Guest post by: Lidia Yuknavitch

Author of The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch appears at the Wordstock Festival on Sunday, October 9 at 4pm on the Wordstock Community Stage and as part of two conversation My Censor, My Self on Saturday, October 8 at noon on the Weiden+Kennedy Stage and What’s with America’s Sexual/Literary Hang-up on Sunday, October 9 at 11am on the Wordstock Community Stage.

Hey. You. American woman writer. About that body of yours? Ssssshhhhhh. Meaning: don’t bleed, don’t fart, don’t deficate. Don’t lactate, don’t orgasm, don’t pee on anything. Don’t shoot your mouth off, shoot your sexuality, don’t shoot a gun. When you write about the sex you’ve had, the anger raging in you, the grief that drove you under down deep enough to leave the world, please do it by way of craft. Don’t talk too much about putting odd things in your mouth, over indulging with drugs or alcohol, or the time you woke up in the gutter in a pool of your own sick with your pants down around your ankles. Don’t make woman characters who stab themselves, inject themselves, cut themselves, or burn themselves up, please, it’s unbecoming. Don’t say “I” too much. And for the love of god, keep the scenes of childbirth (especially if there is a vagina), menstruation, and menopause (ew) to a minimum. Gah.

You must keep to universal themes. Even if the number of females in the United States as of October 2010 was 157.2 million, and the number of males was 153.2 million. Your themes, your body stories just aren’t, you know, universal enough. I mean unless you apply enough craft. See too the VIDA count so you are not confused about women in publishing.

(Hey. Pssst. It’s me. Lidia Yuknavitch, an American woman writer, author of The Chronology of Water. Yep, the boob book. I’m here to interrupt the cultural code of the clean and proper body for a second – consider it a break-in. If you want to read some new books written by American women with female characters whose bodies do what our bodies really do? Here’s some bitchin’ contraband: Zazen by Vanessa Velselka. Zipper Mouth by Laurie Weeks. Green Girl by Kate Zambreno. The Girl With Brown Fur by Stacey Levine. I promise you these American women writers have ruptured the code of the safe and pretty body. You’re welcome. Now back to your regular programming.) O.K.? We clear?

(Pssst.: see also Elfriede Jelinek. I’m just saying. Nobel Prize in Literature, 2004, when everyone voting that day must have been, what, high?)

More information about Lidia Yuknavitch and her writing see http://www.lidiayuknavitch.net/

There is so much to see, hear, do, and learn at Wordstock that you’re bound to have questions along the way. That’s why this year we’ve teamed up with Multnomah County Public Library to bring you a mobile information team.

Who are those people in red aprons with fancy tablet computers in hand?
They are Wordstock’s own roving librarians, and their tablets are more than fashion accessories, they’re information portals, for answering your copious questions.

Do they know all about the festival, like when & where to see my favorite author, & who will be on this stage next?
They sure do. They can tell you anything about what is going on at the festival. They have our mobile app loaded to help you navigate the convention center with confidence, and learn more about Wordstock’s year round work.

What other kinds of questions can they answer?
Want to know your favorite author’s age? Or in what city that book was set? How much was beaver fur worth when the character in this book was crossing the prairie? Maybe something you read rang a bell and you want to know what it was referencing? Go ahead and ask!

Can I try to stump the librarians?
You can sure try, but it’s going to be tough! These fine folks are seasoned information hunters whose research skills will astound you. And with handheld computers at the ready, you’re going to have to get creative if you really want to challenge them.

Can I take one home with me?
As nice as it would be to have a research librarian at dinner every evening, these librarians are not up for adoption. But, did you know that the Multnomah County Library can help you research anything? Their services include a 24/7 librarian by chat or text, and one on one research help by appointment. Yeah, we love Portland too.

