Maybe there’s an instinct that compels us toward the wild, even as our daily lives become more domesticated. Or, maybe amid the technological blur of modern America, it is an urge toward an “authentic life.” In either case, contemporary readers will find much to admire in “The Cabin: A Tandem Memoir of Life in the […]
Christie Hinrichs
Posted inCulture
Poetry Isn’t Just for the Birds
Central Oregon Poetry Cell present men who love prose and verse
For nearly a decade, Larry Jacobs, Don Kunz, John Kvapil, Peter Lovering and John Martin have been meeting weekly to collaborate on their mutual hobby. It’s not fly-fishing or custom cabinetry. Not classic cars or Texas Hold ‘Em or beer. They find themselves more often in bookstores than bars, and spend a good deal of […]
Posted inBest Of Central Oregon
Best Western Wear
Cowgirl Cash
Cowgirl Cash is not a traditional western wear store–it’s a BEND western wear store, and owner Rebecca Charlton understands the difference. After all, she comes from a long line of Central Oregon cowgirls. Her mother, Jeannie Smith, was the Deschutes Rodeo Queen in 1962, and Cowgirl Cash pays homage to her spirit, offering clothes, boots […]
Posted inBest Of Central Oregon
Best Brother/Sister Writers
Benjamin and Jennifer Percy
Growing up in Central Oregon offers plenty of material for creative writers. Just ask Benjamin Percy and his little sister Jennifer, both of whom have made names for themselves among American Literati. Ben, who describes himself as a “side-burned, growly voiced author,” has set much of his fiction in and around Bend — including his […]
Posted inCulture
Books of Bend
Read and meet local authors at the Deschutes Public Library
Jane Austen said that every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of spies. This week, a few literary “spies” will gather at the Deschutes Public Library to celebrate the fiction and nonfiction written in and around Central Oregon. With material ranging from post-apocalyptic fiction to naughty romance to small town memoir, there’s something for everyone […]
Posted inCulture
Fighting with Demons
The post-traumatic struggle in Jennifer Percy’s Demon Camp: A Soldier’s Exorcism
Several years ago, when newspapers were just announcing a “suicide epidemic” among soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, Jennifer Percy—who grew up in Central Oregon, and whose brother Benjamin Percy is also an acclaimed author (Red Moon)—began to wonder how one survives in the aftermath of such deep personal trauma, forever haunted by it. Thus […]
Posted inCulture
Australian-American and Fiction-Journalism
Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks brings novels from history
Geraldine Brooks, who joins the OSU-Cascades Camps Low Residency in Creative Writing MFA faculty this summer, is a Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, but that genre really is too confining. Her four books are each a fiction, but each is also exhaustively researched, and often inspired by an actual historical event. No surprise that the […]
Posted inCulture
Poetic Sasquatch and Alien Intervention
William L. Sullivan’s The Oregon Variations
It’s not difficult to imagine William L. Sullivan—the author of four novels and 13 works of nonfiction focused on Oregon and its many wonders—in a rough-hewn log cabin, tucked into the wilderness, typing out his novels and stories on an ancient manual typewriter (which is exactly what he did). In his most recent book, The […]
Posted inCulture
Road Warrior Meets A River Runs Through It
Peter Heller’s mild-mannered apocalypse: The Dog Stars
After The Road won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005, critics thought Cormac McCarthy had the final word on post-apocalyptic literary fiction. They didn’t see Peter Heller coming. In The Dog Stars, a national bestseller that appeared on multiple “best of” lists when it was released last year, Heller employs all the tropes of the popular […]
Posted inCulture
Slaughter Fodder
Local author reimagines wagon trains with werewolves
Among the many harrowing tales of discovery and misadventure that originated during the great western migration of the 19th century, few are as legendary as the Donner Party, a stranded group of pioneers who turned to cannibalism for sustenance. In a new reimagining of the fateful journey, local author Duncan McGeary adds a supernatural edge […]