In Astoria, writers gather to celebrate ‘the power of place’

Published 9:00 am Monday, October 14, 2024

An inaugural writers’ conference in Astoria will pen its first chapter this weekend.

With the theme “The Power of Place,” the Creative Writing Festival is a production of The Writer’s Guild, an Astoria-based nonprofit. An expansion of a previous annual literary event, the festival will offer three days of conversations and author-led workshops about place-based writing.

The headliner, author Karl Marlantes, will open the weekend with a talk at the Liberty Theatre on Friday evening.

Born in Astoria and raised in Seaside, Marlantes’ work draws on a sense of place, including the lower Columbia landscape.

His two recent novels, “Deep River” and “Cold Victory,” were inspired by stories of his grandparents. The former follows a family as they flee Finland to settle in the region’s logging communities at the turn of the 20th century.

Two other books, “Matterhorn” and “What It Is Like to Go to War,” draw on Marlantes’ combat experience as a Marine during the Vietnam War.

On Friday at 7 p.m., Marlantes will discuss his work and sit down for a conversation with guild founder and president Marianne Monson.

The festival’s focus on place, Monson said, emerged organically, reflecting the fact that “so many people and writers who work here are deeply inspired and connected by the place in which they live and write.”

The event is intended for “writers at every stage in their career,” Monson added. Most participants are local, but some come from further out, Portland or Seattle.

“We really want anyone to come who thinks that they can benefit from some writing inspiration,” Monson said. “Writing is a lonely and challenging endeavor, and so it’s wonderful to come together in community, to support each other, to inspire each other, to share with each other how we navigate certain challenges of the writing lifestyle and craft.”

The second festival day centers on writing workshops, which take place over Saturday morning and afternoon at the Hotel Elliott. Leaders were selected through a competitive call for proposals.

“We have so many talented writers in the area, and we got a lot of wonderful ideas along our theme,” Monson said. “We tried to keep it with a variety of genres and presenters from a variety of backgrounds and representing different areas.”

Marlantes will teach his first-ever writing workshop, “Writing From History.” “If you want to learn historical fiction from an absolute master of the craft, it’s a real steal to be able to do that,” Monson said.

Poet Mary Delea will tackle place poetry in her workshop.

Lara Messersmith-Glavin will help participants generate writing about their beloved objects. Harvest Moon will focus on women’s storytelling, Alyssa Graybeal on turning places into characters in stories, and Emily Ransdell on the poetry of places.

Writer and choreographer Susan Banyas will be leading a workshop, “Writing from the Memory Place,” to close out the Saturday afternoon series.

For Banyas, an Astorian, memory has been the theme of her life: memory is an energy field and remembering is an act of reconfiguring a memory, she says. She calls memory places any locations that “hold key images that call us to it.”

Workshop participants will choose a location in Astoria. “It could be a back alley or it could be your favorite coffee shop, not a famous place necessarily, but a personally charged place for you,” Banyas said.

Writers will then craft a description that could both be in a tourist guidebook description and that is personal as well as “sensual, imaginative and historic.”

“I want people to take a personal approach by virtue of building a memory field around the place and around them,” Banyas said.

Banyas and several other workshop leaders will also read their poems during a Poetry Celebration on Saturday night at the Columbian Theater.

The event is open to the public, with 5-minute slots available for open mic readings starting at 7 p.m. before writers take the stage at 7:30 p.m.

The festival will conclude on Sunday with a free public authors fair from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Fort George Lovell Taproom, where local writers will offer autographed copies of their books.

Tickets for individual events and festival passes are available online at the Writer’s Guild website. The 100 Women Who Care organization provided a grant to offer scholarships to select, need-based attendees to make the event more accessible.

Creative Writing Festival

Karl Marlantes appears 7 p.m. Friday for a conversation at the Liberty Theatre, 1203 Commercial St., Astoria.

Workshops and performances start at 8:30 a.m. Saturday with Marlantes, Mary Delea, Lara Messersmith-Glavin, Harvest Moon, Alyssa Graybeal, Emily Ransdell and Susan Banyas.

Messersmith-Glavin, Ransdell and Banyas return with local author Cliff Taylor for a 7:30 p.m. poetry reading at the Columbian Theater, 1102 Marine Drive, following a 7 p.m. open mic.

The festival wraps up with an authors’ fair from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday at the Fort George Lovell Taproom, 1483 Duane St.

Three-day festival passes are $115 to $165 for adults and $50 for students with a valid ID. Individual tickets for the Marlantes event are $25 for adults and $15 for students; poetry night is $10 at the door; the authors’ fair is open to the public.

www.thewritersguild.org/october-festival