Confluence Press Authors
Margo Aragon
Margo Aragon teaches at Walla Walla Community College in Clarkston, Washington. An independent filmmaker, journalist, poet, and former television broadcaster, she lives in Lewiston, Idaho. She is at work on two new books for Confluence Press.
Horace Axtell
Horace Axtell is a prominent spiritual leader in The Seven Drum Religion and a member of the Nez Perce Tribe. He has been the subject of countless articles and several film documentaries as well as the recipient of honorary degrees and awards. He lives in Lewiston, Idaho, with his wife, Andrea.
Will Baker
Born near Nampa, Idaho, in 1935, Will Baker published fourteen books, among them the novels Chip, Track of the Giant, Shadow Hunter, Star Beast, and The Raven Bride. His collection of essays, Mountain Blood, won an AWP award for creative nonfiction. For twenty-six years until his retirement in 1995, Will inspired and mentored students at UC Davis where he and his colleagues Gary Snyder, Sandy McPherson, Clarence Major, Alan Williamson, and Sandra Gilbert formed the first generation of nationally prominent writers to teach at the school. He died Saturday, Aug. 27, 2005 at his Guinda farm in the Capay Valley. He was 70 years old. He is survived by his wife, Malinda Penn-Baker, two daughters, Willa, and Montana, and his son, Cole.
Wendell Berry
Poet, essayist, farmer, short-story writer, and novelist Wendell Berry is the author of more than forty books including The Way of Ignorance, Given, and Hannah Coulter. He continues to work his hillside farm in his native Henry County, Kentucky where he has lived with his wife, Tanya, for more than four decades. Across the years his phenomenal literary achievements have earned him honors that include the T. S. Eliot Award, the Aiken Taylor Award for poetry, and the John Hay Award of the Orion Society. As most everyone knows by now, Wendell Berry lives on his on his farm in Port Royal, Kentucky.
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/675
Mary Clearman Blew
Mary Clearman Blew is the author of the acclaimed essay collection All But the Waltz; three books of short stories, and the editor of several anthologies. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of Idaho and has twice has received the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, once in fiction for Runaway, and once in nonfiction.
John Daniel
John Daniel lives in the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a two-time winner of the Oregon Book Award for Literary Nonfiction, he is the author of eight books of memoir, poetry, and personal essays.
www.johndaniel-author.net
Robert C.S. Downs
Martha Elizabeth
Patricia Goedeke
Jim Hepworth
Jim Hepworth returned home from Arizona to Idaho in 1984 to direct Confluence Press and teach college English and literature. He has published poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, and interviews in magazines as diverse as The Paris Review, High Country News,The Bloomsbury Review, Writers Digest, and Outside. Confluence Press published his first chapbook in 1977. He lives in Lewiston with his wife, Tanya Gonzales.
Jim Heynen
Best known for his short-short stories about ‘the boys,’ Jim Heynen has published widely as a poet, novelist, journalist, and short story writer. His stories about the boys have been featured frequently on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” as well as on radio programs in both Sweden and Denmark. Minnesota astronaut George Pinky Nelson took a taped collection of Jim’s stories for bedtime listening on his last space mission. Heynen lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with his wife, Sally. www.jimheynen.com/index.html
Michael Hogan
For the past ten years Hogan has headed the English Department at the American School of Guadalajara. He is the author of a novel, Molly Malone and the San Partricios, two books of prose (The Irish Soldiers of Mexico and Mornings in Mexico), and two recent books of poetry: Making our Own Rules and Imperfect Geographies. He lives in Colonia Providencia, Guadalajara, with the textile artist Lucinda Mayo and their dog, Molly Malone.
http://www.geocities.com/drmichaelhogan/hogan.html
Charlotte Holmes
Chalotte Holmes’s short stories and essays have been frequently cited for excellence in The Pushcart Prize anthologies, Best American Essays, Best American Stories, and the O. Henry Prize Stories Anthology. She has published her prose in Antioch Review, Carolina Quarterly, Epoch, Grand Street, New Letters, The New Yorker, Story, The Sun, Topic. She is Associate Professor of English at Penn State University.
