Authors Tina Ontiveros (rough house) and DJ Lee (Remote: Finding Home in the Bitterroots) will share their stories of wilderness, family, and belonging in the rural West. Please join us at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre at 7pm, Wednesday, Oct. 13.
Masks required.
Winner of a 2021 PNBA Book Award and an IndieNext favorite, rough house recounts a childhood divided between a charming, mercurial, abusive father in the forests of the Pacific Northwest and a mother struggling with small-town poverty. It is also a story of generational trauma, especially for the women—a story of violent men and societal restrictions, of children not always chosen and frequently raised alone.
Remote: Finding Home in the Bitterroots follows DJ Lee on her search for answers when a dear friend vanishes in the vast Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho and Montana. The journey unexpectedly brings to an end her fifteen-year quest to uncover the buried history of her family in this remote place. Although Lee doesn’t find all the answers, she comes away with a penetrating memoir that weaves her present-day story with past excursions into the region, wilderness history, and family secrets.
Tina Ontiveros (top or left photo) is a writer, teacher, and bookseller based in the Pacific Northwest. She was raised below the federal poverty line, living mostly with her single mother at the edge of the Oregon desert, but often with her constantly migrating dad in small timber towns around the Pacific Northwest. Today, Tina lives at the bottom of Mt. Hood and teaches writing and literature at Columbia Gorge Community College.
DJ Lee (bottom or right photo) is Regents Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Washington State University and earned a PhD from the University of Arizona and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her creative work includes over thirty nonfiction pieces in magazines and anthologies. She has published eight books on literature, history, and the environment, most recently the 2017 collection The Land Speaks: New Voices at the Intersection of Oral and Environmental History. Lee is the director of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness History Project and a scholar-fellow at the Black Earth Institute.
With thanks to Oregon State University Press and the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre for their support of this event.
