Writing the Northwest
Archives
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Book Review: We Had Our Reasons: Poems by Ricardo Ruiz
Read more: Book Review: We Had Our Reasons: Poems by Ricardo RuizI never know where or how I’m going to come across good writing about the Pacific Northwest. A couple of weeks ago, for example, I was walking through the book fair at the Associated Writers and Writing Programs conference in Seattle when I found myself in conversation with a young…
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The Northwest’s 1st Black Theater Company–and the Fascinating Story of the Woman Who Started it
Read more: The Northwest’s 1st Black Theater Company–and the Fascinating Story of the Woman Who Started itRecently, I came across a fascinating but little-known book that should be read by anyone interested in race relations, theater, or Red Scare accusations in the Pacific Northwest. Titled Fists Upon a Star: A Memoir of Love, Theatre, and Escape from McCarthyism, it tells the story of Florence B. James…
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America’s Midnight in the Pacific Northwest
Read more: America’s Midnight in the Pacific NorthwestAdam Hochschild is not known for writing light books, nor is he known for writing about the Pacific Northwest. His best-known book is probably King Leopold’s Ghost (1998), an unrelenting exploration of the brutality, exploitation and outright slavery Belgian overlords used to extract rubber from what was then called the…
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Three Questions and a Quote: Novelist and Screenwriter Jon Raymond
Read more: Three Questions and a Quote: Novelist and Screenwriter Jon RaymondAfter a brief break over the holidays, Writing the Northwest is back, and I’m pleased to start the new year with a new feature and one of my favorite Northwest writers, Jon Raymond. Raymond is the author of an award-winning story collection, an essay collection, and four novels, including Denial…
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Set in Seattle: John Okada’s NO-NO BOY a Must-Read on the Agonies of American Immigration and Assimilation
Read more: Set in Seattle: John Okada’s NO-NO BOY a Must-Read on the Agonies of American Immigration and Assimilationby Michael N. McGregor When Americans talk about immigration, they tend to have one of two groups in mind: either the crowds of Latin American refugees massing along our southern border today or the waves of Europeans who swept into the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.…
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Northwest Indigenous Artist Sky Hopinka Receives 2022 MacArthur “Genius Grant”
Read more: Northwest Indigenous Artist Sky Hopinka Receives 2022 MacArthur “Genius Grant”by Michael N. McGregor A few weeks ago, I received an email from one of my old colleagues at Portland State University telling me a former student, Sky Hopinka, had been awarded a 2022 MacArthur “Genius Grant.” When I looked him up, I was pleased to see that his art…
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How a Fashion Trend Led to an Eastern Oregon Bloodbath–and How It Was Stopped
Read more: How a Fashion Trend Led to an Eastern Oregon Bloodbath–and How It Was StoppedFew people other than outdoorsy Oregonians and avid birders had ever heard of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon before Ammon Bundy and his gang of armed militants occupied it for six weeks in the early days of 2016. Some feared at the time that the occupation would…
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Portland the Spinster
Read more: Portland the SpinsterA three-week road trip through parts of the Midwest and Canada (including Chatham, Ontario, where the subject of my next biography–J. D. Ross–grew up) has kept me from posting anything for a while. But I’m back in the Northwest now and I just came across a May 19, 1917, article…
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More Than a Dozen Books About the Pacific Northwest Are Finalists for Today’s Washington State Book Awards
Read more: More Than a Dozen Books About the Pacific Northwest Are Finalists for Today’s Washington State Book AwardsWhen the winners of the 2022 Washington State Book Awards are announced today, books set in or focused on the Pacific Northwest are sure to be among the winners. The awards–given out by the Washington Center for the Book (an affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book,…
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