Richard Hugo
William Johnson
Greg Keeler
Greg Keeler received a 2002 Montana Governor’s Award and rose to the rank of Distinguished Professor at Montana State University in 2007. He has published six collections of poems and written seven plays. He will publish his second memoir, Trashfish, with Counterpoint in the fall of 2008. His first, Waltzing with the Captain, a memoir of Richard Brautigan, appeared in 2004. Keeler writes, paints, sings, blogs, cartoons, mushrooms, and fishes from his home base in Bozeman where he lives with his second (and third) wife, Judy (aka “The Bunny”).
http://www.troutball.com.
Rolly Kent
Dan Landeen
Dan Landeen works as a wildlife biologist for the Nez Perce Tribe. He is also a serious amateur photographer and oral historian. In 2006 he published Steelhead Fly Fishing in Nez Perce Country, a historical profile of the Clearwater, Grande Ronde, and Snake River fisheries and the men and women fish them. He lives in Clarkston, Washington.
Laurie Lewis
Legend is not always loud. Particularly in the beneath-the-radar substreams of American folk music and bluegrass, it is bestowed more by whispered word-of-mouth, over years and decades, than by the hurried hype and ballyhoo of the pop mainstream. You can’t measure Laurie Lewis’s 30-year career with the usual commercial yardsticks. She has won a Grammy (“True Life Blues: The Songs of Bill Monroe,” 1997), and twice been named Female Vocalist of the Year by the IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association).
If you listen down the back-roads of acoustic Americana, however, you’ll soon realize this soft-spoken, sweet-singing California fiddler, singer and songwriter is something very special.
Ron McFarland
Norman Maclean
Norman Maclean received the unanimous vote of the fiction jurors for the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for his classic stories in A River Runs through It, votes the Pulitzer’s general committee twice overturned with the result that no prize in fiction was given that year. After befriending Maclean through their correspondence and on the telephone and after reading several of Maclean’s uncollected essays, the publisher of Confluence Press commissioned Maclean to write and deliver a lecture and assigned two editors to collect his essays, talks, lectures, and interviews, which the press published in 1988, the year before Maclean died. The lecture survives as a DVD, whereas the book will comprise a substantial part of the University of Chicago’s forthcoming Norman Maclean Reader.
Nancy Mairs
Nancy Mairs grew up north of Boston. Her alma mater, Wheaton College, made her a Doctor of Humane Letters in 1994. A poet and an essayist, she was awarded the 1984 Western States Book Award in poetry for In All the Rooms of the Yellow House and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1991. Her first work of nonfiction, a collection of essays entitled Plaintext: Deciphering a Woman’s Life, appeared in 1986 and quickly earned her a national reputation. Since then, she has written six more books of prose. She and her husband, George,live in Tucson.
http://www.maskink.com/mairs/index.html
Paul Merchant
Published by the Five Seasons Press in his native England, Some Business of Affinity, Paul Merchant’s most recent book, was short listed for the 2007 Oregon Book Award in poetry. Long associated with the William Stafford Archives in Portland, Oregon, Paul has also compiled and edited (with Vince Wixon) a third volume of William s Stafford’meditations on the writing life entitled The Answers Are Inside the Mountains. Paul edited the first critical volume on Wendell Berry for Confluence Press back in 1992. He lives and writes in Portland, Oregon.
http://www.fiveseasonspress.com/
Hugh Nichols
Almost from its inception until his retirement from academic life, Hugh Nichols fiercely fought and often won the administrative battles to support Confluence Press during its long association with Lewis-Clark State College. Founder of the college’s annual Wallace Stegner Lecture (and dozens of other literary projects), Nichols also served as an editor and board member. He lives in Lewiston where he is among the state’s premiere Steelhead Fly Fishers.
Greg Pape
Greg Pape has published seven books of poetry, including Sunflower Facing the Sun (which won the Edwin Ford Piper Prize), Storm Pattern, Black Branches, and Border Crossings. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Pushcart Prize, the Richard Hugo memorial award for poetry, and the Vachel Lindsey poetry award. His poems have appeared widely in magazines, anthologies, and text books, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Viking Western Reader, and Writing Poems. He has been a member of the Creative Writing faculty at the University of Montana since 1987.