Guest post by: D.F. Walker

Author of Darius Logan: Super Justice Force, D.F. Walker appears at the Wordstock Festival on Saturday, October 8 at 3pm on the Wieden+Kennedy Stage and is leading the workshop Kicking Butt & Chewing Bubble Gum: Writing for Teenage Boys on Saturday, October 8 at 10:30am.

Long before my agent said it, I knew there might be difficulty finding a publisher for my book. I had researched the Young Adult market, and come to the conclusion that books for teens over the age of 13 tended to be written and marketed primarily to girls. This was especially true several years ago, during the initial Twilight frenzy, before a handful of books like Shipbreaker and The Monstrumologist came along to offer glimmers of hope for boys who weren’t interested in reading about books mired in the sappy romantic entanglements of girls torn between vampires and werewolves.

Although my agent felt we were going into a difficult market during uncertain economic times, he was convinced we would eventually be facing a bidding war for Darius Logan: Super Justice Force. Much to his disappointment—and, I must confess, mine as well—all we got were rejections. And with each rejection, there came a few very interesting comments as to why the book was getting the shaft. The three things we heard most consistently were “teen boys don’t read,” “not girl-friendly enough,” and “there’s no market for a book like this”—which I suppose covers both teen boys not reading and not being girl-friendly enough. I can’t recall how many rejections I got—but add up all the major publishers in North America and you’ll have ballpark number—and every one of these rejections pointed out that either teen boys didn’t read, my book was not girl-friendly enough, there was no market for the book, or sometimes, combinations of these three truths.

As difficult as it was to be rejected, that was not what bothered me the most. The thing that got under my skin, eating away at me like some deadly virus, was the matter-of-fact dismissal of teen boys as being non-readers by nearly every publisher in North America. It would have been one thing to not get a publishing deal because my book sucked—I’m a grown man with a thick skin can handle rejection based on the quality of my writing or lack thereof. But to not get a deal because “teen boys don’t read” was a bitter pill that I refused to swallow. If, in fact, teen boys aren’t reading books, it seems to me that there must be reason, and that this reason should be addressed immediately, lest we become a nation populated by illiterate men who didn’t read when they were teenagers.

Educational reform began in this country in 19th century, with the state of Massachusetts passing the first compulsory school attendance laws in 1825. More states followed suit, until eventually all states had laws requiring children to at the very least attend elementary school. Despite raging debates over budgets, over-crowding in classrooms and the fiasco of No Child Left Behind, the United States still pays a fair amount of lip- service to the importance of educating its children. Unfortunately, it seems that quite often this interest only extends to the most rudimentary of educations, and after a time, many young people are left to fend for themselves.

I believe that it is not only important to educate children and teach them to read, it is important to give them things they will want to read. To do any less is a violation of a moral obligation that comes with the educational process. And the pervasive and nonchalant attitude of publishers that teenage boys don’t read is not only a violation of this moral obligation; it is an abandonment of an entire portion of the population that has been deemed to not be commercially viable. In other words, there is no profit in boys reading books.

Don’t get me wrong. I know there are a lot of things in these tough economic times vying for the attention of teenage boys. Capturing a percentage of that audience is not easy, but it is necessary and morally correct. There are teenage boys out there who like to read. I hear from them, their parents, and their teachers on a regular basis, and everyone tells me basically the same thing: “It’s so hard to find good books for teen boys.”

I submit to the publishing industry as a whole this simple truth: it’s not that teenage boys don’t read, it’s that you aren’t publishing anything worth reading. Some publishers are better than others, and there are some awesome books out there—the Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness is amazing, and Charlie Higson’s The Enemy is one of my favorite YA books of all time. But overall the market of books for older teen boys vacillates between bleak and pathetic.

As the publishing industry struggles to define itself amidst the rising popularity of electronic books and the closures of both independent booksellers and national chain stores, there is no better time to rethink the old strategies that clearly aren’t working. Rather than turn its back on an entire segment of the population, now is the time for publishers to start putting out books that will appeal to boys. This means books with subject matter that boys will be entertained by, with covers that will appeal to them (you would think both would be no-brainers, but trust me, they aren’t). I guarantee, once publishers actually start putting out good books for teenage boys (and marketing them properly), teenage boys will start reading books. Of course, I know that they already do.

