Elva Maxine Beach was born in Missouri to a family of preachers, teachers, and storytellers. She studied writing with Andrei Codrescu and others at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, then lived in Austin for more than a decade. In 2008, New Belleville Press published Neurotica, a fictionalized account of her varied and risk-taking sex life.
Beach took time out of her sexy schedule to answer a few questions for Reading Local. See her in person on Monday, March 15, at Three Friends Coffeehouse.
Q: A couple of years ago you returned to St. Louis , where you had lived when you were younger. How has this return home affected your writing life?
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Portland author/illustrator Johanna Wright paints hidden worlds that only she (and children) can see. ‘Little people’ reading books atop mushrooms. A family of birds snuggling on a telephone wire. Babies swaddled in quilted cocoons. Family bands making music while straddling tree branches. Her disarming style evokes comfort and luminous warmth found only in secret hideaways and the realm of imagination. Last year, her first two children’s books, The Secret Circus and Clover Twig and The Magical Cottage, were published to great critical acclaim. Oregon Art Beat profiled Johanna’s work last autumn after one of the show’s producers discovered Johanna and her work at a local art fair.
Johanna stopped by to talk with me about her books, her artistic process, her upcoming art shows, and the magic of working with a timer.
Q: Please tell me about your two books that were published last year.
A: The Secret Circus (Roaring Brook Press, 2009), which I wrote and illustrated, is my first published children’s book ever and came out last spring. It’s about a circus in Paris, under a carousel near the Eiffel Tower, that is so secret, only the mice know how to find it. I painted it using acrylics in 16 spreads. The second book, Clover Twig and the Magical Cottage (Roaring Brook Press, 2009) was written by Kaye Umansky and is a middle grade fiction book. It’s about a sensible, reliable and always tidy girl named Clover Twig who goes to work for a messy witch and discovers that the witch’s cottage has quite a few secrets hiding inside of it!
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Don’t miss novelist Margaret Erhart, who will be in town for a reading from her latest book, The Butterflies of Grand Canyon, at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne, Monday, February 1, 2010 at 7:30 pm.
From the book description: “Set against the backdrop of the majestic Grand Canyon and the nineteen-fifties American southwest, novelist Margaret Erhart shares the lives, loves and long lost secrets of the residents of a small Arizona town, and the young housewife whose world reawakens during a summer visit, in her latest, The Butterflies of Grand Canyon (Plume Original/$15.00/January 2010).”
Recently, Ms. Erhart took the time out of her busy schedule to respond to questions sent via email.
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Yesterday, OPB’s Think Out Loud ran an interview with Olympia-based artist Nikki McClure and her co-author Cynthia Rylant. McClure and Rylant won a 2010 Pacific Northwest Bookseller Award for their beautiful children’s book All In A Day.
RLP also interviewed McClure a while back, and she was kind enough to remember that interview, and mention it on the air. Thanks to Amy Baskin, who did that great interview for RLP–and thanks to Nikki for the shout-out!
Today’s interview is with Sid Miller, the founder and executive editor of Burnside Review, which has a new issue due out in April. In addition to his duties with the journal, Sid has two new poetry collections out, one entitled Dot-to-Dot, Oregon (Ooligan Press) and the other Nixon on the Piano (David Robert Brooks). In reading Dot-to-Dot, Oregon I found Miller’s poetry provided an entry point through which I could relate to a genre that has escaped me nearly all of my life. I immediately skipped to the section on Northeast Oregon and began to experience the places I grew up through anothers eyes. And although the language is beautiful enough to gain appreciation from the most seasoned critic, it was this context that allowed the poems to find a home within a novice like myself. I highly recommend you pick up both of these new collections, I promise they will not disappoint.
Sid will be reading from Dot-to-Dot, Oregon tomorrow (1-21) at 7:30pm at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne.
Click through to read the interview and an excerpt of Sid’s work.
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KOIN Newschannel’s Keep It Local program stopped into Powells yesterday in order to help them celebrate 15 years of selling books online. The story includes an interesting behind-the-scenes look at the processes involved in preparing online orders for shipping. The end of the video features an interview with Powell’s Books President & Founder Michael Powell, who discusses everything from electronic readers to running a family business.
This is all comes as Powell’s is attempting to revamp their web strategy by improving “site search and navigation,” creating a “streamlined checkout process” and running “new promotions like free-shipping offers.” Overall Powell’s aim is to bring the “wonderful process of discovery” shoppers feel when they wander the stores aisles to their “shopping experience online.” This process partly began with Dave Weich leaving the company and now has them looking for an e-Commerce Marketing Manager. That is a great job for anyone interested!
Now onto the video:
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Several presses have established themselves in Portland, with a wide variety of genres represented by each. The newest on the block is Patient, Folded Hands, a small press started by Jaret Ferratusco the “quiet little proprietor of Corpse On Pumpkin Photography.” Jaret plans to release dark fiction that gets at the “underbelly of civilization,” stories that tell the truth in a way most publishers aren’t willing to. In doing so he hopes that Patient, Folded Hands will cultivate a readership that gravitates towards these stories, and appreciates that through this press they have a chance to be told. My guess is that he will be successful in these efforts, and I’m sure after seeing the determination and passion offered in the words below, you will feel the same.
