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Oregon Humanities: Spring 2013
Trophy
Does money make the man?
I was at a writing conference in upstate New York the night my boyfriend, Daniel, called to tell me about his Emmy nomination. Before I got the call, I’d been considering having an affair with one of my fellow conference-goers, a thirty-five-year-old waiter with plans to publish a memoir that would, he suggested, revolutionize the art of food writing. By the time Daniel and I hung up the phone, though, I felt rededicated to our wobbly, long-distance relationship—not to mention excited about picking out a fancy dress to wear to the awards ceremony. It didn’t occur to me that the sudden surge in my commitment level might have something to do with the equally sudden upswing in Daniel’s professional situation.
Daniel had what most people would probably consider a good job, working for a television studio as a 3-D animator. One night, he showed me a sample of his work: a made-for-TV movie with no dialogue, about toy soldiers that come to life and kill a guy. We watched all forty-five painstaking minutes, curled against each other on Daniel’s futon. At one point, a three-inch helicopter crashed into a chair leg, exploding into dozens of little flaming pieces, and he whispered, “I did that,” into my hair. Looking up at his handsome, angular face, a shy smile playing on his lips, I thought, We’re doomed. Not only was Daniel tied to Los Angeles because of his job, and I to a graduate program in creative writing in Portland, but, more significant, I was a self-proclaimed “Artist”—a writer, no less—and he made stuff blow up in movies without words.
Yet every few weeks for about a year, we tried to keep the relationship afloat, as Daniel flew to Portland or I scraped up the funds to visit him in L.A. Because of the geographical distance between us, the relationship felt low-pressure, which suited me well, since I didn’t want major distractions taking me away from my writing. And in spite of his “good job,” I believed I saw shades of a true Artist in Daniel, hints that deep inside him beat the heart of a man for whom beauty and truth outweighed all other concerns. In his spare time, he liked to draw and paint. He even had a particular character—an ugly flower who suffered from unrequited love for a butterfly that landed on him solely to steal his nectar—which he drew over and over again, and which clearly expressed some essential part of who Daniel was and how he felt about life.
Sometimes I tried to get Daniel to admit that what he really wanted to do was become a serious visual artist, but he remained firm about not wishing to make his living as a painter. I claimed to understand, but in truth I considered Daniel a bit of a sellout. At the studio, he was always subject to his superiors’ whims and judgments, so his work didn’t really belong to him. Yet I did envy Daniel for making what seemed like heaps of money at a stable job that he enjoyed while I struggled to pay my bills each month. Occasionally, I even despised my own dreams for the financial burden they seemed to place on me.
The fact is that in some dim corner of my soul, I had begun to wonder what made an aspiring artist, finally, an Artist. If money—which seemed to be society’s usual way of determining worth—had anything to do with it, then I was probably less of an Artist than that elephant who learned how to paint with his trunk—his trainers, at least, must have made some money. Talent ought to be the truest measuring stick, but how does one ever assess one’s own artistic ability accurately? And what about someone with a deeply poetic sensibility who hasn’t had the proper guidance or time necessary to hone her craft—is she an Artist? In my bitterest moments, I told myself that even the most dedicated and gifted among us only become Artists once they achieve some measure of success, which usually means whenever wealthy people start buying or promoting their work. And while I had to keep believing my time would come—I was young, after all, the best years might yet be ahead of me—I had begun to wonder how I’d cope if it never did.
***
On the day of the Emmys, Daniel offered me his hand and I stepped out of our rented limousine and onto the red carpet. Above us, the dazzling Los Angeles sun burned bright, making the bare backs and shoulders of the women around us shine, their sequins sparkle. To one side, hordes of photographers scrambled over each other, clamoring for the perfect shot.
“Over here!” they called. “Turn this way!”
Still blinking from the abrupt change of light, I felt something bloom and soar inside my chest. I thought, for a moment, that the photographers were calling to me.