D. F. Walker is a writer, filmmaker, and crime fighter. More information about him, his thoughts and his projects can be found at www.SuperJusticeForce.com

Guest post by: Jennifer Richter

Author of Threshold, Jennifer Richter appears at the Wordstock Festival on Saturday, October 8 at 11am on the Attic Institute Stage

What are you reading now? What is your favorite book of the year?

I’m actually reading my husband Keith Scribner’s novel, The Oregon Experiment. I read some early drafts years ago, and it’s great to reunite with these characters and see how fleshed-out and compelling and complicated they’ve become. Can I call that my favorite book of the year?

Which writers have most influenced you?

Two writers who were also my early teachers have influenced me a great deal: Yusef Komunyakaa and Bruce Weigl. They’ve written about the Vietnam War as well as more domestic subjects with a strikingly honest, desperate tone; my book Threshold focuses on the subjects of motherhood and illness, and Yusef and Bruce’s poetry helped me to write from the trenches.

What are you working on now?

I’m taking this fall off from teaching to work on poetry collection #2.

Another focus at the festival this year is children’s literature. What was your favorite book as a child? Who is your favorite children’s book author now?

I have great memories of learning to read with the Ant and Bee books by Angela Banner. Somebody needs to get those back in print.

I’ve loved reading Jon Muth’s books to our kids; also William Steig’s Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. Lio Lionni’s Frederick—about a dreamy little poet-mouse in a “chatty family of field mice”—is also fabulous.

What is your favorite website for writing and literature?

therumpus.net

What is your favorite food?

Coconut macaroons. Also the marionberry pie I just made with our backyard berries.

Do you have any connection with Portland or to the Pacific Northwest? Have you been to Portland before and, if so, what is your favorite thing about it?

We’ve been fortunate to live in Corvallis—about an hour and a half south of Portland—for the past eleven years. We get up to Portland often; our family favorites are Powell’s, the fountains you can play in, the Portland Arts & Lectures series, Voodoo Donuts, and the bike paths along the riverfront.

For more info about Jennifer Richter see http://jenniferrichterpoet.com/ or https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002546123820&sk=info

Guest post by: Nancy Sullivan

The school librarian at Madison High School in Portland, Nancy Sullivan appears at the Wordstock Festival as part of the conversation Banned on Sunday, October 9 at 2pm on the Wordstock Community Stage.

I’m excited and honored to be appearing with young-adult author Ellen Hopkins on a panel at Wordstock in a few weeks. On many occasions I have revisited my memories of her talk during the 2010 OASL (Oregon Association of School Libraries) Fall Conference, where she brought a thick file folder jam-packed with letters from adolescent readers responding to her books. School library professionals from around the state sat captivated as she shared a selection of these letters with us. The writers expressed everything from appreciation for her writing style to profound gratitude for saving their lives. This is not hyperbole. Ellen’s books save people’s lives.

Some people don’t believe (or don’t want to believe) that teenagers deal with the issues Ellen addresses in her books – that students have close family members or caregivers succumbing to addiction, living on the streets, working in the sex trade, or wanting to die. But they do. I teach in an “under-achieving” urban school (the most diverse in the state) with a population of about 1,200 students, and I see a microcosm of Ellen’s stories in my work on a daily basis. Ellen travels around the entire country meeting thousands of kids, and listening to their stories in response to her own. On both sides of her conversations are stories that need to be told, and stories that need to be heard.

At the time of this writing, we are about to celebrate Banned Books Week (BBW), September 24–October 1, 2011, an annual library event celebrating our freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment.

