Portland Author Profile: Molly Gloss

I decided to stay with the Oregon Book Award (OBA) theme and profile a 2008 nominee for the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction, Molly Gloss.  Ms. Gloss won the award in 1990 for The Jump-off Creek, “a full-length portrait, with landscape, of an unforgettable pioneer woman who confronts and conquers the demands of homesteading alone in northeast Oregon’s Blue Mountains in the 1890s.”

I have to say, reading about how she became a writer actually brought a tear to my eye (cheesy I know).  Maybe I connected with her situation in some way, just reverse the word “mother” for “father.”  She tells of giving birth to and bringing up a child, and how it is “about as awash in Life as you can be, and I was swimming hard, looking for a log to hang onto.”  This led her to start “writing while my baby was sleeping, and later when he was in nursery school two mornings a week.”  Eventually through a competition she came across for “the best Western novel by an unpublished writer,” she decided to see if this whole writing thing was something she should pursue in earnest.  This act in and of itself, gave her the experience and confidence she needed to begin thinking of herself as a writer.  This steadily grew, until the success of Jump-off Creek made it so that those around her actually thought of her as a writer as well.  There was no turning back at that point.

The highlights along the way:

In 1996 I received a prestigious Whiting Writers Award–sort of a MacArthur grant in a minor key. But nobody knows what the heck it is, so how did it come to be prestigious?! The Jump-Off Creek is usually referred to as “a Pacific Northwest classic” and was winner of an Oregon Book Award and a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. The Dazzle of Day, which is a science fiction novel, received the PEN West Fiction Prize and was a New York Times Notable Book. Wild Life, set in the woods and mountains of Washington State at the turn of the 20th century, won the James Tiptree Award for literary fantasy.

For her most recent work “The Hearts of Horses” (for which she garnered the OBA nomination), Ms. Gloss maintained a “tour blog” on Amazon, shedding light on some of the oft forgotten roles an author must play.  Hearts of Horses is also set in Eastern Oregon and tells a “heartwarming story of a determined young woman with a gift for gentling wild horses.”  It is also the first choice for the Reading Local “Fiction Lovers” Meetup group.

Gloss is a fourth generation Oregonian who also finds the time to instruct at Portland State, and conducts workshops and seminars through PSU’s Center for Excellence in Writing. She also serves as the advisory board member for the Center and directs its curricular development.  I have emailed her for an interview request and will post any response.

Links For More Info:

Google Search for Molly Gloss

2009 Schedule of Events

Molly Gloss-Wikipedia

Past Interview w/ Dave Weich from Powell’s

IndieBound Interview w/ Gavin Grant Part I & II

Interview w/ Jenny Shank from Newwest.net

Powell’s Original Essays-Molly Gloss