Reading Local Seattle

{ Maged Zaher, 12/10, 7:30, Open Books }

By Dana Guthrie Martin

Maged Zaher was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, where he earned an M.Sc. degree in structural engineering, specializing in computer-aided design. In 1995, he led the team that did the analysis of the seismic effect on the Meridian high-rise hotel in Giza, Egypt. In 1998 he earned a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Akron, Ohio. He has worked at many large software companies, and participated in building products such as AutoCad, Hotmail, Windows Presentation Foundations and Microsoft Student. His main areas of interest are API (Application Programming Interface) design and building scalable, and flexible SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) systems. His collaboration with Pam Brown, Farout Library Software, was published by Tinfish Press in 2007. Zaher will read from his debut collection, Portrait of the Poet as an Engineer, recently released by Pressed Wafer, Thursday December 10th, at Open Books in Seattle.

Dana Guthrie Martin: Your first language is Arabic, and you wrote poetry only in Arabic until about 10 years ago. Why did you make the switch to writing poetry in English, and how has that affected your writing? Do you still write in Arabic at all?

Maged Zaher: This is an important question. I switched for multiple reasons:

1. I didn’t think my Arabic poetry was any good. I was under the influence of the poets I read then, and my work was purely derivative. A new language was a new beginning of sorts.
2. More important, in Arabic there is a split between the written and spoken languages. Imagine if you are using the language we are using now for talking, but when you write you do so in Medieval English; quite a split, isn’t it? — the attraction of the English language was that I can write in the same vernacular that I speak in. This is why you find a fascination with the colloquial in my English poems.

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{ Tim Hallinan, 9/29 (noon), Seattle Mystery Bookstore, and in Portland at Murder by the Book, 9/30}

Tim Hallinan is best known for his thriller series set in Bangkok. Unlike many crime books that take place in Asia, the primary concern of his main character, Poke Rafferty, is keeping his family together. Poke has fallen in love with Rose an ex-go go dancer. Together they adopt a little girl who grew up on the streets. But Poke has a way of getting himself into trouble.

Now Hallinan is touring to promote Breathing Water, the fourth book in his Bangkok series.

His Web site is a treasure. In addition to telling about his books he  writes a hilarious blog which has an extremely useful section called “Finish Your Novel”. He shares all his tips to help other writers find their way to the happier side of a rough draft.

Hallinan splits his time between Santa Monica, Bangkok, and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He has lived in Asia for the greater part of twenty-five years and it shows in his cultural understanding.

I’ve read two of the Poke Rafferty series so far,and love Hallinan’s portrayal of Bangkok and the relationships between his cobbled-together family. It was a thrill to get to ask him the following questions via email.

[Interview on after the break.]

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{ Charles LeWarne, The Love Israel Family, University of Washington Press }

Charles LeWarne who has written extensively about intentional and utopian communities in our region has just published a definitive history of Seattle’s infamous commune, the Love Family, or Church of Jesus Christ at Armageddon, The Love Israel Family. Founded in 1968 by television salesman Paul Erdmann, the Family quickly gained a sizable following drawn mostly from Seattle hippies. By the late 1970s, the Family owned houses and operated business in Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill neighborhood. In 1984 the Seattle-based commune collapsed. Members, though, continued the commune in Arlington, where they continue to live. They run a local organic restaurant and hold the annual Garlic Festival.

Charles LeWarne was kind enough to answer some questions this last week. [Interview after the break.]

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William J. Kiesel

I few months ago I heard word about a mysterious bibliophilic event entitled the Esoteric Book Conference. Alas, the Great Recession has reduced my book buying budget considerably–I won’t be attending any book fairs, let alone an “esoteric” one. But recently I discovered that the conference was being organized by William J. Kiesel, publisher at Ouroboros Press.

I met William by frequenting his place of employment for many years, Magus Books, where he greeted questions about unusual, hard-to-find tomes with a slightly bemused smile behind a tiny trimmed beard or an arched eyebrow above old wire-rimmed glasses. For a few years in Pioneer Square he ran a well-stocked used occult bookstore. I would often visit just to see books I couldn’t see anywhere else and to have my questions about arcane and even taboo subjects answered by an intelligent, rational, and amicable fellow wearing a black fez. Nowadays Mr. Kiesel has moved on to tackle a tiny corner of the publishing world. As a service to Reading Local readers he kindly agreed to answer not only some questions about the upcoming conference (and the culture behind it) but also about some of  the ideas and terms (taken from the conference website) that might be unfamiliar to the uninitiated outsider who is curious about this seldom explored area.

Interview on the next page.

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{ Lynne Breedlove on Manic D: One Freak Show }

Jen Joseph from Manic D was nice enough to take some time to answer some Reading Local questions via e-mail last week. She will be at Bumbersoot this year for a twenty-five year anniversary reading for a press that has published writers such as Michelle Tea, Francesca Lia Block, and Beth Lisick. At twenty-five Manic D has become one of the West Coast’s great independent presses, such as Mercury House, Black Heron Press, Future Tense Press, and the late Black Sparrow Press. About surviving twenty-five years, Joseph said, “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

Joseph will introduce authors Amber Tamblyn (Bang Ditto), Lynn Breedlove (Lynn Breedlove’s One Freak Show), Bruce Jackson (Growing Up Free in America), and Jon Longhi (The Rise and Fall of Third Leg) . They will be on the Literary Arts Stage Monday 9/7 at 1:45 p.m.

(Interview after the break.)

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Handmade Tales.

The Fairy Tale Factory is the work of Amy Leigh Morgan who abandoned her professional ambitions of writing “serious and depressing stories about my hometown,” which is probably a good thing, because as a writer of sometimes serious and depressing stories about my hometown I can tell you that it isn’t much of a profession. Instead Amy constructed The Fairy Tale Factory. Workers from the factory gathered this last Tuesday at Third Place Books in Ravenna.

Fairy tales have long been a kind of secret in contemporary fiction. Most contemporary fiction, or the kind of contemporary fiction that wins big awards and people seem to talk about a lot, seems to be naturalistic, involving real people in real world situations, such as say, the work of Philip Roth, Alice McDermott, or the post-modern work of of William Gass or David Foster Wallace. Some of the contemporaries of William Gass, people such as Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme (Snow White) and Angela Carter (a British writer who taught at Brown and elsewhere from time to time and wrote The Bloody Chamber) re-appropriated old fairy tales or wrote allegorical, completely non-realistic fiction in the fairy tale mode. Angela Carter in addition to writing and translating fairy tales, also anthologized a huge number of contemporary fairy tales. Fiction with an allegorical bent is currently finding an audience. Writers such as Lucy Corin, Kelly Link, and Shelley Jackson have recently publishing collections of stories that either borrow heavily from fairy tale structures or contain out-and-out fairy stories. Perhaps the most useful guide to this was the recent Tin House issue “Fantastic Women“. Read the rest of this entry »