As a school librarian I do not believe in censorship, but I do believe in developmentally appropriate materials. I don’t want my daughter’s school librarian handing her, at 10 years of age, a book in which the protagonist is a first year college student who is experimenting with sex and drugs and struggling with depression. (Actually, my daughter’s school does not have a school librarian, but that’s a separate issue.)

I think the concern that books addressing tough issues do not belong in schools is often well intentioned, but ultimately naive and counterproductive. Adolescents are doing their best to understand and figure out their world, and their world contains some serious problems. I would never interrogate a student who brings one of Ellen’s books up to the circulation desk about why they might have chosen this particular book—and if I did, the answer would be different for each student. Kids are curious. If anyone needs help figuring out the human condition, it’s teenagers.

A frequently cited reason for censorship challenges of books that deal with sex or addiction, is the belief that they will encourage a young person to romanticize or experiment with these behaviors. From my perspective, I see the impact as exactly the opposite. Not only do well-written and compelling stories that confront these issues help teenagers make positive choices, they can also trigger impulses to learn more, help others, or empathize with those who might be struggling in a way that hearing a 30-second public service announcement (or the nightly news) never will.

Teenagers have stories to tell, and stories they need to hear. Banned books are banned wisdom—and we can’t afford to keep that wisdom from our youth.

For more information on issues of Intellectual Freedom:

American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom:
50 East Huron Street
Chicago, IL 60611
(312) 280-4223
Fax: (312) 280-4227
E-mail: oif@ala.org
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/index.cfm

Mission:
Established December 1, 1967, the Office for Intellectual Freedom is charged with implementing ALA policies concerning the concept of intellectual freedom as embodied in the Library Bill of Rights, the Association’s basic policy on free access to libraries and library materials.

In Oregon:
Leigh Morlock, OASL Intellectual Freedom Chair, lamorlock@hotmail.com

Candace Morgan, Coordinator, Celebrate the Freedom to Read in Oregon (BBW);
cooperative project of the Intellectual Freedom Committees of the Oregon Library Association and the Oregon Association of School Libraries, Oregon Intellectual Freedom Clearinghouse (Oregon State Library) and the ACLU of Oregon, cd_df_morgan@msn.com

To find out what Nancy Sullivan is up to, please visit: http://www.pps.k12.or.us/schools/madison/241.htm

The competition is going to be stiff. We recommend taking the next 48 hours to hone your tweeting skills.

Good Luck.

Guest post by: Viva Las Vegas

Author of The Gospel According to Viva Las Vegas, Viva Las Vegas appears at the Wordstock Festival as part of the conversation What’s with America’s Sexual/Literary Hang-up on Sunday, October 9 at 11am on the Wordstock Community Stage.

One of the most treasured artifacts in my family is an old, worn cassette tape from the late seventies. On it my great-uncle Bob interviews my great-grandma about her childhood as a pioneer on the South Dakota prairies. In my opinion, it’s a national treasure.

Immanuel Lutheran Church in Canova, South Dakota, the social hub
of the prairie where my great-grandmother Selma Spieler grew from
preacher’s daughter to preacher’s wife.

As a teen, I’d play the tape on my dad’s fancy tape deck and sit close to the speakers so as to catch every vividly remembered detail. Great-grandma wasn’t a fabulous storyteller per se, but she had fabulous stories. Stories that, although articulated in a somewhat feeble, German-inflected monotone, had me by the seat of my capri pants. In one particularly memorable tale, she recalls accompanying her pa on a mid-winter trek into the Canadian wilds to evangelize a tribe of heathen Russian émigrés. After a long, treacherous commute in sub-zero weather by sleigh, the little eight-year-old preacher’s daughter was welcomed into the domicile of a hooch-pickled polygamist and his happy harem. Later that evening, she sat wide-eyed at a bacchanal to rival anything I’ve seen at Portland’s Casa Diablo (where the last days of the Roman Empire are reenacted nightly) while her father tried valiantly to bridge the language gap and preach the Gospel to what was essentially an orgy.