1) For those of us who are uninitiated but nonetheless interested, what’s it take to get a press up an running?
So far as I can tell (I’m new at this, and new responsibilities are still unfolding), one simple thing and two not so simple things to get it started. Desire is the simple one, I suppose, if you can describe it so effortlessly. Desire to do it and wanting to make it work. The bigger ones are money and time, with more emphasis obviously on acquiring the financing but no little amount of time within which to pour yourself into. I’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time, but money was always the biggest obstacle telling me no; this has definitely involved borrowing money and so I still haven’t beaten that. Even before I got somebody to help me out with it, the first step (for me), was finding a printer. I couldn’t have a company unless I could print a lot of books. So once I found one with prices I could afford and a bulk plan that made sense, that’s when I decided to do it, and looked into what it takes to get that book from the printer to the reader. And the internet is so far my best friend in this. Having websites, promoting, networking, gaining interest, making the books easily available through the web. Getting the book into stores will have to be something I’ll experience along the way. I’m hoping that sooner or later I can say exactly what it takes to do that part. I think maybe it might involve standing outside of a bookstore and asking repeatedly every couple of minutes with almost no change in vocal inflection until it becomes a matter of putting the books into their inventory just so I’ll leave. Only I think that might start Patient, Folded Hands off on the wrong foot.
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This interview with children’s author/illustrator Nikki McClure is provided courtesy of Amy Baskin. Ms. Baskin is a children’s writer, and maintains the fantastic blog Euphoria, which she uses as “a spot for author and illustrator interviews, thoughts on favorite children’s/ YA books, and musings on my foray into writing for children.”
For years, Nikki McClure’s self-published calendars have graced my office walls. I love the intricate beauty of her paper cuts and the ways in which she pays yearly homage to the nuances of each season. Her art is often peppered with words that challenge the observer to act with intention.
As are her many books. Her recent collaboration with Cynthia Rylant, All in a Day (Abrams, 2009) offers children and families a poignant reminder of the simple wonders that a day can have in store for us. I was thrilled to learn it landed on the NY Times bestseller list last spring, and that there are more books to come.
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This interview was conducted by contributor, Teresa Bergen. Ms. Bergen is the author of the novel Killing The President, and in addition to writing, transcribes and edits oral histories, paints animal portraits, makes costume devil horns, teaches yoga, and plays bass in an indie rock band.
As an avid reader, I’m always fascinated to learn of a new genre. And this one is a doozy: werewolf romance. Now the closest I ever got to werewolf romance was watching Michael Landon in I Was A Teenage Werewolf as a child. (I had quite a crush on Little Joe in the Bonanza reruns.) But I recently came across Heart of the Wolf by Terry Spear. While I still don’t expect to become a big romance novel fan, I enjoyed how Spear created a new and complicated take on the werewolf world. Unlike Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Spear’s werewolves turn into full on wolves, not just hairy humans. They live in complicated packs that go back for generations. She graciously took the time to answer my wolf world questions.
Why Oregon as a setting for werewolves?
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©2000. 2009 Paul Guinan
With his doughboy helmet and antique telephone receiver mouth, the robot known as Boilerplate would be the envy of every steampunk street rat from here to Seattle—if he hadn’t vanished without a trace during World War I.
A technological wonder by modern standards yet constructed in an era before computers and television, he was as anachronistic as any Industrial cybergoth ever dreamed of being.
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This interview was conducted by contributor, Teresa Bergen. Ms. Bergen is the author of the novel Killing The President, and in addition to writing, transcribes and edits oral histories, paints animal portraits, makes costume devil horns, teaches yoga, and plays bass in an indie rock band.
Tim Hallinan is best known for his thriller series set in Bangkok. Unlike many crime books that take place in Asia, the primary concern of his main character, Poke Rafferty, is keeping his family together. Poke has fallen in love with Rose, an ex-go go dancer. Together they adopt a little girl who grew up on the streets. But Poke has a way of getting himself into trouble.
Now Hallinan is touring to promote Breathing Water, the fourth book in his Bangkok series. (He will be at Seattle’s Mystery Books Today, September 29, noon, and Portland’s Murder by the Book Tomorrow, September 30, 7 PM)
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This interview was conducted by contributor Nicole Krueger. You can keep track of what Nicole is up to on her wonderful blog Books and Bards.
Back when I was a cub reporter at my first newspaper job, my editor asked me what my career goals were. I would always answer, “Journalism is just a stopover for me. What I really want to be is a novelist.”
You can guess his response: “Yeah, you and every other reporter, kid.”
It’s true that far more journalists dream of becoming novelists than actually become them. S.W. Capps is one of those rare journalists who actually managed this mystifying feat. His first novel, Salmon Run, was published in 2007 by Inkwater Press (a company I now work for, hoping that rubbing elbows with honest-to-really-real authors will bring me closer to the dream I still haven’t given up).
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