Take That, Pious Prius Drivers!

Misfits and Other Heroes
By Suzanne Burns
Dzanc Books
First off, we'll make no effort to hide the fact that local author Suzanne Burns is a contributor to this publication. You might remember her pieces on playing Bunco, traveling to Mitchell and you'll soon read about her experiences with psychics in an upcoming issue. But there's a good chance that your first exposure to Burns' writing came in the form of an excerpt of her quirky short story, "Tiny Ron," which took the top prize in the 2008 Source fiction contest.
Now, that short story - a woman's narrative of life married to the world's smallest man - appears in the aptly titled Misfits and Other Heroes, a collection of 14 short stories, all of which share the same whimsical quirkiness of "Tiny Ron." Throughout these stories, Burns weaves a collection of often-outlandish characters into fluid narratives that allow us to believe the tiny worlds she so meticulously creates. Each story is focused on wildly interesting characters, as evidenced by the soap opera star turned kidnapper in "Bittersweet" and the baking-obsessed copy editor in "Domestic Arts."

Katherine Dunn demonstrates that some poses are just eternally cool.

It’s been 20 years since Portland author Katherine Dunn published her quirky novel, Geek Love, a book that is still widely read and loved for its weird depiction of a family of circus freaks. Dunn’s fans also know her as one of the country’s most accomplished boxing reporters and some of her most memorable pieces on pugilism now appear in a new book, One Ring Circus: Dispatches from the World of Boxing. We caught up with Dunn before her pair of appearances in Central Oregon on July 15 to chat about, well, mostly boxing. Makes, sense, right?
When you were putting together One Ring Circus, was that sort of a walk back through your entire career as boxing reporter? Oh, absolutely. It was definitely a trip down memory lane for me. One of the things, of course, was that almost all of the pieces were written for general interest publications, not for boxing publications. Although I did write and continue to write for boxing publications, these seem to be the most consciously designed to reach out to people who were not necessarily boxing fans and to try to engage with people who might have even negative attitudes toward boxing, of which they are a larger number of, unfortunately.