Great-grandma must’ve been nearing ninety when she told these tales into her son’s new-fangled tape recorder. And it’s only because of this well-worn cassette tape that I learned that my frail little great-granny—who is so fuzzy in memory I see only cat-eye glasses and floral-print cotton shifts—lived quite the wild life. I was gonna have a hard row to hoe if my stories were ever going to measure up. But by George I was gonna try.

So now I’m trying. Collecting stories, as it were. The trajectory of my life makes little sense outside of this: I LOVE a good story. As such, good stories are attracted to me. Make no mistake—this is not always a good thing. I’ve had far more than my share of tragedies, tragicomedies, romantic tragedies, romantic comedies. I still walk the boards at Mary’s Club for precisely this reason. It’s not for the $$ (not as much as you’d think) or because I’m an exhibitionist (I’m not). I mince around Mary’s in various states of undress because it’s a STORY JACKPOT. The stories that pass through “Rose City’s First Topless” are second-to-none. You get a lot of bum stories, a lot of rockstar/moviestar stories, and plenty of Average Joe stories (not so average after all!). But best of all, you get WOMEN’S stories. Strippers, mothers, grandmothers, even great-grandmothers… It’s a wonderfully intimate and revealing Kaffeeklatsch, and not just cuz most of the female habituées are all-nude girls (though I’m sure that has something to do with it).

My compulsion to collect stories dovetails nicely with my compulsion to write. Eventually I compiled my strip club stories and published two books: Magic Gardens and The Gospel According to Viva Las Vegas. When I started writing about stripping (in 1998, for Exotic Magazine), I felt that my published musings served a greater purpose—inspired a fresh perspective, something I felt was urgently needed. And I think that back then, they did. But it’s a brave new world now, in which the rôles of writer and reader have merged. Nowadays, a fundamental part of the American experience seems to be writing about oneself: in a memoir, in the blogosphere, on facebook. In a sense, everyone is a stripper. This ubiquitous compulsion to reveal is curious to me and, ironically, makes me crave more privacy. In 1998, no one wanted to admit she was a stripper. Nowadays there are dozens, if not hundreds, of stripper blogs, and the Stripper Memoir is a genre. In 1998, I wrote about my life as a sex industry worker with a passion inspired by a sense of mission. Nowadays, I prefer to keep that part of my life under wraps.


I think about this paradigm shift a lot, and how we’ve gone from telling stories around a fire to telling stories via facebook status updates. Some storytelling technologies I grew up with are now archaic, like tape recorders and bound books (so they say). But although the way we tell stories is changing rapidly, I’m comforted to think that the stories remain very much the same.

Perhaps one day I’ll have a precocious great-granddaughter who will sift through the archaic technology of the Internet until she comes across my tales of venturing into the wilds of Portland, Oregon, to convert a population of sex-worker decrying, hooch-pickled heathens with the Gospel according to Viva Las Vegas.

I hope she’ll be inspired.

More about Viva Las Vegas at http://vivacide.com/

Guest post by: Mary Rechner

Author of Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women, Mary Rechner appears at the Wordstock Festival as part of the conversation Banned on Sunday, October 9 at 2pm on the Wordstock Community Stage.

The Wordstock panel I’m moderating is called “Banned” and features YA writers, Ellen Hopkins and Jonathan Hill and Nancy Sullivan, Madison High School librarian and President-Elect of the Oregon Association of School Libraries.

I’m excited to be on such a dynamic panel! Hopkins writes her hugely popular novels in verse, Hill is a graphic novelist, and Sullivan runs a vibrant library (along with a killer poetry slam team) at one of the most culturally diverse high schools in the state of Oregon.

The conversation is sure to be compelling. No writer wants to be banned, but writers who are surely have good company: Whitman, Orwell, Shelley, Twain, Lawrence, Flaubert… the list goes on.

