Meet Our 2010 Guest Authors

Guest authors for the November festival span genres of fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Ellen Waterston, Executive Director
The Nature of Words
Phone: 541.647.2233
Email: info@thenatureofwords.org
Website: www.thenatureofwords.org

Editors: Photos available upon request.

The Nature of Words Announces 2010 Festival Guest Authors

Bend, OR. July 3, 2010. The Nature of Words (NOW) has announced the guest author roster for its November 2010 literary festival, which takes place November 3-7. The names of the participating authors were revealed at NOW's Bookplate Reception and Auction on July 1. Acclaimed and prize-winning authors in fiction, literary non-fiction and poetry will appear at the five-day event.

The 2010 festival guest authors are as follows:

Jimmy Santiago Baca - Born in New Mexico of Chicano and Apache descent, Jimmy Santiago Baca was raised first by his grandmother and was later sent to an orphanage. A runaway at age thirteen, it was after Baca was sentenced to five years in a maximum security prison at the age of twenty-one that he began to turn his life around: there he learned to read and write. He has devoted his post-prison life to writing and teaching others who are overcoming hardship. Like many Southwestern writers, Baca identifies with the land around him and the myths that are part of his culture. He is the winner of the Pushcart Prize, the American Book Award, the National Poetry Award, the International Hispanic Heritage Award, and, for his memoir A Place To Stand, the prestigious International Award.

Michael Dickman - Michael Dickman began writing poems “after accidentally reading a Neruda ode.” His first collection is The End of the West. Dickman has received several fellowships, including a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton for 2009-2010, and he won the 2008 Narrative Prize. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Tin House, Narrative Magazine and others. He has been profiled in The New Yorker and Poets & Writers with his twin brother, poet Matthew Dickman. Matthew Dickman was a guest author at The Nature of Words' 2009 literary festival.

Kent Haruf - A self-proclaimed “ministry brat,” fiction writer Kent Haruf grew up in eastern Colorado, where his novels are set. For two years he taught English in Turkey as a member of the Peace Corps. Haruf was 41 before his first piece of fiction was published. His novel Plainsong won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The New Yorker Book Award. Haruf’s descriptions of rural existence are a richly nuanced mixture of stark details and poetic evocations of the natural world.

Hillary Jordan - Hillary Jordan is a novelist whose authentic and earthy prose is expected to echo for years to come. Of her debut novel Mudbound, Barbara Kingsolver said, “Hillary Jordan writes with the force of a Delta storm.” Mudbound received the 2006 Bellwether Prize for Fiction, a prize founded by Barbara Kingsolver to reward books of conscience, social responsibility, and literary merit. Publishers Weekly hailed Mudbound “as “a superbly rendered depiction of the fury and terror wrought by racism.”

Anne Lamott - Anne Lamott writes and speaks about subjects that begin with capital letters: Alcoholism, Motherhood, Jesus. But armed with self-effacing humor – she is laugh out-loud funny – and ruthless honesty, Lamott converts her subjects into enchantment. Lamott is the author of six novels as well as four bestselling books of non-fiction including, Operating Instructions, an account of life as a single mother during her son’s first year, and Traveling Mercies, a collection of autobiographical essays on faith. She has been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has taught at UC Davis, as well as at writing conferences across the country.

Barry Lopez – Barry Lopez is an essayist, author, and short-story writer, and has traveled extensively in remote and populated parts of the world. He is the author of Arctic Dreams, for which he received the National Book Award, and eight works of fiction, including, Resistance. His most recent book is Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, a reader's dictionary of regional landscape terms, which he edited with Debra Gwartney. Barry Lopez’s writings have frequently been compared to those of Henry David Thoreau. Lopez is the winner of The Nature of Words' 2010 Caldera Special Recognition Award.

Paulann Petersen - Paulann Petersen is Oregon’s newly appointed Poet Laureate. The author of four chapbooks and four full-length collections, she is a former Stegner fellow at Stanford University. Petersen was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award for A Bride of Narrow Escape. She is the force behind the annual series of William Stafford Birthday Readings held in January throughout Oregon. Petersen has taught poetry workshops for colleges, libraries, and writers’ conferences, including Fishtrap, Oregon Writers’ Workshop, Oregon State Poetry Association, and The Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College.

Brian Turner - Brian Turner is a soldier-poet whose much-praised second collection, Phantom Noise, is a window into dealing with the traumatic after-effects of war. Turner’s prizewinning debut book of poems, Here, Bullet, is a harrowing, beautiful first-person account of the Iraq war which won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award, the New York Times “Editor's Choice” selection, the 2006 Pen Center USA "Best in the West" award, and the 2007 Poets Prize, among others. Turner served seven years in the US Army, to include one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq. Prior to that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000.

David Whyte - David Whyte, a native of Yorkshire, England, is a poet, author and naturalist, whose poetry reflects a living spirituality and a deep connection to the natural world. The author of six books of poetry and three books of prose, David Whyte holds a degree in Marine Zoology and has traveled extensively, including living and working as a naturalist guide in the Galapagos Islands and leading anthropological and natural history expeditions in the Andes, the Amazon and the Himalayas. His life as a poet has created a readership and listenership in three normally mutually exclusive areas: the literate world of readings that most poets inhabit, the psychological and theological worlds of philosophical enquiry and the world of vocation, work and organizational leadership.

The Nature of Words festival offers two nights of author readings and book signings at the Tower Theatre in downtown Bend, a VIP Reception at Umpqua Bank, two days of guest author workshops and presentations on the Central Oregon Community College and OSU-Cascades campuses, a gala author dinner at the High Desert Museum in Bend, and an open mic, with a guest author reading, for workshop participants and community members. The festival kicks off with the Rising Star Creative Writing Competition Awards Ceremony and Reception on November 3, honoring young writers ages 15-25.

In addition to the annual festival, NOW's programs include Words Without Walls, offering creative writing workshops in regional classrooms and alternative educational environments, and The Storefront Project, providing after-school and summer drop-in creative writing workshops for students at no charge.

The Nature of Words is made possible by these sponsors and donors:
Central Oregon Community College, OSU-Cascades Campus, Penny & Phil Knight, Oregon Community Foundation, Starview Foundation in support of Deschutes Land Trust, Anonymous Donor. Bryant Lovlien & Jarvis PC, The Bulletin, Caldera, Cascade Publications, Julia Kennedy Cochran, Combined Communications, Terry Cumbie/Dudley's Bookshop Cafe, Greer Mahr & Associates LLP, The Kinsman Foundation, Les Schwab Tires, Oregon Arts Commission, Roundhouse Foundation, The Source Weekly, Umpqua Bank, University of Oregon, Dan Wieden. Brooks Resources, COCC Office of Student Life, Diversity Committee and Native American Program, Devore's Good Food Store, Margaret Heater, Mike & Sue Hollern, Phoenix Inn Suites, Jeff & Margie Robberson, Roll35, Sally Russell, Samuel S. Johnson Foundation, The Trust for Public Land. Dr. John Berreen, Deschutes County Commissioners, Deschutes Brewery, Ingrid Lustig, Linda & Craig Moore, The Oxford Hotel, Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. of Bend, Nancy Tyler.

About The Nature of Words

Now in its sixth year, the mission of The Nature of Words is to foster an appreciation of the literary arts and humanities in the High Desert region of the Northwest through community interaction with acclaimed authors, and through creative writing programs for the region's youth. For more information, visit www.thenatureofwords.org, call 541.647.2233 or email info@thenatureofwords.org.

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