You'd never know from reading his comic strip that there is a sadness at the center of Chad Carpenter's life. Carpenter is the Alaska-based cartoonist whose strip "Tundra" begins running today in The Spokesman-Review. (The Sunday strip will begin Nov. 4).
Many years ago, when Jerry Pallotta began reading to his young children, he did so from books in which the letter "A" always stood for apple, "Z" for zebra. As he says on his Web site, www.jerrypallotta.com, he gradually realized that he could do better. The result was a writing career of 20-odd books, including "The Icky Bug Alphabet Book" and "Who Will Guide My Sleigh Tonight?"
Writers spend a lot of time by themselves, dreaming up scenarios that fill the books they want the rest of us to read. Then they go out to meet the public, trying their best to get us to pop $20 or $30 for the final product. Some writers love the sales process. Others loathe it. Jess Walter has experienced all aspects of the writing trade, from writing all alone in his West Spokane neighborhood office to hitting the sales trail in bookstores across the country.
Since the days of "Heart of Darkness" author Joseph Conrad, and maybe even before, writers have talked about visitors to the continent "going African." It's hard to say exactly what that term means. As with all other all-inclusive descriptions, definitions usually are linked to the individuals they're applied to.
It's the eve of October, and you know what that means. It's time for Spokane Is Reading, the annual community read-along – now in its sixth year – that invites area literature fans to tackle the same book.
William D. Layman owes the judges of the 2007 Washington State Book Awards a double dose of thanks. The Wenatchee-based author of "River of Memory: The Everlasting Columbia" (University of Washington Press, 150 pages, $40) first needs to thank the judges for choosing "River of Memory" as the winner in the general nonfiction category.
Some of us see dead people. OK, maybe we don't see them the way Haley Joel Osment's character does in "The Sixth Sense," not as the souls of the recently deceased still unable to let go of life.
Gonzaga University will kick off its 2007-08 Visiting Writers Series on Tuesday by presenting poet Herman Asarnow. Asarnow, who will read at 7:30 p.m. in GU's Foley Teleconference Room, is a professor of English at the University of Portland. He is author of the collection "Glass Bottom Boat" and has had poems published in such literary journals as Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review and the Seattle Review.
"I was born with water on the brain." Those are the opening lines of Sherman Alexie's new novel, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" (Little, Brown; $16.99, 230 pages), which is being marketed as the author's "first novel for young adults."
No one, least of all Chris Crutcher, could have predicted the fame that would come his way as a writer. Crutcher, after all, was the roommate of the writer. It was his friend Terry Davis who, if life were a Hollywood comedy, was supposed to maintain top billing.
A few weeks ago, I pointed out that the 2007 Artist Trust GAP awards displayed a distinct West Side flavor. In that spirit, it's only right that I point out something else: Artist Trust is sponsoring a pair of workshops that should help anyone wanting to qualify for grants.
Elvis Presley has been dead for 30 years and three days now. It was on Aug. 16, 1977, that his body was found on the bathroom floor of Graceland, his Memphis, Tenn., mansion. And yet he remains a recognizable part of international popular culture.
September is approaching, and that means another school year is ready to begin. Over at Gonzaga University, it also means that a full season of the Gonzaga University Visiting Writers Series will commence.
The world can't have too many literary journals. One of the latest to enter the scene is called The Whitefish Review. As described in a press release by editor Brian Schott, "The 128-page soft cover book features established and emerging authors and artists with a leaning toward the literature of mountain culture."
In last week's column, I pointed out that the 2007 Artist Trust GAP awards bore a distinctly west-of-the-Cascades look. Of the 77 artists (out of 795 applicants) who won awards of up to $1,500, only six were from Eastern Washington. And of those, only one qualified for a literary grant: Pasco's Gwendolyn James.
For guys who were raised on Hemingway novels, TV Westerns and Steve McQueen movies, the stories of Thom Jones are irresistible. In fact, the very word irresistible – which came from a New York Times review – is emblazoned on the cover of the paperback edition of Jones' first short-story collection, 1993's "The Pugilist at Rest," which just happens to be the August choice of The Spokesman-Review Book Club.
In the press information accompanying the announcement of the 2007 Grants for Arts Project awards, the sponsoring entity – Artist Trust – does bit of bragging about its support of Washington state arts. And much of it is justified. Some examples: The 77 GAP awards given out represent a "45 percent increase in the number of awards given from 2006."
Howard Frank Mosher is a natural raconteur. In a 20-minute phone interview, you're apt to find out a number of things. That he's in the midst of a 100-city book tour in support of his latest novel, "On Kingdom Mountain," for example – a tour that will bring him to Auntie's Bookstore at 4 p.m. on Saturday.
April Christofferson isn't shy about explaining what drives her to write. Her stories, she says, reflect the things that she both cherishes and despises.
Nothing would please me more than being able to fill this column with Harry Potter clichés. But that's not going to happen. We've been given orders to avoid hackneyed, J.K. Rowling-inspired phrases as if they were Dementors in debt.
The role of screenwriter is never an easy one. Take Terry Southern, writer of such controversial novels as "Candy," "The Magic Christian" and "Red Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes."
Jeff Standal, a 52-year-old area businessman, once scoffed at the idea of online dating. "I think two or three years ago, and this is just my perception, it still had a tacky kind of quality about it," he said. "It was just kind of an instinctive thing."