E-mail:greg.pape@mso.umt.edu
Paulann Petersen
Paulann Petersen, a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, has published three chapbooks and three full-length collections of poems. The winner of two Carolyn Kizer Awards, she has taught for the Creative Arts Community at Menucha, the Oregon Writers Workshop, the Oregon State Poetry Association, and the Mountain Writers Series. She also serves on the board for Friends of William Stafford and organizes the annual January William Stafford Birthday Events.
http://www.paulann.net/
Keith C. Petersen
Keith Petersen has published five books of history, perhaps the most influential of which is his chronicle of the four fish-killing dams on the lower Snake River in Washington state. He is a former acquisitions editor for Washington State University Press. His challenging work on behalf of the State of Idaho has become legendary. In 2006 Lewis-Clark State College awarded him it highest honors for his extraordinary service to the region. He is currently an associate director-at-large for the Idaho State Historical Society. He lives in Pullman, Washington.
John Rember
John Rember was born in Sun Valley, Idaho, and grew up in the nearby Sawtooth Valley. His mother was a nurse at Sun Valley Hospital and his father drove ski bus and worked as a miner, fishing and hunting guide, trapper, and mechanic, subjects he examines with grace, unblinking candor, and humor in his memoir, Traplines. Educated at Harvard and at the University of Montana, he has worked as a ski patrolman, wilderness ranger, technical writer, concrete and construction worker, high school teacher, bartender, journalist, and professor. He is Writer-at-Large at Albertson College of Idaho in Caldwell and teaches in the Pacific University MFA program in Forest Grove, Oregon. He lives in the Sawtooth Valley with his wife, Julie.
http://www.johnrember.com/index.html
Alberto Rios
Alberto Ríos, born in Nogales, AZ, is the author of nine books of poetry, three collections of short stories, and a memoir about growing up on the border called Capirotada. National Book Award finalist and recipient of the Western Literature Association Distinguished Achievement Award, Ríos has an extensive record of public art and outreach. He and has taught at Arizona State University for 25 years, much of that time as Regents’ Professor. He holds the further distinction of occupying the Katharine C. Turner Endowed Chair in English.
http://www.public.asu.edu/%7eaarios/
Sherry Rind
Sherry Rind is the author of three collections of poetry, articles, public relations materials, and successful application letters (which she claims are the most difficult of all to write). She has edited newsletters and two non-fiction books and taught academic and professional writing for over twenty years. She received grants and awards from the Seattle and King County Arts Commissions, Pacific Northwest Writers, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Artist Trust. She lives in Seattle.
William Pitt Root
William Pitt Root has published twelve books of poetry. His pomes have been translated into nearly 20 languages and broadcast over Voice of America and Liberation Radio; he’s been invited to read throughout the U.S. (M.I.T., N.Y.U., Columbia University, Guggenheim Museum, L.B.J. Library, Harvard Law School, Juilliard (2), Vassar); in England; in Sweden at Lund University, Malmo Poetry Festival, and the Gotenberg Book Fair; in Italy at University of Pisa and the American School in Rome; in Macedonia at the Struga Poetry Festival. For over ten years he commuted twice a week between Tucson (where he was that city’s first Poet Laureate 1997-2002) and upper East side Manhattan to teach in the writing program at Hunter College. Now he and his wife, poet Pamela Uschuk, live in Southwestern Colorado near the Weminuche Wilderness.
James Willard Shultz
James Willard Schultz (1859-1947) lived in and wrote about the northwestern portion of Montana now included within the Blackfeet Reservation and Glacier National Park. In 1877, at the age of 18, he traveled from his birthplace in Boonville, New York to Fort Benton, Montana Territory. He became interested in American Indians, and lived for many years with the Blackfeet Indians as an accepted member of their nation. Drawing upon his experiences on the western frontier he later wrote thrilling and colorful books and articles to make his living as an author. His success was notable in his own time, and many of his books remain in print.
