EUGENE, Ore. — (May 10, 2013) — The six winning stories from Oregon Quarterly’s 14th annual Northwest Perspectives Essay Contest will be presented in a free public reading on May 30, at the University of Oregon.
The readings will take place at 6 p.m. in the Gerlinger Alumni Lounge, 1468 University St., preceded at 5:30 p.m. by a reception and book signing featuring this year’s contest judge, Oregon writer Ellen Waterston (“Where the Crooked River Rises”, “Between Desert Seasons”). The events are free and open to the public.
The reading will feature “Logging Days,” by 2013 open category contest winner Daniel Lindley of Naples, Fla., and “Boris’s Bluff” by student category winner Iris Graville of Lopez Island, Wash.
Attendees will also hear the second- and third-place winners read from their essays: “Crossing Lines” by Gregg Kleiner of Corvallis and “At the Counting Window” by Ruby McConnell of Eugene in the open category; and in the student category, “The Long Run” by Ben DeJarnette of Eugene and “Lunch Hour: How a hawk taught me the 9 to 5” by Allyson Woodard of Eugene (who tied with John A. Steele of Vermillion, S.D., for his essay “Remembering Who You Really Are”).
The reading will be introduced by Waterston, a previous winner of the Northwest Perspectives Essay Contest, for “The Old Hackleman Place, an Obituary,” in 2008. Her award-winning essays, short stories and poems have been published in numerous journals, anthologies and reviews.
The Northwest Perspectives Essay Contest is an annual competition sponsored by Oregon Quarterly magazine and The Duck Store. The contest, featuring previously unpublished writings about the Northwest, is open to nonfiction writers competing in student and open categories.
The top winning essay, Lindley’s “Logging Days,” will be published in the summer 2013 issue of Oregon Quarterly, which is distributed to nearly 100,000 readers. That issue, and a chapbook featuring all the winning essays, will be available at the reading. Winners also receive cash prizes.
About the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is among the 108 institutions chosen from 4,633 U.S. universities for top-tier designation of "Very High Research Activity" in the 2010 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The UO also is one of two Pacific Northwest members of the Association of American Universities.
Contact: Julie Brown, 541-346-3185, julbrown@uoregon.edu
Source: Ann Wiens, 541-346-5048, awiens@uoregon.edu
Link: Oregon Quarterly, http://OregonQuarterly.com
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