During the panel I hope to learn:

     - Are there any benefits to being banned?

     – Does it up street cred?

     – Do more kids want to read you if you make their parents nervous?

     – Does the occasional banned book brouhaha serve to keep books culturally relevant?

     – If books weren’t ever banned, would it mean nobody cared?

These days, in addition to reading work by Hopkins and Hill, I’m reading my usual mix of classic and contemporary.

Classic: Herzog by Saul Bellow

Contemporary: A Simple Machine, Like the Lever, by Evan P. Schneider, the publisher of Boneshaker, A Biking Almanac.

Also, I’m working on a new book of linked stories. The working title is Living and Dying on the East Coast. You can read one of the stories in the New England Review.

More info about Mary Rechner is available at http://www.maryrechner.com/ 

Additional information on Banned conversation members available here:
Nancy Sullivan: http://schedule.wordstockfestival.com/attendees?s=Nancy+Sullivan
Jonathan Hill: http://schedule.wordstockfestival.com/attendees?s=Jonathan+Hill
Ellen Hopkins: http://schedule.wordstockfestival.com/attendees?s=Ellen+Hopkins

Guest post by: Anna Solomon

Author of The Little Bride, Anna Solomon appears at the Wordstock Festival on Sunday, October 9 at 2pm on the Wieden+Kennedy Stage and as part of the conversation Move Over, Holden Caulfield on Sunday, October 9 at noon on the Wordstock Community Stage.

It’s a question I’m asked often: “How did you manage to write the perspective of a mail- order bride to America in the 1880s?” In the question, there are certain assumptions. First, that I am not – nor have been – a mail-order bride. (This is true.) Second, that I did not live in the 1880s. (Also true.) And third, that I am not an immigrant. This, too, is true. I was born in America. My parents were born in America. Most of my grandparents were even born in America.

But there’s one aspect of the immigrant experience I’ve shared: some part of me has always felt like an outsider. I grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts – a fishing town comprised mostly of Italian Catholics, Irish Catholics, and WASPS. My family was Jewish. And we didn’t belong to the small group of Jews who’d been in Gloucester for decades, running clothing stores. My parents had come to Gloucester not long before I was born. They were deeply involved in the community. My father was a City Councilor. My mother was President of our synagogue.

 
But involvement, I’ve realized, is not the same as roots. In some ways, I was a Gloucester native through-and-through. I grew up swimming in the saltmarsh, clambering rocks, picking mussels. I had my own little dinghy with a 4 horse-power motor which I masterfully captained back and forth across the Essex Bay.

 
I felt like I belonged in the place. But I was never of it. And this wasn’t just because I went to private schools from 1st grade on. It was because I was aware, always, that what other New Englanders did with ease – sailing, for instance, or fishing, or don’t even mention skiing – my parents had to work hard at. I was subjected to one near-disaster after another, each one making it clear: we were different. We came from somewhere else – not just in a geographical sense but in a sensory one as well: our muscles held different memories, our hands different skills.

The first short story I ever published was about a 70-year old Protestant man whose family had lived on the same land in Maine for generations. His last name – get this – was Seed. I didn’t realize then that I was writing about the people I longed, in some ways, to be: the people who belonged. The true Americans. It took me a while to write about a young woman, and far longer to write about Jews. But Minna Losk, the protagonist of my first novel, The Little Bride, is both these things: a young Jewish woman whose journey to America is in large part a journey toward belonging.

So how did I write so intimately about a mail-order bride in the 1880s? One answer: “It’s what a fiction writer does.” I imagine, I empathize, I seek to understand; I like to think I could do this with any character, from any background. Another: “I identify with her. I’m still becoming an American, too.”

How are you still becoming an American? Is there one place that you feel you are of? Where do you belong?

More info about Anna Solomon and her book at www.annasolomon.com  or www.thelittlebride.com  and on Twitter @SolomonAnna