Writers; Snubs and the Portland Writing Scene

Monday, August 15, 2016
Theresa Griffin Kennedy, GoLocalPDX Contributor

“I lacerated myself with this other woman's sentences. And it if hadn't been her book, it would have been someone else's.” Bonnie Friedman, from her essay, “Writer's and Self-sabotage.”

Writing, as a response to people, an idea or even as a reaction to a particular place occurs in prescribed contexts and for diverse reasons. When we work on a written piece, we essentially attempt to create space for another individual to receive our impressions, perspective and ideas, and perhaps experience something transformative. This process governs the choices we make as writers. And those choices impact our fearlessness, what we focus on or reject and how the community at large reacts to our writing and consequently to us, as separate unique individuals.

The above quote, from Bonnie Friedman's popular essay, “Writer's and self-sabotage,” is an excellent example how a writer creates fresh ideas about on-point topics. Who would have thought to pen an essay about writers and self-sabotage? Well, they're out there, but it’s not a common topic to pursue. 

Friedman's essay further attempts to second guess the readers expectations, while leading them down an elusive avenue of exploration, new connections, self-awareness and an enhanced sense of social identification. In this way, writing can be experienced as truly a dynamic social act, as opposed to an individual and isolating act of self-focus or the narcissistic self-indulgence that memoir writing is often perceived as being.

As a longtime writer, of over thirty years and an author who recently turned fifty, and a woman, much like Bonnie Friedman I've felt haunting pangs of self-doubt and even envy. The envy I've experienced was reserved for a small number of writers in the Portland community where as a lifelong resident, I've worked hard to be recognized for my unique and sometimes quarrelsome voice. Strangely, the feeling of covetous resentment never became an issue until I became the author of two books. It was shortly after this time that I felt myself becoming aware of the level of other writers success and comparing their success to my own.  

Part of the envy resulted from feeling like a misfit or an outcast, due to my voice, and the different kind of writing persona I've created. Ultimately, the emotions I experienced resulted from the belief that my voice was unappreciated and ignored; a common complaint for any ambitious writer, but particularly so for women, who are often dismissed as irrelevant and provincial by the male dominated publishing industry.

Coming of Age

Coming of age in the 1970s and 1980s, I never actually consciously decided to become a writer, it just happened over time, spurred on by simple circumstance and by my father's encouragement and belief in my potential as a young writer. My father, Dorsey Griffin, also a longtime writer and later a local author and historian of some note, published a well-regarded book of Oregon history, Who Really Killed Chief Paulina. The book was published in the early 1990's when self-publishing was not common and difficult to arrange and finance. My father's book on Paulina has gone down as the definitive solving of an old Oregon mystery. It remains highly regarded for the attention paid to investigating all angles of the mystery and coming up with the most sound and logical conclusion, based on what evidence was available and what the conflicting personal testimony signified—as to whether it was Clark or Maupin who fired the final death shot.

Before Daddy became published, when he wasn't typing away on his old Underwood typewriter, he could be found at Providence Hospital, working as an Engineer to support his wife and nine children. His encouragement of me, beginning when I was not yet twenty-years-old is the primary reason I'm a writer and an author today.

Though I began seriously focusing on the alluring and seductive interior world of writing, beginning at the early age of eighteen, I remained unpublished for most of my life. In 2005, I began to tentatively submit and was thrilled when my first published bit of writing was a simple letter to the editor published in the March issue of Vanity Fair Magazine. After that I began submitting to various places in Portland. In time I had published poetry, additional letters, opinion pieces and a couple of social justice articles in various newspapers’ And, so began the long slow climb to becoming a writer capable of achieving some manner of small recognition, handicapped by my gender I often felt and seemingly my age as well.

Like all writers, I possess a multitude of idiosyncratic weaknesses and bad habits. My punctuation is excessive and my voice has been described more than once as “pedantic” and “kind of old fashioned” with regard to my usage of language. As I invariably attempt to cover too much ground, perfectionist that I strive to be, I always write long; a huge weakness it turns out, to being perceived as professional or competent. Strengths include an excellent vocabulary, comprehension, ability to craft concise, elegant and well-developed sentences and a willingness to take on challenging, difficult and unpopular topics. Some of those topics include the long-term realities of sexual assault, human rights abuses of those living in the Middle East and even the professional conduct of well-known Portland journalists who are routinely deceptive in their information gathering. 