“What are you wearing?” they cried, and I looked down at my gray satin dress with the tiny cap sleeves made of lace; I’d hoped it would transform me into a vintage starlet. But the photographers couldn’t care less about me or my dress, or even Daniel in his ill-fitting tux; they cared only about the stars who stood between us and them, up against the red velvet ropes.
Even if the paparazzi didn’t think Daniel and I were of any importance, I felt important. I didn’t ask myself what my date’s achievement had to do with me. There, in the bustling lobby of the Shrine Auditorium, with its pseudo-Egyptian motif and classy Art Deco furnishings, I was grateful to Daniel for leading me, on his well-muscled arm, into a privileged realm that had always been—I was sure of it now—my rightful milieu.
Daniel won the Emmy that night for the work he’d done on the TV movie he’d shown me about murderous toy soldiers. As I watched him collect his statue, I beamed with pride and sat up straight in the plush, crimson seat. If the cameras had turned toward me, they’d have captured an adoring girlfriend with a bright smile and excellent posture.
That night, I understood for the first time how closely success and money are bound with attraction and sex. This was a truth I experienced intuitively, on a physical level I couldn’t deny. For as the evening progressed—from the awards ceremony, to the celebratory dinner and ball, to an all-night after-party thrown at a studio executive’s mansion—my pride turned, very quickly, to desire. I hadn’t felt such strong desire before, for Daniel or for anyone else I’d been with. His smile flashed; his blue eyes twinkled. His broad shoulders and chest, which in the past I’d thought of as too overtly masculine—attractive, sure, but in an annoyingly showy way—now begged for my touch. More than anything, though, I wanted his hands on me—low on my hip or at the small of my back, clutching an elbow, grazing an arm. I wanted badly to please him and to be beautiful for him. I wanted to be his prize: the sexy girl on the arm of the powerful man.
The house where the after-party was held resembled a pink stucco wedding cake with terra-cotta frosting. Sliding glass doors, polished until they gleamed, opened onto a deck the size of a basketball court, with spectacular views of the valley below and the surrounding Pasadena hills. A floating thatch-roofed bar drifted across the pool, ethereal beneath the pale light of the moon. I found Daniel sitting by himself at the pool’s edge, his pant legs rolled up and his bare feet dangling in the water.
I stepped out of my heels, hiked up my dress, and sat down beside him. The pool was the perfect temperature, not too warm and not too cold, as was the night air, which hung about my shoulders like a delicate shawl. I set my champagne glass down and wrapped my arms around Daniel’s neck. Punctuating each word with a kiss, I told him how proud I was of him. My head swam—from all the champagne I’d drunk, from the startling force of my own desire, and from the sudden notion that I could be falling in love. I envisioned our happy future together: once Daniel’s career really took off, he’d ask me to move to L.A. and live with him while I finished my first book. Or maybe I’d try my hand at screenwriting; perhaps Daniel had the right idea after all, and Hollywood was the best place to make a living with one’s artistic talent.
Daniel and I finally dragged ourselves away from the after-party shortly before dawn. In the dim car on our way back to his place, I couldn’t stop myself from leaning across the gearshift, kissing his neck, and asking him, rather awkwardly, if he wanted me to fall in love with him.
Daniel shifted in his seat, his silence filling the car. Outside, Los Angeles flashed by, and knotted freeways and flimsy-looking houses turned bone-pale in the thin light of early morning.
“Sure,” he finally said. “That would be nice.”
“Oh,” I said and sank back into the soft leather of the passenger seat. Staring at my lap, I attempted to smooth the wrinkles from the skirt of my dress. For the rest of the way home, neither of us spoke.
***
By the time Daniel dropped me off at the airport the following afternoon, it was pretty clear that our relationship was over. Although we continued to talk on the phone for another couple of weeks, neither of us visited the other, and Daniel soon confirmed that he no longer wished to. Maybe he had sensed that my newfound passion for him did not come from an entirely pure place. Or maybe something had shifted in our dynamic the moment he won his Emmy. Now, he not only had a higher salary than I did, but he also had this golden statue, proof positive that he was going places. My own scribbling suddenly felt small and desperate by comparison. Perhaps this discrepancy explains why rich, successful people tend to marry other rich, successful people. Wealth doesn’t necessarily make love flourish, but need—especially an imbalance of need—surely helps to stifle it.
