Personal Statement

The problems of our time are political, ecological, economic—but the solutions are cultural. How do people speak their truth? How do we listen eloquently? If communication is the fundamental alternative to violence and injustice, what is the work of each voice among us? At the Northwest Writing Institute, we answer word by word.

Professional Biography

Kim Stafford grew up in Oregon, Iowa, Indiana, California, and Alaska, following his parents as they taught and traveled through the West. He is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, and the director of the Northwest Writing Institute, and co-director (with Joanne Mulcahy) of the Documentary Studies Certificate Program at Lewis & Clark College, where he has taught since 1979. He holds a Ph.D. in medieval literature from the University of Oregon, and has worked as a printer, photographer, oral historian, editor, and visiting writer at a host of colleges and schools, and offered writing workshops in Italy, Scotland, and Bhutan.

His book, Having Everything Right, won a citation for excellence from the Western States Book Awards in 1986. Stafford has received creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Governor’s Arts Award for his contributions to Oregon’s literary culture, and his work has been featured on National Public Radio.

Stafford’s most recent book, 100 Tricks Every Boy Can D o, is an account of his brother’s death by suicide, and the struggle of a family to understand, and to live beyond that event. It is a story where “the writer reaches back through the difficult end to grasp the beautiful beginning, like pulling a venomous serpent inside out.”

Kim Stafford lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and children.

 

 

Some forthcoming events:

Readings from 100 Tricks:

Powells Books, 1005 SW Burnside, Monday, 29 October 2012, 7:30pm

Annie Blooms, 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Thursday, 8 November 2012, 7pm

Broadway Books, 1714 NE Broadway, Wednesday, 14 November 2012, 7pm

 

Other events:

National Council of Teachers of English Convention (“Fiction Writing in the Classroom”), Las Vegas, 17 November 2012, 11am

Associate Writing Programs Convention (“Writing Past the End”), Boston, 8 March 2013, time TBA

               

Some publications by Kim Stafford:

“Oregon Patriot in Tough Times,” an essay in Oregon Quarterly, Spring 2012: http://www.oregonquarterly.com/spring2012/feature4.php

“Resume of Failures,” a chapter from 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do, by Kim Stafford, in Oregon Humanities, Winter 2010:  http://www.oregonhumanities.org/magazine/issue/ha/kim-stafford-on-resume-of-failures/

100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: My Brother Disappeared. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2012.

Prairie Prescription, a chapbook of poems. Boise: Limberlost Press, 2011.

Pilgrim at Home: Vagabond Songs (with Jan DeWeese and Harriet Wingard): Original Songs [CD] . Portland: Little Infinities, 2009.

Every War Has Two Losers (a film on William Stafford’s poetry and witness for peace). Kim Stafford, Associate Producer. San Rafael: Zinc Films, 2009.

A Thousand Friends of Rain: New & Selected Poems. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2005.

Every War Has Two Losers: William Stafford on Peace & War. Edited by Kim Stafford. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2003.

The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003.

Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2002.

Oregon Pilgrimage in Green. Knight Library Press: Eugene, OR.1998: 

Wheel Made of Wind (with Jan DeWeese): 13 Oregon Songs [CD]. Portland: Little Infinities, 2000.

Having Everything Right: Essays of Place, rpt. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 1997.

We Got Here Together. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994.

Wind on the Waves. Portland, OR: Graphic Arts, 1992.

Entering the Grove.  Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1990.   

Lochsa Road: A Pilgrim in the West. Lewiston: Confluence Press, 1989.

Places & Stories. Pittsburgh: Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1988.

A Gypsy’s History of the Worl d. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 1976.

 

 

 

 

 

 

                   

 

 

 

 

 

 

                     The Secret

  After long delay, ignorant of what you guarded                                                             when it came volcanic to your mind, there to be                                               hoarded smoldering until you found a way to tell it,                                               your secret is out—your joy too tender to entrust                                                     to anyone, your pain too dangerous to reveal                                                         until you do. And there it is, a birth, with blood,                                                         to celebrate.

                       But then the bowl in the heart,                                                       where such things first appear, has something                                                         new to hide, some fingerling creature silver                                                               in the dark, with jagged fins and tender wings                                                         that must be held, locked up, suppressed, fed                                                       crumbs as you fend off the world. Little one,                                                         must you leave me now?

  Thus we breathe our holy secrets one by one.

                                              

Video

“Pilgrim at Home: Local Encounters Beyond the Epoch of the Car,” 2009

Kim Stafford interviews Portland artist Bruce Palone at the Riverview Cemetery for his project called Pilgrim at Home: Local Encounters Beyond the Epoch of the Car.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Academic Credentials

Ph.D. 1979,M.A. 1973, B.A.1970 University of Oregon

 

Samples of creative work.  A set of poems, songs, films, photographs, and other creative work at www.kim-stafford.com.

See also the website for the William Stafford Archive at Lewis & Clark:  www.williamstaffordarchives.org