This week you hear from Gradylee Shapiro. I’ve never met Gradylee, he’s the best friend of one my best friends. But I feel like I know Gradylee because of the stories he tells on his blog, You Said You Would Pray for Me. They’re funny, they’re tender, they’re raw, they’re so completely authentic that you almost wince when reading them. And I knew when I was taking a hiatus from writing, that I’d like Gradylee…
Month: <span>November 2016</span>
This week you hear from Mel Wells. I met Mel Wells through Literary Arts, the organization that administers the Oregon Book Awards. Mel is smiley and tall and has an easy laugh. And because she comes from a Mormon background and has had to educate herself, probably knows more about gay history than me and my friends combined. I think of Mel and her fiancée, Ashley Brittner, who you heard from earlier, as arts movers and shakers.…
The Authenticity Experiment, the everybody’s dead edition. It’s strange: now that the cat is dead all I want to do is call my mother and tell her when I haven’t felt the urge to call her in months. Tell her that the last two nights I’ve come home to an empty house—no tortoise shell cat sitting imperiously on the back left cushion of the couch and cussing at me for being out too long, too…
This week you hear from Kate Gray. I met Kate in a coffee shop on Hawthorne. We were meeting to talk about riding bikes and writing books and she sat there in her kind, quiet, and unassuming manner. I’d just gotten on my first AWP panel and I was stoked about it and so I went on and on about AWP, not realizing what a big wig Kate Gray really was. Finalist for an Oregon…
The Authenticity Experiment, the suddenly dead old friend special edition. My father—consummate international business man—was never good with names. His right ear ruined by rifles and high angle artillery on naval vessels meant that even when I was a teenager, he didn’t hear well. So when I introduced him to Nita Kuhns, short for Juanita, I articulated the I dramatically. “Dad,” I said, “this is Neeeeeeta. Can we drop her off on our way home? …
This week you hear from the Alaskan Poet, Erin Coughlin Hollowell. I met Erin at graduate school and I’ll be honest, at first she scared the shit out of me. She’s super tall and, when I met her, she wore Frye boots that made her even taller. And she’s extra super smart (and not just because she went to Cornell for undergrad). Erin is one of the most well-read people I know, finishing well over 125…