This ability to take on difficult subjects first expressed itself in 2009 when after being approached by Tim Flanagan, editor of the now defunct Portland Alliance Newspaper, (which I was writing for at the time) I wrote a particularly scathing book review of an author, also a former memoir professor of mine from Portland State University. The review was published in the print edition of The Portland Alliance and distributed widely on PSU campus and all through the Portland Metropolitan area. I still stand by what I wrote in that book review to this day but a year later in 2010, when I applied for graduate school at PSU in the department I wished to earn a master’s degree, that very professor happened to be, ironically, on the three person panel deciding who would be accepted into the program and who would not be admitted.  

When I discovered this, I recall laughing as it seemed the truest example of Murphy's Law I had ever encountered. I knew this would present a problem and so I attempted with my usual dogged optimism to deal with it. I also understood my chances of being accepted into that graduate program would be slim to nothing as a result of the book review I'd written and the professors expected bias during the review process.

Damage Control

In an effort to do damage control I met with one of the chairs of the English Department, a notoriously indifferent, haughty and unpopular poetry professor I had been warned about by no less than five young female undergraduates. All five had at one time or another, years before, implored me to never take her poetry classes. The word from the young women was that this professor had verbally berated them in private student/instructor meetings and after telling them they would “never” succeed as poets, had reduced some of these young, impressionable and idealistic women to tears. One young woman confided in me as we sat in the Women's Resource Center, during the weekly Stitch and Bitch. As we drank coffee and commiserated about the schools many failings, she told me, haltingly, “I couldn't believe how she talked to me. I just…I just burst into tears. She was so cruel with the things she said about my poetry!”

Years later, in 2010, I was morbidly interested in meeting with this very poetry professor for these and other reasons and also to discover what I could about the previously mentioned memoir professor, whom I had been so critical of in my review of her ultimately mediocre book of nonfiction memoir.

After sitting down with the chair of the department, (the poetry professor) I found myself surprised and satisfied that she appeared threatened by my presence. I was not a “twenty-something” she could emotionally manipulate, control or intimidate. And I easily occupied a certain kind of space with my confident presence. Sitting across from her, smiling and giving her direct eye contact, I politely engaged with her—and I felt a secret smugness that I made her feel uneasy. ‘She's not so tough after all’ I recall thinking to myself.

After I explained the situation to her, with what I presume was a polite but obvious tone of emotional remove, the chair suggested I write an email to the memoir professor and apologize. I thanked her for her advice, we said our goodbyes and later that night I crafted an insincere, well-written apology email to the condescending memoir professor who I personally detested. I had taken her memoir class in 2007 and had been mistreated by her firsthand, as a result of the passive aggressive, micro-aggressions she routinely directed at particular students. I had witnessed her nauseating favoritism of the shameless sycophant students who worshiped her and the conscious way she gave favors to those students, while holding older students (such as myself) to an entirely different set of academic and social standards. I was not the only older female student who would claim to be treated poorly by her. There were several of us, I came to find out later.

The memoir professor never responded to my email, as I knew she wouldn't. And despite my sound writing skills and history of being published here and there in the community, along with maintaining a personal on-line writing website since 2007 and an adequate GPB, after my graduate application was looked over I was not accepted into the program. The rejection did not come as a surprise and I accepted it with good grace, humor and the mature understanding that I had brought the situation on myself, by writing the book review in which I had, to borrow an old cliché—torn her book to shreds.

I proceeded to make other plans, applied for, was accepted and earned a master’s degree and master’s certificate in a different department, doing well there and making friends with my various cohorts and professors—before graduating on time and on the honor roll in 2013.

