Back to You: We. Are. Storytellers.

by Sherry Wachter '82, English, and Patrick Dunphy '20, humanities

EVER SINCE MY GRANDFATHER told me stories of his grade-school mischief—putting frogs in the water cooler and cleverly rewording an “r” alliteration test to remove almost every “r” sound it contained—and I passed those stories to my son Patrick, I knew that my purpose, my life’s pursuit, was to share stories.

So, Patrick and I started Magic Dog Press. We also work as designers for Dragonfly Design Group in California and NewSage Press in Oregon.

Every story, whether its audience is the entire world or only the writer’s family, is worth being told.

And there are so many stories to tell! Our independent publishing house has shared memoirs, remembrance books, first novels, group cookbooks, local history books, and books built around communities. Here are stories that we’ve been especially proud to print:

From the writers, editors, photographers, and later the actors, composer, and audio producer, those of us who produced Corona City: Voices from an Epicenter became more than just part of publishing an award-winning book, we became a community built around capturing how it felt to live in a world changing beyond recognition.

As I Remember: A Family History by Esther Ambrosine Atkinson Babb was developed in cooperation with Esther’s grandson James McConaughy. From her family roots in the kitchens and stables at Castle Greystoke in England, to her family's pioneer history in Illinois, to her own experiences homesteading as a young bride, to jetting across America to visit her grandchildren, Esther's story captures a transformative part of the American experience.

Starting out as a report filled with statistics about a flood grant received by the City of Milton-Freewater, Ore., a book titled These Are Our Neighbors chronicles how the Milton-Freewater community recovered from the flood.

We worked on the second edition of One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement, which adds sections discussing the woman suffrage movement in the African-American, Hispanic-American, Asian-American, and international communities.

In Horace Heidt: Big Band Starmaker, we captured the remarkable career of musician and entertainment innovator Horace Heidt, Sr., founder of one of the oldest big bands in America today.

Scottish-American family histories, lore, and local color from Northeastern Oregon are featured in a book titled, Tell It To Me Again: Sharing Athena’s Scottish History.

And in the College Writing class I taught at Walla Walla University, the students brought comfort food recipes from home, edited them in class, and then created and published a cookbook titled, A Longer Table.

Yes, stories can take many forms. Chances are good you have one inside you. You should let it out.

Every story, whether its audience is the entire world or only the writer's family, is worth being told.