Author at Large
Dear Readers: I just read a review about my memoir, Ahead of the Flaming Front: A Life on Fire, which I quote as it appears: If you are going to read memoirs about fire fighters, here are the two you must start with: Young Men and Fire by Norman McLean and Ahead of the Flaming …
My first Public Radio interview aired and I heard about it first from my good friend Craig. I’d been interviewed because my memoir, Ahead of the Flaming Front: A Life on Fire, won the North American Book Award. Craig and I were rookies on the Krassel Heli-Rappellers together and the oldest two on the crew. …
Read More “Tricking Memory with a Radio Interview on Boise Public Radio”
Today I got an email from a stranger. No not a spam email trying to sell me timeshares or a phishing email to help some poor Nigerian claim an inheritance, but a person who had read Andrea Mason’s review of my book, Ahead of the Flaming Front in High Country News. She sought out my …
So I’ve been working feverishly on a new project and neglecting the blog. It’s true. What’s the use of the blog, sometimes I think, when I should be working on the new project like an attentive new lover. I am a writer after all and 500 words here is not 500 words there. Marketing of …
I took a couple of chapters from a novel in progress, formed them into a short story and sent it in to the Narrative Prize. I placed in the top ten and Tom Jenks at Narrative Magazine sent me back a copy with his editorial suggestions. Red Flag Warning had like six pages cut from …
Sorry for the pop up. I am learning slowly. Please enjoy this video essay for SPACESLIT MAG Writers Reading: Jerry D. Mathes II.
Here is the title essay from my essay collection, Fever and Guts: A Symphony as it appeared in the wonderful Dos Passos Review. For the book I broke the essay into its four movements and spaced them throughout the book. Section I begins the book and IV ends as one would expect in doing this. …
The past coils into our guts like a snake. The longer we live the tighter it coils to contain its length and girth. Always at its center resides the sins of our youth and along its body the tumors of our mistakes and missteps. Some maybe
One semester in grad school we read for a nonfiction class two memoirs. One was Geronimo’s Bones and the other was A Million Little Pieces. It was quite a coincidence that during that semester they were both uncovered as frauds to one degree or another and that fired the debate about the truth in nonfiction. …
In a crowded auditorium in Walla Walla, Washington’s Whitman College, a student raised his hand and asked Tim O’Brien why he wrote fiction about his war experiences. O’Brien said, “To tell truths that I can’t tell in nonfiction.” Ernest Hemingway, Albert Camus, Pam Houston, Flannery O’Conner