Or maybe it’s not as complicated as all that. Maybe Daniel had simply discovered that he did not, could not, love me—for reasons that had nothing to do with money or fame. As I stood at the curb, watching the shiny black tail of his car grow smaller and smaller, I didn’t know why things with Daniel were over; only later would I come to acknowledge how much my own longing for status and security had colored our relationship, how wrong I’d been to imagine my own artistic ambitions as purer than Daniel’s, or anyone else’s. Standing in line at the Bob Hope Airport, waiting with the other passengers to board a plane back to Portland, I knew simply that a small change had taken place that weekend, not only between Daniel and me, but also in my own way of thinking about the world. And I knew, too, that in a short time, I would squeeze into my economy-class seat, open my journal to a fresh page, and begin sorting everything out.
From the Summer 2008 “Class” issue
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Contributors
Eric Gold
Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland.
Eric Gold
Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland.
Alex Behr
Alex Behr is a writer in Portland. Her last piece for Oregon Humanities appeared in the spring 2009 “Nostalgia” issue.
Eric Gold
Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland and regular contributor to Oregon Humanities.
Kristy Athens
Kristy Athens’ nonfiction and short fiction have been published in a number of magazines, newspapers, and literary journals, most recently High Desert Journal, Eclectic Flash, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and Five Fishes Journal.
Rich Wandschneider
Rich Wandschneider was the founding director of Fishtrap, a literary nonprofit in eastern Oregon, and is now building the Alvin Josephy Library of Western History and Culture at Fishtrap. He writes a regular newspaper column and has written for the Oregonian, High Desert Journal, High Country News, and others. He is on the editorial advisory board of this magazine and on the board of directors for Oregon Humanities.
Ellen Santasiero
Ellen Santasiero is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Northwest Review, The Sun, Marlboro Review, Oregon Humanities, and in a recent anthology from the University of Oklahoma Press. She is at work on a memoir.
Caroline Cummins
Caroline Cummins is the managing editor of Culinate.com.
Jedidiah Chavez
Jedidiah Chavez is a visual artist and writer based in Portland. His work has been showcased in a variety of venues nationally and in the Pacific Northwest. Chavez was awarded a 2010 project grant by the Regional Arts and Culture Council.
Kristin Kaye
Kristin Kaye is a Portland-based writer. Her book, Iron Maidens, was an Oregon Book Awards finalist. She has recently completed her novel To Catch What Falls.
Lucy Burningham
Lucy Burningham is an independent writer and journalist who lives in Portland. She holds a master’s degree in nonfiction writing from Portland State University.
Eric Gold
Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland and former communications assistant at Oregon Humanities.
John Frohnmayer
John Frohnmayer is chair of the Oregon Humanities board of directors.
Sarah Gilbert
Sarah Gilbert is writing a book about mothers looking for emotional healing in food. In February, she decided to begin homeschooling her eldest son.
Courtney S. Campbell
Courtney S. Campbell is the Hundere Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University. You can try friending him through his Facebook page.
Barry Johnson
Barry Johnson has written about the arts since 1978 when he started writing about dance for the now-defunct Seattle Sun. He has edited arts sections at Willamette Week and The Oregonian, where he recently finished a twenty-six-year stint. You can find his up-to-the-minute thoughts on the arts at http://artsdispatch.blogspot.com.
Nancy Rommelmann
Nancy Rommelmann’s recent books include Transportation, The Bad Mother, and The Queens of Montague Street, a memoir of growing up in 1970s Brooklyn Heights that was excerpted by the New York Times Magazine. She is a long-form journalist whose work appears in the LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Byliner, and other publications.
Phil Busse
Phil Busse recently took the position of editor of The Source, a weekly paper in Bend. He also continues to serve as the executive director for the educational nonprofit Media Institute for Social Change and is an adjunct instructor at Portland State.
