community literary arts 11: What advice would you have for the aspiring writers in this city? MD: I think what’s great about Portland is that we have all of these kind of kitchen table classes now. I studied with Tom Spanbauer when he first started teaching classes here, about 1991. That was a turning point for me. It wasn’t an MFA, it wasn’t even a community college. It was just paying Tom some money to join his group at home. I think that because he was just trying to get off the ground, having people that stuck around and took his classes helped generate steam for what he was doing, and at the same time he helped us all pick up our speed as writers. So there’s that kind of connecting with people who you have an affinity for. We can compliment each other, and hopefully generate a positive scene around what you’re doing. That’s where I met Chuck Palahniuk before he published Fight Club. 11: And you also became a teacher. Can you tell me about your program? MD: I teach down at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, PNCA. I designed an undergraduate writing program that’s in place there now. We’re just getting it off the ground. It is a BFA that joins writing and art. It’s a small private school, but it is an amazing place to come and study writing and art. When designing the program, that was a big part of what I wanted to assert. Before I started writing, I studied art history and painting. I think that painting was incredibly satisfying, but writing, to me, is more directly communicative. But there’s something about painting that allows your mind to range and settle. So I set the program up to have the foundation classes as visual arts classes. So you will have an art foundation– design and drawing and art history. But when you come to your studio arts, instead of film, or sculpture, or graphic design, you would be working on writing. 11: Clown Girl is a very visual story. Can you tell me more about that process? MD: My idea of a clown was based on Charlie Chaplin, a very toned down visual image of a clown. It was the idea of the struggling underdog with small but determined aspirations, who is kind of run over by life. The comedy comes from persistence. In the end I think it has a lot of underpainting, to use a visual arts term. I think all those layer show through. It’s almost like archeology, or when you paint–you start with just a bare sketch on a canvas and just build up, it’s all still there.
11: There is a lot of humor in both this book and Clown Girl. How important is humor in your stories? MD: A lot of my writing is funny to me. I don’t know if people always see the humor in it, but when you find people that recognize what is going on, personally that’s satisfying. To connect with the reader who enjoys the absurdity of what’s on the page. Clown Girl is about the character’s adherence to clowning as a high art, and how much that means to her. When her life gets worse, and the ground begins falling out from under her feet, all she can think to do is to work out another act. She just thinks, "I’ll make a better one, it will save me this time." In many ways, I was making fun of myself because I was dirt poor and all I could think was, "I’m going to write another novel." Somebody else might say, "I’ll go to law school." In this new book, there’s a lot that makes me laugh, and I hope that comes across. I think things like "Fry-O-Lator" are funny, the word is just inherently funny. With that burn on her arm she is kind of branded by that crummy job. I was always told in high school that a job would help build character, but when I worked at Burger King it sure didn’t build any character. It wasn’t a character I wanted to build. But there is an art in it. That’s what art is for right? You’ve got these life experiences, and art somehow makes them richer, whatever art you turn to. It enriches the humanity of that job. 11: Is there still room for writers and artists to make it in this climate? MD: We have to keep room. We have to make that room. We have to keep asserting that room. » - Scott McHale
LOCAL LITERARY EVENTS DREW SCOTT SWENHAUGEN RELEASE PARTY 1 MARCH 4 | MOTHER FOUCAULT'S | 523 SE MORRISON Beloved local poet and publisher Drew Scott Swenhaugen will be reading from his highly anticipated chapbook Big, published by Dikembe Press. Stacey Tran, Hajara Quinn and Sophie Linden will also be reading at the event.
SALON SKID ROW PRESENTS 2 MARCH 15 | SALON SKID ROW | 401 SW ALDER This is a very special international edition of the weekly reading series. Recent ELEVEN featured artist Ed Skoog is the author of two books of poetry, Mister Skylight and Rough Day, both published by Copper Canyon Press. A third book, Run the Red Lights, will be published this fall. He will be joined by two Irish poets now living and working in London, C.L. Dallat and Anne-Marie Fyfe.
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