New California Writing: 2011Gayle Wattawa, ed. 320 pages, softcover: $20.Heyday, 2011. Most anthologies possess a ready-made but sometimes narrow audience. Readers come to these single-subject, multi-authored books with an already established connection and desire to know more. What, then, does a book focused on California offer to those who live outside the Golden State? Plenty, […]
Tara Rae Miner
Posted inOctober 31, 2011: Omens from a Vanished Sea
To die fighting: a review of Jesse’s Ghost: A Novel
Jesse’s Ghost: A NovelFrank Bergon224 pages, hardcover: $20.Heyday, 2011. “The story of how I came to kill my best friend keeps pressing on my brain like a bad dream so I can feel it, but I can’t remember it whole.” So begins Jesse’s Ghost, the account of a man’s attempt to understand a murder he […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
A part of something old: writer Kim Stafford’s storied places
In southwest Portland lies a strip of untamed land, bounded by busy roads in a dense, urban landscape. It is not a park, simply a tract of woods that developers missed. It is also not pristine nature, but it is what writer and Portland native Kim Stafford calls a “scattered Eden.” Those woods are just […]
Posted inMarch 21, 2011: Big Beef
The dark corners of the heart: A review of Volt
Volt: StoriesAlan Heathcock208 pages, softcover: $15.Graywolf Press, 2011. A good story has the power to divert us from our struggles as well as to help us understand them. This is one reason people turn to fiction, and it explains why Alan Heathcock’s debut short-story collection, Volt, is an ideal book for our times. Characters face […]