What the experience taught me though, was exactly how small and insulated the literary and academic community in Portland really is—to those who do not easily fit into an attractive mold of social acceptability or tasteful low-key conformity. The experience also taught me that if you want to write and publish quiet essays about quiet, civilized topics, you will do well to do just that and refrain from writing about the harsh social, racial and cultural truths as you may come to understand them; as those truths and your outspoken expression of them may not endear you to other writers for a variety of reasons. Most of all, I learned, on a gut level, that the literary community in Portland is a dirty, petty fishbowl, with all the limitations and genuine comedy of a dirty, petty fishbowl.  

From 2009 to 2014, I continued to write and submit, growing philosophical about the continuous rejection and pleased when I was occasionally published in some small literary review, newspaper or magazine. Then in 2015, after spending almost three years as primary editor, main creative collaborator and general over-seer for my husband Don DuPay's complex police memoir, Behind the Badge in River City: A Portland Police Memoir, his book was finally published by Oregon Greystone Press. That was the year Don and I finally began to receive notice from the writing community in Portland. Since that time, Don’s police memoir has slowly gained popularity and attention as more people learn about it, read it and are impacted by the truths it presents exposing the secretive police culture of the sixties and seventies and the history of the Portland Police Bureau, as a collective whole.

Despite the growing reputation of Don's book, before and even after it was published, we still experienced the odd behaviors of some local writers and media persons from the community.

Before the publication of the police memoir, we were contacted by a white woman working at The Skanner newspaper. She asked if Don would agree to an interview on KBOO radio and promised that she would arrange to have The Skanner write an article about Don's forthcoming book—if he would allow her to read the most updated draft. Don and I discussed her proposal and agreed, mailing her a copy of the most current draft. Several months later, she had failed to contact us about her proposal to have Don interviewed on KBOO and have The Skanner write an article, so Don emailed her. Once again this woman repeated that she wanted to go forward with her proposal; an interview on KBOO and a written article in The Skanner. She apologized, saying she'd been “too busy” to pursue it but was firm in her desire to follow through.

Again, several months passed and still nothing. Now, she was almost one full year in arrears of her initial plans and promises. Don emailed her a second time and she promised it would happen in an additional eight weeks; if only we would please be patient. We politely agreed to wait. Eight weeks came and went and again nothing. Don emailed her a third time and once again she said she'd been “too busy.” A week later, after some thought, Don decided that as she had not kept her end of the bargain, (after she had contacted him with the proposal) and had been so incredibly unreliable, he was now not going to pursue the idea. Since she had been too “flaky” in her communications and his time was valuable as an older man in his late seventies, he explained he was no longer interested. This unusual woman responded by informing Don that being “demanding of the media in Portland” was not something she was used to tolerating and she was now no longer interested in keeping her many—by this time—broken promises to him. She informed him, it was actually SHE who was no longer interested. 

The entire exchange was odd and confusing for both of us. We accepted it had to do primarily with the woman's questionable skills as an editor and her dizzy lack of professional focus as a serious person. We laughed about it later, shaking our heads and wondering why she had contacted us in the first place, if she was so utterly incapable of following through in a professional manner. Shortly after this, we requested she please return the copy of Don's manuscript and as usual, she promised she would. Eight weeks later, the woman still had not returned the manuscript, at which point, as Don's wife and manager, I emailed one of the other editors and demanded that the manuscript be returned immediately. I explained how this confused and preoccupied woman had contacted us, over a year before, making all kinds of promises and had not followed through with any of them, even failing to courteously and promptly return the manuscript she had asked to read. The manuscript was finally returned by another member of the staff at The Skanner Newspaper.

Murder and Scandal

Shortly before the publication of Don's police memoir, and after becoming acquainted with several people in law enforcement circles, including writers, poets, painters and other media persons, I found myself becoming friends with well-known writer and crime historian, JD Chandler. 

JD is the author of several well-regarded books detailing crime history and even organized crime within the police department. After guest blogging on his popular blog, Slabtown Chronicle, in late 2015, JD asked if I would be willing to coauthor a book with him. Naturally, I was thrilled to be asked to coauthor a book with a published crime writer I respected and admired, so I readily accepted the invitation. JD and I spent the next several months working on the book, Murder and Scandal in Prohibition Portland: Sex, Vice and Misdeeds in Mayor Baker’s Reign. I did countless hours of research and found several documents that were pivotal to the book's accuracy regarding “bootlegged liqueur” and the police department's involvement in those and other criminal enterprises during the 1920s and 1930s.  

