventually burned out and headed west. Still, after only a year of teaching at Lewis & Clark College, he was pulled back into the Enron investigations, and then found himself in the race for state attorney general. After only one year in office he has already fulfilled a campaign promise to establish an environmental crimes task force.

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 reading 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 2010 schedule or contact Kathie Hightower, 503-739-1505; kathie@jumpintolife.net).

August 21st Workshop for Writers: Crafting A Writing Life

You want writing to be a priority in your life, but you keep getting side-tracked?

You wish you could focus on your writing, but you keep self-sabotaging?

You want to move from writing-as-hobby to writing-as-profession, but you don’t know how?

Lauren Kessler (www.laurenkessler.com <http://www.laurenkessler.com> ) and Thomas Hager (www.thomashager.net <http://www.thomashager.net> ) – who between them have written 18 books – will help you get serious about your writing life, from daily inspiration to annual budgeting. This one-day, high-energy workshop – with exercises and expert tips – will inspire you to up your game, whether it’s fiction, nonfiction or poetry. Learn from two writers in the trenches who have weathered the storms…and crafted successful writing lives for themselves as they raised three children.

Lauren Kessler, Author and Professor at the University of Oregon

 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 last year.

Tom Hager is the author of six nonfiction books and the former publisher of the University of Oregon

Tom Hager, Author

 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.

Saturday, August 21st from 10-3 Cost: $50.

Download and complete the Crafting Workshop Registration Form, and mail it in with your check to register.

Manzanita Writers’ Series presents Cathy Lamb on July 17, 2010

Portland area author, Cathy Lamb

Cathy Lamb will read from her latest novel Henry’s Sisters at the Manzanita Writers’ Series at 7 pm on Saturday, July 17, at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita.

 Henry’s Sisters is a story of strength and reconciliation and change, with a Columbia River Gorge backdrop.

 A Publisher’s Weeklyreview says “Lamb delivers grace, humor and forgiveness…positively irresistible.”

 The Three Tomatoes Book Club blog declares: “If you loved Terms of Endearment, the Ya Ya Sisterhood, and Steel Magnolias, you will love Henry’s Sisters. Cathy Lamb just keeps getting better and better.”

 Previous books include Julia’s Chocolates and The Last Time I Was Me. Her next book, Such A Pretty Face, is due out at the end of July, and Holiday Magic, an anthology with Fern Michaels, comes out in November, 2010.

 Lamb has a B.A. in Elementary Education and a M.S. in Curriculum and Instruction, both from the University of Oregon. She was a fourth grade teacher for Beaverton Schools for more than seven years. In addition to writing seven books, she has written about 200 articles as a freelance writer for The Oregonian. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and three children.

 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 <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. Further information contact Kathie Hightower, 503-739-1505; kathie@jumpintolife.net.

“En Plein Air” Workshop on June 12: Sign up NOW!

Author Robert Pyle

Author Robert Pyle

The “En Plein Air” workshop at the Alder Creek Farm Conservation Site led by award-winning author Robert Michael Pyle still has room.  Sign up this week and take the opportunity to study with a master, to spend a day that will combine lecture with observation, writing and “workshopping” your words.

Click here http://hoffmanblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/en-plein-air-registration.pdf to print off and complete your registration form and order your lunch. 

 “Imagination and the interior life are all very fine,” says Pyle, “but we should not neglect the fact that we live in a sensual and sensory wonderland whose close observation can only enrich every story, poem or essay.”

Pyle has published hundreds of essays, stories and poems along with fourteen books, including Wintergreen, Where Bigfoot Walks, Walking the High Ridge, and Sky Time in Gray’s River. His latest book, Mariposa Road, is due out later this year. Pyle has his Ph.D. in conservation biology from Yale. He’s won numerous awards to include the John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Harry B. Nehls Award in Nature Writing, and the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature.

 Alder Creek Farm is a 52-acre conservation site preserved as open space by the Lower Nehalem Community Trust. You’ll have a chance to wander the property for your observations, with views of the bay, an estuary, permaculture gardens, lots of wildlife, and often a herd of elk.

 The workshop will run from 9am to 3pm. The fee is $95, $85 for LNCT members, and includes a box lunch. There is space for 20 participants.  For additional information, or to give us a ‘heads up’ that you’ll be coming, email vwildauer@gmail.com.

 This workshop is a collaboration between the Hoffman Center’s Manzanita Writers’ Series and the Lower Nehalem Community Trust.  To become a member of the Lower Nehalem Community Trust, go to www.nehalemtrust.org.

Jim Lynch to read at Manzanita Writers Series June 19

Author Jim Lynch

Author Jim Lynch

Jim Lynch will read from his latest novel Border Songs at the Manzanita Writers’ Series at 7 pm on Saturday, June 19, at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita.

Border Songs was picked as one of six finalists for American Booksellers Award for best fiction of 2009. It was also picked as among the Best Books of 2009 by The Washington Post, The Toronto Star, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, and The Oregonian.

One of his many glowing reviews reads:

“Although I think Border Songs is in a class by itself, I’d also like to offer just a couple of comparisons that give the feel of what a great read this really is. It’s The Big Chill of life on the border, and a cross between The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and T. C. Boyle’s Budding Prospects. Finding a novel that is at once pure fun but literary, and humorous with outstanding character development, can be hard to come by. But Jim Lynch has wrapped it up tightly in this incredible story of life in a border town near British Columbia. All in all, a wonderland of growers, dealers, smokers, and birders! Fantastic!” —Linda Grana, Lafayette Books, Lafayette, California

His first novel, The Highest Tide, won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, appeared on several best-seller lists, was adapted for the stage and has been published in eleven foreign markets.

Jim Lynch lives with his wife and their daughter in Olympia, Washington. As a journalist, he has received the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, among other national honors.

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