Sarah Mirk
Sarah Mirk is a Portland journalist who often writes about gender, sexuality, and politics as the online editor of Bitch magazine and as the author of the forthcoming book Sex from Scratch (Microcosm, 2014). Her other interests include writing comics and talking to strangers.
Courtney Campbell
Courtney Campbell is Hundere Chair in Religion and Culture and professor of philosophy at Oregon State University. He is also an Oregon Humanities Conversation Project leader for the program “Friendship: Reviving, Surviving, or Dying?”
M. Allen Cunningham
M. Allen Cunningham is the author of the novels The Green Age of Asher Witherow and Lost Son, and the recipient of a 2013 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission. His story collection, Date of Disappearance, was recently published in an illustrated limited-edition by Atelier26 Books and his first nonfiction volume, The Honorable Obscurity Handbook, is forthcoming. He leads an Oregon Humanities Conversation Project program on the subject of e-reading.
Dan DeWeese
Dan DeWeese is the author of Disorder, a story collection, and You Don’t Love This Man, a novel. He is also the editor in chief of Propeller, a web magazine.
Margaret Malone
Margaret Malone’s work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Swink, Coal City Review, latimes.com, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2009 Oregon Literary Fellowship and a 2011 Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship. She lives in Portland with her husband and son.
Dave Allen
Dave Allen is director of interactive strategy at NORTH, a branding agency in Portland. He is also an adjunct lecturer in digital strategy at the University of Oregon, as well as the founding member and bass player of the UK band Gang of Four.
Dmae Roberts
Dmae Roberts is a Peabody-winning radio producer and Oregon Book Award–winning writer. Her work has been on NPR and published widely. She is a USA Rockefeller Fellow and received the Dr. Suzanne Award for Civil Rights and Social Justice from the Asian American Journalists Association. She lives in Portland with her hubby and twin kitties.
Brian David Johnson
Brian David Johnson is a futurist at Intel. His book Vintage Tomorrows: A Historian and a Futurist Journey Through Steampunk into the Future of Technology, coauthored with James H. Carrott, wil be published next year by O’Reilly Media. He is featured in Oregon Humanities’ Bring Your Own video series. This essay was written on a 747 somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.
Mott Greene
Mott Greene is a historian of science and technology. He was an Oregon Humanities Think & Drink presenter earlier this year for a program about the future of human and artificial intelligence. A former MacArthur Fellow, he is affiliate professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington. He admires Portland’s civic life and wishes Seattle could figure that out.
Jill Owens
Jill Owens works in marketing for Powell’s Books. She enjoys interviewing authors as part of her job and for publications like Oregon Humanities.
J. David Santen Jr.
J. David Santen Jr. has written about books, business, the environment, and communities for the Oregonian, the Portland Business Journal, and other publications. He lives in Portland.
Camas Davis
For more than a decade Camas Davis has been a magazine editor and writer for national magazines such as National Geographic Adventure and Saveur, and local publications such as Portland Monthly, Edible Portland, and Mix. In 2009, she traveled to France to study butchery. Upon her return, she founded the Portland Meat Collective, a traveling butchery school.
Sarah Gilbert
Sarah Gilbert is a writer, photographer, struggling urban farmer, mama to three boys, and military wife in southeast Portland. She is editor-in-chief of the new literary magazine for parents, Stealing Time, and is working on two memoirs and at least one novel.
Jim Lommasson
Photographer Jim Lommasson received the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University for Shadow Boxers: Sweat, Sacrifice & the Will to Survive in American Boxing Gyms. Previous publications include Oaks Park Pentimento. His photographs have been widely exhibited in museums and galleries.
Margot Minardi
Margot Minardi is an assistant professor of history and humanities at Reed College, and the author of Making Slavery History: Abolitionism and the Politics of Memory in Massachusetts (2010). She is currently working on a history of the nineteenth-century American peace movement.