I doggedly searched for images in the Research Library at the Oregon Historical Society and found several that were quite alluring. One in particular, features a 1923 photo of two wealthy looking women in fur coats. The women were arrested for consumption of illegal liqueur by the Portland Police. Gladys Carson and Edna Karr were both convicted of moon-shining and sentenced to one month in jail and a $100 fine. While JD and I encouraged the publishers at The History Press to use that photo for the cover of the book, they chose a more appropriate one of Portland Mayor George Baker, instead. The lush photo of the two young women was finally put to good and proper use within the interior of the book, along with a few other photos I was able to obtain and purchase.

Later, in February of 2016, during the evening of the first reading for Murder and Scandal in Prohibition Portland; Sex, Vice and Misdeeds in Mayor Baker's Reign, held at Powell’s City of Books, I felt thrilled and proud. I enjoyed seeing the packed reading room and discussing the colorful sections of the book, with JD leading the discussion in the lively Q and A afterwards. It was fun to sign the books, sitting next to JD and to feel important, finally having achieved something of merit as a longtime invisible Portland writer. Though our names were absent from the lit Marquee out in front on Burnside Street, I was still proud and happy to be an author reading in Portland's very own Powell’s City of Books. And I still felt very much humbled and grateful that JD thought I was a skilled enough writer and researcher to coauthor a book with him on crime history.

In the following weeks, I did Google searches on the Internet, to see who was writing about the book I had coauthored with my friend. Most of the clicks had positive information and reviews and I felt once again thrilled to know I had been involved in writing a book on the crime history of my fair and complicated city. One afternoon, during one of my searches, I found an article, “The Scandalous History of Booze in Portland” from Portland Monthly Magazine and our book was mentioned in the article. I clicked on it. 

The article is written by former Willamette Week writer, Zach Dundas. When I saw the photo I had found, of the two women in fur coats which Portland Monthly used in their article, I was pleased and surprised. When I saw that Portland Monthly had color enhanced it, I found the change from black and white to color to be whimsical and attractive. I felt happy knowing that the image was one I had found myself, to be used later in Portland Monthly Magazine, which is by all accounts a very fine publication, staffed by fine artists, editors and writers, including Zack Dundas.

As I read the article, I slowly became aware that the book, Murder and Scandal in Prohibition Portland; Sex, Vice and Misdeeds in Mayor Baker's Reign, coauthored by me was being described as having been written solely by one author; JD Chandler. My name was not mentioned in any section of the short article. I read the article once more and let the information sink in that I had been snubbed. 

As I thought about it, I was not surprised. The name Zack Dundas was vaguely familiar to me and seemed to reside in the back part of my memory as a former writer for a local newspaper I couldn't quite remember. So, I Googled Dundas's name and then it clicked. Oh yeah! He used to write for Willamette Week. But why would Dundas snub me by not mentioning my name in any part of the article he had written about the book I'd coauthored with JD Chandler? What would be his motive for such an obvious and unprofessional slight?

I thought about it for a couple of minutes and then it all made sense. As an avid Face-booker, I had been critical of Willamette Week writer Nigel Jaquiss and his repeated penchant for focusing his journalistic skills on exposing the sex lives—or any other local sex scandal—of powerful white men. I had made numerous comments regarding the pattern of Jaquiss's sexually focused writing regarding these sexually titillating, exploitative topics on many Willamette Week Facebook threads, until such time that the administrator chose to block my ability to make future comments. When I saw that I'd been blocked, I chuckled and simply turned away permanently, from looking at any Willamette Week stories on their Face-book page or their official on-line website. 

Later, I discovered my name was included in a bracketed mention, on the Portland Monthly website link on the article by Dundas, but in the print copies of the magazine there is no mention of my name anywhere, which leads me to believe the Dundas snub was intentional.

