Over the past few years, I was involved with the amazing group of people who put together the annual Terroir Creative Writing Festival, hosted on the Yamhill campus of Chemeketa Community College. I’ve moved away from the area now and so haven’t been involved in this year’s planning, which means this year, I get to experience today’s announcement of their 2017 speaker list the way everyone else does: with excitement and joy!
They’ve put together a heck of a lineup, including novelists, memoirists, and poets as well as playwrights, journalists, literary agents — and, to my delight, a few of my friends:
- Sean Davis, author of The Wax Bullet War and Post Commander at what might be the nation’s most exiting — and most literary — American Legion post (and he’s a personal hero of mine: in addition to being a decorated war vet and tremendous writer, he also ran for Mayor of Portland last year, fights forest fires each summer, combats homelessness every day . . .)
- Emily Grosvenor, essayist, travel writer, author of the children’s book Tessalation!, and the brains behind Terroir’s WordStudio workshops (I led one on historical fiction last spring, and Emily herself is running one on the personal essay this month)
- Lidia Yuknavitch, divine author of The Book of Joan, The Small Backs of Children, and The Chronology of Water, and the woman who gave that TED Talk about misfits that you probably shared a few dozen times with all your social media pals
Looks like an exciting festival this year, folks! If you’re anywhere near McMinnville, OR, keep an eye out for the registration forms, sign up, and enjoy all the genius and creativity and community!
Samuel Snoek-Brown 