Hoffman Center Blog

Ismet Prcic kicks off the 2012 Manzanita Writers' Series season with a reading from his novel, Shards.

Ismet Prcic will read from his novel Shards at the Manzanita Writers’ Series at 7pm on Saturday, February 18, 2012 at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita. This event kicks of the 2012 series, now in its fourth year.

Also at the Saturday event, we’ll unveil the first edition of the new literary journal, the North Coast Squid, with selections from a variety of writers who have a connection to the local area.

Shards is a novel about a young Bosnian, also named Ismet Prcic, who has fled his war-torn homeland and is now struggling to reconcile his past with his present life in California.

It’s a harrowing war story, a stunningly original coming-of-age novel, and a heartbreaking saga of a splintered family. Shards has been listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a Chicago Sun-Times Best Book of the Year, an Oregonian Top 10 Northwest Book of the Year, and shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Award and the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize.

Prcic has gotten positive reviews for his first novel:

“Prcic captures the insanity of war and its unceasing aftermath.” – Publisher’s Weekly.

“Impressive . . . Inventive . . . Pushes against convention, logic, chronology . . . Ambitious and deep . . . [Prcic] succeeds at writing an unsettling and powerful novel.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Irresistible . . . Fierce, funny, and real.”—Chicago Sun-Times

Ismet Prcic (ISS-met PER-sick) or Izzy as he prefers, was born in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1977 and immigrated to America in 1996. He holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and was the recipient of a 2010 NEA Award for fiction. He is also a 2011 Sundance Screenwriting Lab fellow. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife.

Following Prcic’s reading and Q&A, we’ll have our popular Open Mic where up to nine local writers will read 5 minutes of their original work.

Admission for the evening is $7.

New York Times Bestselling author Chelsea Cain will read from her latest book The Night Season at 7 pm Saturday November 5.

Caine’s Portland-based thrillers, described by The New York Times as “steamy and perverse,” have been published in over 30 languages, recommended on “The Today Show,” appeared in episodes of HBO’s “True Blood” and ABC’s “Castle,” named among Stephen King’s top ten favorite books of the year, and included in NPR’s list of the top 100 thrillers ever written. According to Booklist, “Popular entertainment just doesn’t get much better than this.”

So how did this “Queen of serial-killer fiction” (Kirkus Reviews) get into writing gory books? Here’s the start of an explanation.

“In retrospect I always had a fascination with the macabre.

It started with the pet cemetery. A kitten of mine was hit by a car and I buried her in an elaborate ceremony under the Rhododendron bush in our front yard in Bellingham, Washington. Months later, I came across a dead bird. I picked it up, put it in my lunchbox, carried it home and buried it under the Rhododendron.

Eventually kids in the neighborhood started hearing about the cemetery and would appear at my door cradling their dead pets. By the end of that year I had buried fifteen birds, three cats, a hamster, a rabbit, a chicken, and about a dozen gold fish. Each corpse was laid in a shoebox, cushioned with toilet paper, and presented with a piece of costume jewelry from a collection that someone had given me. I would then bury the box and say a few words to whoever was present. I had a special vintage ladies hat I would wear for the occasion. It was black, with white silk flowers piled on it, and a torn black net veil.

I was not an ordinary child.”

Get the idea that Cain won’t be an “ordinary reader?” To find out more about how the Green River Killer, Nancy Drew and TV cops shows headed Cain down the path of gory thrillers join us on November 5.

After Chelsea’s reading and Q&A we’ll have our popular Open Mic focused on the theme of “It was a dark and stormy night” at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita.

Admission for the evening is $5.

The weekend is a joint event of the Manzanita Writers’ Series/Hoffman Center and the Manzanita Business Alliance, and is made possible in part by a grant from the Tillamook County Cultural Coalition.

Jess Walter will read from his book The Financial Lives of Poets at the Manzanita Writers Series event at 7 pm on Saturday, October 15, 2011.

After hearing Jess Walter read at Wordstock 2010, the Manzanita Writer’s Series coordinators vowed to get him to come to Manzanita. He’s funny, engaging, and so-very-down-to-earth. You won’t want to miss this.

Take a look at some of the reviews of The Financial Lives of Poets.

