The Coos History Museum will host a free Oregon Writers’ Day event on Saturday, October 12, from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm. The event will feature presentations from three guest authors – Jason Brown, Alison Clement, and Steve Durham. All three authors will share a presentation, public reading, and answer questions from the audience. Jason Brown grew up in Maine. He was a Stegner Fellow and Truman Capote Fellow at Stanford University, where he taught as a Jones Lecturer. He has received fellowships from the Yaddo and Macdowell colonies and from the Saltonsall Foundation. He taught for many years in the MFA program at the University of Arizona and now teaches in the MFA program at the University of Oregon. He has published two books of short stories, Driving the Heart and Other Stories (Norton/Random House) and Why the Devil Chose New England For His Work (Open City/Grove Atlantic). His stories have won several awards and appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Pushcart Prize Anthology and other magazines and anthologies. Several of his stories have been performed as part of NPR’s Selected Shorts, and his collection Why The Devil Chose New England For His Work was chosen as a summer reading pick by National Public Radio. Jason’s third book of stories, a novel in stories called A Faithful But Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Lately Committed, is due out in the fall of 2019. Alison Clement has published two novels, Twenty Questions (Atria, 2006), and Pretty is As Pretty Does (MacAdam/Cage, 2001). A third is currently with her agent. Twenty Questions won the Oregon Book Award. Pretty was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers and BookSense selection. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The Sun, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Salon, Calyx and High Country News. In 2014, she, rather belatedly, earned her Masters of Fine Arts at OSU. She lives in Corvallis. Steve Durham has worked as a newspaper reporter, electrician, and fly-fishing guide. A native New Englander, he now lives in Spokane, Wash., with his wife and a cat they rescued from a bloodthirsty Montana ranch dog. His fiction and essays have appeared in Bridge Magazine, Front Porch Journal and Opossum Magazine. His essay Human Out of Me was named a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2017 edited by Leslie Jamison. He has just completed a memoir about marriage and mental illness. In addition to the author presentations, there will be an awards ceremony for creative writing submissions for youth and adults. The Oregon Writers’ Day event at the Coos History Museum is in partnership with Southwestern Oregon Community College (SWOCC), with support from the Coos County Cultural Coalition, and The Mill Casino. Light refreshments will be served. For more information, please visit the Coos History Museum website at www.cooshistory.org or call 541.756.6320.
