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From the Oregon Book Awards fundraising dinner:
“Confidence is something that I, as a writer, carry awkwardly. There are rare, blessed moments when I might write a sentence and be able to say, “Damn that’s good,” but there are uncounted hours and weeks when I struggle with the very basic question of should I even be doing this? Am I kidding myself? Is this just a waste of time? Should I, instead, be volunteering at a homeless shelter, teaching kids to read, ripping the ivy out of Forest Park?”
(Read the rest of the essay in the Literary Arts newsletter.)
A memoir excerpt in MORE magazine about making peace with my idealist, missionary father.
A piece in Granta about a man who returns to Haiti in the shadow of his missionary grandfather’s extraordinary legacy: The Grandson of Jesus Christ.
Homage to John Helmer, Jr., Haberdasher, a man who sold European style berets to New Yorker readers and handkerchiefs to Louis Armstrong, sailed with Hemingway, drank tea with Eleanor Roosevelt, summited 50 peaks, ran 27 marathons, and was unfailingly courteous to everyone he met.
An essay in Oregon Humanities about the difference between travel and escape. “My two years in London had earned me half a dozen new stamps in my passport; Madina’s exile to Portland had cost her a daughter.”
An intermittent travelogue of recent trips to Haiti.