“The hero of Jess Walter’s novel is like a stoned Humbert Humbert … The funniest way-we-live-now book of the year.” – TIME

“Brilliant–and brilliantly funny.” – ESQUIRE

“Lifts off like a rocket … This vigorous, engaging novel is one of the sharpest satires to come along in years.” — BOSTON GLOBE

“Gasp-out loud funny.” — New York Daily News

The book has been chosen in lists of best novels of the year by Time, NPR’s Fresh Air, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, The Oregonian, Kansas City Star, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Salon.com, and others.

A former National Book Award finalist and winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award, Jess Walter is the author of five novels and one nonfiction book. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages and his essays, short fiction, criticism and journalism have been widely published, in Playboy, McSweeney’s, ESPN the Magazine, Details, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe among many others.

Following Walter’s reading and Q&A, we’ll have our popular Open Mic where up to nine local writers will read 5 minutes of their original work. The recommended theme for this month is “Trouble.”

Admission for the evening is $5.

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.)

Naseem Rakha reads on Saturday, August 20

Naseem Rakha will read from her book The Crying Tree at the Manzanita Writers Series event at 7 pm on Saturday, August 20, 2011.

Set in southern Illinois and central Oregon, The Crying Tree tells a story of a mother who must overcome the hate, grief, and secrets that surround the murder of her 15-year-old son, and defy church and family as she attempts to stop the execution of the man who killed her boy.

With the heart of a storyteller, Naseem explores the death penalty and forgiveness with her audience through the lens of our justice system as well as subsequent interviews with crime victims, inmates, corrections officials and exonerated death row prisoners.

Publisher’s Weekly says, “This complex, layered story of a family’s journey toward justice and forgiveness comes together through spellbinding storytelling.”

The American Booksellers Association chose The Crying Tree for its TOP 10 Indie Next list for Reading Groups <http://news.bookweb.org/news/winter-2010-2011-indie-next-list-reading-groups> . The book has been published in six international editions.

Naseem is an award-winning author and journalist whose stories have been heard on NPR’s All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Marketplace Radio, Christian Science Monitor, and Living on Earth. She lives in Oregon with her husband, son, and many animals.

Following Rakha’s reading and Q&A, we’ll have our popular Open Mic where up to nine local writers will read 5 minutes of their original work. The recommended theme for this month is “Forgiveness.”

Admission for the evening is $5.

Further information on the Writers’ Series can be found here or contact Kathie Hightower, 503-739-1505 or Vera Wildauer at vwildauer@gmail.com.

John Daniel to read on July 16th

John Daniel will read from his new book The Far Corner: Northwestern Views on Land, Life, and Literature at the Manzanita Writers’ Series event at 7pm on Saturday, July 16, 2011 at the Hoffman Center.

As Wallace Stegner describes Daniel: “John Daniel loves wilderness of all kinds, …, but it is more than scenery he is after. He has a streak of mysticism, some generalized religious sense, that is stimulated by the natural world…his essays will win him devoted readers.”

 Daniel is the author of nine books of memoir, personal essays, and poetry. He has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, a James Thurber Writer-in-Residence at Ohio State University, and a Research and Writing Fellow at Oregon State University’s Center for the Humanities. He has been a Writer-in-Residence or Visiting Professor at a number of other universities. Two of his books have won the Oregon Book Award and he has won the Andres Berger Award for Creative Nonfiction, the annual John Burroughs Nature Essay Award, and a Pushcart Prize, among other honors.

Following Daniel’s reading and Q&A, we’ll have our popular Open Mic where up to nine local writers will read 5 minutes of their original work. The recommended theme for this month is “Something Wild.”

Admission for the evening is $5.

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.

Please join us for another book launch party on Friday, April 22nd from 6:00 p.m. to 8 p.m.  Travis Champ will read from his new book — As a Ghost Through a City of Millions.

“I was in Mexico City for six weeks this past autumn,” says Champ.  “Holed up with a typewriter in a cheap hotel.  Trying to adapt and become comfortable in the city. If anything, that is what the book is about.”

The book was printed entirely by letterpress at The Manzanita Community Printshop which is located at the Hoffman Center.  Sarah Archer designed and printed the cover and Champ bound the hardcover books by hand.

There are ongoing printmaking classes and information about that will be available at the reading as well.

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 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).