Jill Owens
Jill Owens works in marketing for Powell’s Books, where interviewing authors is the most interesting part of her job. She’s originally from the South but has lived in Oregon for eleven years and is here to stay.
Dionisia Morales
Dionisia Morales is a freelance writer and teaches writing at Linn-Benton Community College. Her essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in CAYLX, Brevity, Cream City Review, and Silk Road.
Wendy Willis
Wendy Willis is a poet, Conversation Project leader, and the executive director of the Policy Consensus Initiative and the deputy director for Research and Development at the National Policy Consensus Center at Portland State University. Her book of poems, Blood Sisters of the Republic, is forthcoming from Press 53 in fall 2012.
Carl Abbott
Carl Abbott is professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University. A specialist on the history of cities, his recent books include Frontiers Past and Future: Science Fiction and the American West and Portland in Three Centuries: The Place and the People.
Monica Drake
Monica Drake is the author of Clown Girl (Hawthorne Books),which was optioned for film by Kristen Wiig. Her next novel, The Stud Book, is forthcoming from Hogarth Press in February 2013.
Tara Rae Miner
Tara Rae Miner is a freelance writer and editor, former managing editor of Orion magazine, and author of Your Green Abode: A Practical Guide to a Sustainable Home. She lives with her family in Portland.
John Holloran
John Holloran lives in Portland and teaches at Oregon Episcopal School. His last essay for Oregon Humanities was “After the Fall” (Spring 2011).
Rebecca Hartman
Rebecca Hartman is an associate professor of history at Eastern Oregon University. She received her PhD in history from Rutgers University in 2004. Her current research is focused on twentieth-century U.S. rural history.
Dmae Roberts
Dmae Roberts is an award-winning independent radio producer and writer based in Portland.
Jennifer Ruth
Jennifer Ruth is a professor of English literature at Portland State University and the author of Novel Professions, a book of literary criticism.
Richard J. Ellis
Richard J. Ellis is the Mark O. Hatfield Professor of Politics at Willamette University. In 2008 he was named Oregon Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and in 2007 he was chosen as Oregon Scientist of the Year by
the Oregon Academy of Science. His book The Development of the American Presidency is forthcoming from Routledge in January 2012.
Leigh van der Werff
After ten years in Oregon, Leigh van der Werff now lives in central California, where she runs a record store with her husband and their dog, Edgar. When she’s not at the shop, she’s writing essays and music criticism.
Joanne Mulcahy
Joanne Mulcahy teaches creative nonfiction and humanities classes at the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, where she is codirector of the Documentary Studies Certificate Program. Her writing combines memoir and personal essay with ethnographic exploration. Her book Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz was published by Trinity University Press in 2010.
Marion Goldman
Marion Goldman has passed through the social worlds of Rajneeshees, Jesus People, and Nevada prostitutes. In her latest book, The American Soul Rush (forthcoming in December 2011), she describes how a small group of 1960s seekers at California’s Esalen Institute cultivated and spread spiritual alternatives ranging from transpersonal psychology to yoga to Zen golf. She is professor of sociology and religious studies at the University of Oregon.
Guy Maynard
Oregon Humanities editorial advisory board member Guy Maynard is the editor of Oregon Quarterly, the magazine of the University of Oregon, and the author of The Risk of Being Ridiculous, a historical novel of love and revolution set in Boston in the the late 1960s, into which he managed to slip several Red Sox references. He lives in Eugene.
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri
Kambiz GhaneaBassiri is an associate professor of religion and humanities at Reed College in Portland. He is the author of A History of Islam in America (from which this selection is excerpted) and Competing Visions of Islam in the United States. He was also a faculty member at the Oregon Humanities Teacher Institute in July 2011.
Tim DuRoche
Tim DuRoche is a writer, jazz musician, artist, and cultural advocate. He works as the director of programs for the World Affairs Council of Oregon. Tim hosts the The New Thing, a weekly jazz program on KMHD-89.1 FM in Portland, is currently developing a program on jazz and community values for Oregon Humanities’ Conversation Project, and is the author of the recently published collection of essays, Occasional Jazz Conjectures.
