Literary Series Returns to Central Oregon Coast's Lincoln City

Published 12/27/2019 at 3:35 PM PDT
By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff

(Lincoln City, Oregon) – A favorite returns to the Oregon coast: the Friends of Driftwood Public Library will present the literary series Oregon Legacy to the Lincoln County community on four Sunday afternoons in February 2020. Each author talk will take place in the reading room at Driftwood Public Library in Lincoln City at 3:00 p.m., beginning Sunday, February 2.

The series opens on February 2 with a visit from Willy Vlautin. Willy last visited Driftwood in 2012 as part of Legacy, and has since become one of the festival’s most asked-about visitors. Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, Willy started playing guitar and writing songs as a teenager and quickly became immersed in music. It was a Paul Kelly song, based on Raymond Carver’s Too Much Water So Close to Home, that inspired him to start writing stories. He founded the band Richmond Fontaine in 1994. The band produced eleven studio albums, plus a handful of live recordings and EPs. Driven by Vlautin’s dark, story-like songwriting, the band, now retired, achieved critical acclaim at home and across the UK and Europe. In 2014 Willy formed The Delines with singer Amy Boone (The Damnations) and released their first album, Colfax. He has published several novels, including The Motel Life (2007), Northline (2008), Lean on Pete (2010), and The Free (2014). In spring of 2018 he published his most recent book, Don’t Skip Out on Me.

Willy Vlautin currently resides in Scappoose, Oregon.

On February 9, Sophia Shalmiyev will visit the library. Sophia Shalmiyev tells readers on the first page of her striking, lyrical memoir, Mother Winter (2019): to understand the end of her story you must go back to her beginning. Born to a Russian mother and an Azerbaijani father, Shalmiyev was raised in the stark oppressiveness of 1980s Leningrad. An imbalance of power and the prevalence of antisemitism in her homeland led her father to steal Shalmiyev away, emigrating to America, abandoning her estranged mother, Elena. At age eleven, Shalmiyev found herself on a plane headed west, motherless and terrified of the new world unfolding before her.

Now a mother herself, in Mother Winter Shalmiyev recounts her emotional journeys as an immigrant, an artist, and a woman raised without her mother. Sophia is an MFA graduate of Portland State University with a second master's degree in creative arts therapy from the School of Visual Arts. She lives in Portland with her two children.

Oregon Legacy continues on February 16 with a visit from writer Kate Hope Day. Kate's first novel, If, Then, was published in Spring 2019. In it, the residents of the quiet mountain town of Clearing, Oregon are rocked by troubling visions of an alternate reality: four neighbors find their lives upended when they begin to see themselves in a parallel reality. At first the visions are relatively benign, but they grow increasingly troubling, and in some cases, frightening. When a natural disaster threatens them all, it becomes clear that the visions were not what they first seemed, and that the town will never be the same. Kate holds a BA from Bryn Mawr College and a PhD in English from the University of Pittsburgh. She was an associate producer at HBO and currently lives here in Oregon with her husband and their two children.

The series finishes on February 23 with a visit from Claire Rudy Foster. Claire is a queer, nonbinary, trans writer of fiction, nonfiction, personal essays, articles, reported news stories, interviews, book reviews, cultural commentary, full-length books, screenplays, TV and film treatments, speeches, editorials, blog content, and letters. They also work as a ghostwriter. Their writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Rumpus, McSweeney’s, and many other journals. Their work has been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize four times, as well as several small press awards for excellence, including a Speculative Literature Foundation’s Working Class Writer Grant, an NLA-International Nonfiction Writing Award, and an SFWA Writing Award. Foster has been in recovery from alcoholism and addiction since 2007. In 2018 they co-authored American Fix: Inside the Opioid Addiction Crisis and How to End It with activist Ryan Hampton.

Foster’s contributions to the recovery movement include speeches, letters, and articles supporting equal rights for people with substance use disorder. Their work has been read on the floor of the Senate. Foster developed, wrote, and hosted two seasons of a leading recovery podcast called “Addiction Unscripted,” described as “This American Life” for people with substance use disorder.

Twenty-six years ago, Driftwood Public Library completed a move into a their current location in the City Hall building. To celebrate the library’s new home and to thank the community for all of its support during the transition, The Friends of Driftwood Public Library created a gift for this central Oregon coast community. With little resources beyond the income from their occasional book sales, the Friends underwrote the first literary series ever presented in Lincoln County: Oregon Legacy. Each year they have renewed that sponsorship. All Oregon Legacy presentations are free due to the generous support of The Friends and The D’Sands Condominium Motel, who provide free lodging for each of the visiting writers.

The library is located on the second floor of the Lincoln City City Hall building at 801 SW Hwy 101 in Lincoln City, just across the street from Burger King and adjacent to McKay’s Market grocery store. For further information about the Oregon Legacy series, contact Ken Hobson at 541-996-1242 or khobson@lincolncity.org. Visit Driftwood’s website at www.driftwoodlib.org. Hotels in Lincoln City - Where to eat - Lincoln City Maps and Virtual Tours

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