CLARA AND MERRITT, by the author MADISON HOUSE, winner of the Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction, unfolds amidst the violent strife between longshoremen and Teamsters in Seattle in the 1930s and '40s. When Clara Hamilton, the daughter of a longshoreman, and Merritt Driscoll, a member of the Teamsters union, fall in love, their relationship is immeidately threatened by the fierce antagonism between the rival unions. Encompassing the West Coast labor movement, World War II, the Northwest School of Art, and much more, this exciting new novel explores how people reckon with the larger forces of world events in their everyday lives. "CLARA AND MERRITT is rich with details that give life to a little-known chapter of our past. Donahue draws us into a panoramic, dramatic saga--events that affected the entire Pacific Northwest and generations to come" -- Molly Gloss, author of THE JUMP-OFF CREEK, WILD LIFE, and THE HEARTS OF HORSES "Peter Donahue has crafted an impressive, fully imagined, satisfying drama, and Clara Hamilton ranks among the most endearing and inspiring heroines in Northwest literature." -- Jim Lynch, author of THE HIGHEST TIDE and BORDER SONGS "Vivid characters, persuasive storytelling, rich noirish detail, and a deep sense of time and place . . . Clara and Merritt is a ripping good read, a ride on an old Plymouth's running board to a time of highballs, union brawls, and no shopping malls." -- SEATTLEMET MAGAZINE "For those interested in the history of the Pacific Northwest, author Peter Donahue has an approach akin to that of E.L. Doctorow in meshing prominent historical figures into fictional narrative . . . Donahue knows Seattle inside and out . . . There are encounters with real-life players in mid-20th century Seattle: painter Guy Anderson, for example, and union leaders Dave Beck and Harry Bridges. But it is the fictional characters that are utterly engaging -- reticent Merritt, spirited Clara, her odd-couple parents, their singular friends." -- THE SEATTLE TIMES "Like the best historical fiction, Donahue's well-paced novel provides a strong sense of place and well-drawn characters to convey its time . . . This is a good summer read that will draw you in with its portraits and leave you knowing more about a fascinating stretch of Northwest history." -- THE WILLAMETTE WEEKLY

Clara and Merritt

Literature & Fiction

Donahue, Peter

Literary

Wordcraft of Oregon, LLC

Selected poems of Northwest poet, Dan Raphael, gathered from small press collections published prior to the year 2000 and published in a larger format to accommodate his long lines. "Musical, intelligent and perpetually mutable...IMPULSE &amp; WARP is a gift of high art made of the raw materials...Essential sound from one of our best singers." -- Jake Berry, author of BRAMBU DREZI and CYCLONES IN THE HIGH NORTHERN LATITUDES. "IMPULSE &amp; WARP is a wild wonderful ride, a kaleidoscope of words, sensations and ideas." -- Sharon Doubiago, author of MY FATHER'S LOVE

Impulse & Warp: The Selected 20th Century Poems

Raphael, Dan

Poetry

First full-length poetry collection by Northwest poet and writer, Bette Lynch Husted, author of ABOVE THE CLEARWATER, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in Creative Non-Fiction. "Bette Husted, so richly rooted in the wild Oregon land she inhabits, writes with deep care and conscience. Her poems shun nothing..." --Naomi Shibah Nye. "This is a poet who will take you on roads you don't know to places where you haven't been, the lonesome places...the farthest West, farther than the pioneers. She goes the distance." -- Ursula K. Le Guin

At This Distance

Husted, Bette Lynch

New and Selected Poems 1960 - 2010. "In his impressive body of work spanning 40 years, Alex Kuo consistently pushes the limits of literary genres while defying some of society's most deeply entrenched assumptions..In fusing the political and the literary, Mr. Kuo illuminates over and over again the profound power of the art." -- Pauline Chen "Line after line I am surprised and moved by the way his language connects the rhythmns of our collective memory, imagination and chance." -- Ping-kwan Leung

A Chinaman's Chance

Kuo, Alex

Kuo, Alexander

"You're killing me, Duffy," the mom always said. In his memoir, Murdering the Mom, award-winning novelist Duff Brenna elevates the obscene to the sublime. He takes all the materials of hardship and abuse during an unhappy childhood and sculpts it into art, into something transcendent. This is a heart-rending memoir that exceeds the expectations one normally has of a memoir, that is, it reads like a captivating novel.

Murdering the Mom: A Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

Brenna, Duff

Memoirs

Keeping the Swarm: New and Selected Essays. La Grande, OR: Wordcraft of Oregon, 2012. Paperback,ISBN:978-1-877655-76-0, 224 pages (6 x 9), 20 photos. Packed with sweetness and stinging, George Venn's KEEPING THE SWARM: NEW AND SELECTED ESSAYS is a honey house chuckablock of eclectic gifts: stories, songs, adventures, memoirs, meditations, eulogies, poems. There are new cells of joy, old black combs of grief, memories of love's honey flow."This welcome essay collection by the sharpest-eyed Northwest writer conjures the region he knows so intimately. His careful portraits of mining towns, wheat harvest, bee keeping, snowland wonders ring clean and true... This venerable voice blesses every reader with another brave and rewarding book." --Craig Lesley, author of BURNING FENCE

Keeping the Swarm: New and Selected Essays

Venn, George

Essays & Correspondence

The poems in Mad Cursive move gracefully between beauty and destruction, the essential real locale of poetry in our times. A mad swordsman inside a poet-seer, McKinney dares to locate what resembles, in my reading, spirit laid bare. In this truly elegant book, the remnant of our language negotiates a shadow world-that space between life and death-which is life on this earth. "Inside sword we find word," indeed. A truly courageous book. -Claudia Keelan, author of Missing Her

Mad Cursive

McKinney, Joshua

SUDDEN DEATH, OVER TIME does what only good satire can--tear down the artificial and the irrelevant to get to what is human. The stories are funny, insightful, disturbing, sad and always entertaining. Rember's talent in bringing interesting characters to life and letting them stumble on their own humanity in places common and extreme gives these stories an energy that sparks on every page until they conflagrate into a controlled burn.

Sudden Death, Over Time

Rember, John

Humor & Satire

In The Glob Who Girdled Granville and The Secret Lives of Actors, the second in Wordcraft of Oregon's series of fabulist novellas and the second in award winning novelist Peter Grandbois' series of monster double features, we encounter perhaps the two biggest icons of '50's B Horror, The Blob and The Thing from Another World. This time around, we meet our monsters decades after the films that made them famous as they attempt to adjust to "normal" life.

The Glob Who Girdled Granville and the Secret Lives of Actors

Grandbois, Peter

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