Walidah Imarisha
Walidah Imarisha is a founding editor of AWOL, a national political hip hop magazine and has toured nationally and internationally as part of the poetry duo Good Sista/Bad Sista. She has taught in Portland State University’s Black studies department and leads three Conversation Project programs for Oregon Humanities on hip hop, the history of race in Oregon, and reenvisioning the prison system.
Kim Stafford
Kim Stafford is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College and author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Elegant Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft. This essay is a section from his book-in-progress, 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do.
Debra Gwartney
Debra Gwartney is the author of the 2009 memoir Live Through This, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Oregon Book Award, and the PNBA award. She is currently working on a memoir about growing up in the West and the heritage of Narcissa Whitman, a project for which she received a research grant from the American Antiquarian Society. Debra lives on the McKenzie River with her husband, Barry Lopez, and is on the nonfiction faculty at Pacific University.
Susan Meyers
After growing up selling corndogs and cotton candy at carnivals up and down the West Coast, Susan Meyers extended her gypsy lifestyle by spending several years in Latin American before coming home to the Pacific Northwest. Her work has recently appeared in CALYX, Dogwood, Terra Incognita, and The Minnesota Review, and it has been the recipient of several awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship. She teaches writing at Oregon State University.
Matthew Stadler
Matthew Stadler is a writer and editor in Portland. He writes about cities and urbanism for journals including Volume, Netherlands Architecture Bulletin, Domus, and Camerawork. His book about urbanism, Deventer, is forthcoming from 010 Uitgevrij, in Rotterdam. In 2009 he cofounded Publication Studio (http://www.publicationstudio.biz) in Portland.
Amanda Waldroupe
Amanda Waldroupe is a freelance journalist living in Portland. Whenever she fails, she buckles down and tries, tries again.
John Holloran
John Holloran lives in Portland and teaches at Oregon Episcopal School, where he is the chair of the history department. His last essay for Oregon Humanities was “Under a Spell” (Summer 2009).
Scott Nadelson
Scott Nadelson’s most recent book is The Cantor’s Daughter. A new collection of his short fiction, Aftermath, is forthcoming from Hawthorne Books in Fall 2011. He teachers creative writing at Willamette University. His latest essay for Oregon Humanities was “Go Ahead and Look” (Spring 2010)
Todd Schwartz
Todd Schwartz is in reality a very serious and reserved person who divides his time between being a Calvinist minister and a funeral home director. Wait…wait! A funeral home director and a Calvinist minister walk into a bar…
Courtenay Hameister
Courtenay Hameister is the host and head writer of LiveWire Radio, the co-creator of “Road House: The Play!,” a screenwriter and filmmaker. In her spare time, she likes to imagine what it would be like to have more spare time.
Ariel Gore
Ariel Gore is the author of seven books including Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), from which this selection is excerpted. She is also the founding editor of Hip Mama, and editor of the Lambda-award-winning anthology Portland Queer. She teaches creating writing online at the University of New Mexico and The Attic in Portland.
Jamie Passaro
Jamie Passaro lives in Eugene, where she is a freelance writer and an editor for Northwest Book Lovers, a blog produced by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. Her last essay for Oregon Humanities was “Driving Mrs. Spacely” (Summer 2008).
Andrew Guest
Andrew Guest is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Portland. When not watching, playing, coaching or writing about soccer, he does research on youth developmental and educational experiences through sports, arts, and service activities.
David Bragdon
David Bragdon served on the Portland regional Metro Council for nearly twelve years and was elected president in 2002. The major accomplishment of his service was an expansion of the regional parks and natural areas network known as the Intertwine. He resigned from the Metro Council in September 2010 in order to accept New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s appointment as director of the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability.
M. Allen Cunningham
M. Allen Cunningham is the author of Lost Son, a novel about the life of Rainer Maria Rilke. His first novel, The Green Age of Asher Witherow was a #1 Booksense Pick and was shortlisted for the Booksense Book of the Year. He’s the recipient of an artist fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission and a Yaddo residency. His third novel, set partly in the Pacific Northwest, is forthcoming.