Kim Stafford
Kim Stafford received Governor’s Arts Award in 1998 and Oregon Book Award in 2007. His memoir of his father, Early Morning, won him a second Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award in 2003; the first he received in 1987 for Having Everything Right: Essays of Place. His collaborative work with Margot Thompson to place poems on permanent display in hospitals and libraries, his community building in association with the Northwest Writing Institute, and his teaching have all contributed to his ever-growing reputation as first-rate thinker and activist. He lives in Lake Oswego with his wife, Perin, and their son, Guthrie.
http://www.lclark.edu/~krs/
William Stafford
William Stafford was an extremely prolific writer, authoring 67 volumes in his 79 years. His first book of poetry, West of Your City, was published in 1960 when he was 46 years old. By 1963 he had won the National Book Award for Traveling Through the Dark. He went on to win the Shelley Award from the Poetry Society of America, served as the Poetry Consultant for the Library of Congress (1970-71) and was appointed Oregon Poet Laureate in 1975 by Governer Tom McCall. As an enormously admired writer, he traveled thousands of miles each year to give readings and to encourage aspiring poets throughout the United States, Egypt, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, Germany, Austria, Poland and many other countries. He died in his home in Lake Oswego, Oregon, in August of 1993.
http://www.williamstafford.org/
Richard Shelton
Since 1956, Richard Shelton has lived in Southern Arizona where he is a Regents Professor (emeritus) of English at the University of Arizona in Tucson. In all, he has published twelve collections of poetry and two memoirs: Going Back to Bisbee, which won a Western States Book Award, and Crossing the Yard, the 2007 Southwest Book of the Year. In that book, Shelton chronicles his experiences after establishing a Creative Writer’s Workshop at the Arizona State Prison in 1974. The program has become a national resource and model for penal reform. His new book of poems is titled The Last Person to Hear Your Voice.
http://www.richardwshelton.com
Rosalie Sorrels
Rosalie has recorded over 20 albums and written three books. She began her career as a folklorist in the 1950’s. Hunter Thompson and Studs Terkel wrote introductory liner notes for her albums. Robert Creeley wrote a poem about her. Studs Terkel has included interviews with Rosalie in two of his books. University of California at Santa Cruz has set up a Rosalie Sorrels Archive as part of its Beat Generation holdings. She is a tireless and effective advocate for peace and social justice. She received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts in 2000 from the University of Idaho. In 2001 the Boise Peace Quilt Project added Rosalie’s name to the distinguished list of workers for peace and justice who have also been presented with other quilts around the nation. She lives in the cabin her father built 30 miles outside of Boise. http://www.rosaliesorrels.com
Wallace Stegner
Wallace Stegner published more than thirty books over a sixty year career as a novelist, historian, essayist, and cultural critic. He founded the creative writing program at Stanford University, served on the boards of the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, and as an assistant to Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall in the Kennedy Administration. Winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, Stegner also served as a confidential adviser, patron, literary scout, and contributing writer for Confluence Press from 1984 until his death in 1993. Stegner’s essays on Wendell Berry and Norman Maclean in the Confluence American Authors series are among the finest things ever written about either man. In November of 2007 Shoemaker and Hoard released Stegner’s Selected Letters edited by his son, Page. A second biography, this one by Philip Fradkin, will appear in the spring of ’08.
William Studebaker
Tracy Vallier
Tracy Vallier is the world’s foremost authority on the geology of Hell’s Canyon, arguably the deepest gorge in North America. Through his research at sea and his exhaustive mapping work in Hells Canyon itself across four decades, Tracy helped establish and codify the theory of plate techtonics now universally accepted by scientists around the globe. He is at work on two books more books and a novel. He lives in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.
Mary Ann Waters
Sir James Welch
Sir James Welch, a Blackfeet Indian, led much of the western American literary renaissance in the late twentieth century, a burgeoning that continues to flower. Welch published five novels, almost all of them justifiable famous, an early book of poems, and one of the most remarkable books about Custer ever to see print. Kind, thoughtful, reserved and well-mannered, Welch accepted the medal of the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Art et des Lettres—the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters—from the French government in 2000. The medal confirmed Welch’s official status as a knight and thus his entitlement always to be addressed as “Sir.” He lived in Missoula with his wife, Lois, where he died at the age of 62.