Bette Lynch Husted
Bette Lynch Husted lives and writes in Pendleton. She is the author of Above the Clearwater: Living on Stolen Land (OSU Press, 2004) and At This Distance: Poems (Wordcraft of Oregon, 2010). Lessons from the Borderlands, her collection of memoir essays about teaching, class, gender, and race, is forthcoming from Plain View Press. She is a 2004 Oregon Book Award and WILLA finalist and was awarded a 2007 Oregon Arts Commission fellowship.
Bob Bussel
Bob Bussel is associate professor of history and director of the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon. He has published numerous articles on labor history and contemporary labor issues, including a history of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. He is currently working on a book about working-class citizens.
Dave Weich
Dave Weich is the president of Sheepscot Creative. The Portland-based company fosters engaging and profitable communication among businesses, consumers, colleagues, and fans. Weich is on the editorial advisory board of Oregon Humanities magazine.
Camela Raymond
Camela Raymond is a Portland-based writer whose work has appeared in Modern Painters, Plazm, the Oregonian, and elsewhere. She was previously an editor at Portland Monthly magazine and the founding editor/publisher of the Organ. She serves on the editorial advisory board of Oregon Humanities magazine.
Scott Nadelson
Scott Nadelson’s most recent book is The Cantor’s Daughter. He teaches creative writing at Willamette University.
Karen Karbo
Karen Karbo‘s three novels, as well as her Oregon Book Award–winning memoir, The Stuff of Life, have all been named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her most recent book is The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World’s Most Elegant Woman.
Lisa Radon
Lisa Radon has written about art and design for Portland Spaces (as associate editor), Portland Monthly, Surface Design Journal, SHIFT (Japan), FLAUNT, Hyperallergic, and ultra (ultrapdx.com). She’s written a handful of catalog essays and is working on her first book.
R. Gregory Nokes
R. Gregory Nokes has worked as a reporter and editor for the Associated Press and the Oregonian. His reporting about this incident has resulted in a formal designation of the massacre site as Chinese Massacre Cove. He lives in West Linn.
Christine Dupres
Christine Dupres is the former director of the Office of Sustainability and Community Engagement at the Native American Youth and Family Center in Portland. She is a freelance writer and an Oregon Humanities board member.
Apricot Irving
Apricot Irving is a writer and radio producer whose most recent project, Boise Voices Neighborhood Oral History Project , brought together elders and youth in Northeast Portland. She has lived in Haiti, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom, but currently calls Portland home.
Brian Doyle
Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, and the author most recently of Thirsty for the Joy: Australian & American Voices, from One Day Hill Press in Melbourne, Australia.
Lucy Burningham
Lucy Burningham is an independent writer and journalist who lives in Portland. During the past decade, she has traveled on assignment for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and Lonely Planet guidebooks. She holds a master’s in nonfiction writing from Portland State University.
Vicente Martinez
Vicente Martinez lives in Portland and works at a fast food restaurant.
Susan W. Hardwick
Susan W. Hardwick is a professor of geography at the University of Oregon. Her research and teaching focus on the geography of immigration, identity, and place in the Pacific Northwest. She is the author or co-author of nine books, including Russian Refuge: Religion, Migration, and Settlement on the North American Pacific Rim (University of Chicago Press, 1993). This article is adapted from Hardwick’s Commonplace Lecture that she delivered for Oregon Humanities in 2007.
Sarah Gilbert
Sarah Gilbert is a writer and photographer who lives in Portland with her husband and three little boys. She writes about food and finance for several web sites, including DailyFinance, WalletPop and Culinate, is cofounder of the Portland parenting resource urbanMamas.com, and keeps a blog, cafemama.com.
Kevin Nute
Kevin Nute is a professor of architecture at the University of Oregon. He is the author of the American Institute of Architects award-winning monograph, Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan (1993) and Place, Time and Being in Japanese Architecture (2004).
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