The fact that I had not been mentioned as coauthor in a book I helped to write and create, by former Willamette Week writer Zach Dundas has confirmed for me the unshakable awareness that if you go against the established power structure of media and powerful writers in Portland there is sometimes blow-back. But is that power structure all consuming? Can they make or break you as a writer? No. Not if you're stubborn and have conviction, tenacity and confidence in your ability to make people listen.

The snub by Dundas demonstrated to me the reality of how petty and punitive established writers can be in Portland and what they're willing to do to make a point or punish someone they deem unworthy or an enemy to their cloistered group of the chosen few, (invariably white writers) who are privileged enough to write their truth and be published.

In my thirty plus years of writing, I've learned that creative writers invariably envy journalistic writers for their ability to take on tough political or social justice stories that have real significance—sprinkling them with facts, dates, names, places and other linked articles for that powerful and necessary unbiased journalistic punch. And journalists, traditionally envy creative writers for their ability to be colorful, creative, fearless and stunningly confessional in what they produce; writing on any number of topics, wherein they can have an opinion, demonstrate elegance in their writing and even insert themselves into the story, much like Gonzo Journalism inserts the writer into the story.

After fuming for a few minutes at the Dundas snub, I found his email and sent him a sarcastic, mocking email telling him I suspected the snub had been intentional; as a form of misdirected loyalty to his pal Nigel Jaquiss. The email was not meant to be conciliatory, as there was no doubt in my mind that what Dundas had done was absolutely intentional, not to mention unprofessional. At no point in my email did I offer Dundas the room to apologize or extend himself to me in any manner. If I had, the man would still have done what he chose to do, which was to ignore my email and I well understood that likely probability.  

So, instead of responding to my email, which I knew he would not, Dundas forwarded the email to my friend JD Chandler the following day. Later the next day, JD sent me a short message telling me about the forwarded email he had received from Dundas. JD was amused and told me that it would do no good for either of us if I “alienated the media,” and of course he was correct. He also admitted that Dundas ought to have included my name in the original story and that it was wrong not to do so. As usual, JD maintained the professional distance and impartiality that I've grown to admire about him. And of course, I later apologized to him personally.

The truth is, I was deeply hurt by the Dundas snub, deeply hurt and deeply angered. My naïve enthusiasm that I had finally gotten some recognition as a writer by being included in a project I felt proud of was sullied by the pettiness of Dundas and his immature sophomoric snub. Looking back on it now, I don't regret it because it has been an enlightening and educational experience, as it taught me first-hand how small this town can be, with regard to the literary community and it’s relentless and tedious cliques. 

There have been other experiences too, that demonstrate the smallness of certain writers in Portland, including the Portland writer who sent my husband Don an out of state invitation to a reading but failed to include an invitation to me; as if my 80-year-old husband Don would ever travel out of state to a reading without me.  

Then of course, there was the woman who while having achieved a small measure of success herself as an author, declined my pleasant offer of the poetry book I had just published, Blue Reverie in Smoke, via Oregon Greystone Press, explaining in a patronizing, insincere manner that she was “just too busy” to read it. She went on to say she had too much backed up reading material to warrant accepting my book of poetry, which had come highly recommended by several well-known Portland authors. Instead of just graciously accepting the offer of my slim volume of poetry, (something of a happy accomplishment for me) she had to make a point of saying no, to indicate I felt, that there was a distinct difference between the kind of writer she was, in comparison to the kind of writer I was. She was up there; I was down here.

I accepted her refusal with the grace and good manners I was raised to value and observe but sometimes I still think back to it with amusement. Ultimately, you learn to recognize those kinds of interactions for what they are: the passive-aggressive, micro-aggressions of innately insecure people and you learn to forgive them for it for that reason.

What I've learned as a writer, author and longtime fighter is that you can accept the status quo for what it is, in any given field or you can stridently jog against it. If you jog against it, with respect to writing, you will make enemies and you will face challenges but you will also have the knowledge and the pleasure that you have not abandoned your integrity. You will have the singular pleasure of knowing that what you strive to create is original and perhaps even meaningful, to others. 

If you want to write quiet essays or books about quiet topics like shopping, weight issues or whether or not your neighborhood has a fake nail salon, then by all means do so and you might even be published here or there, perhaps even to some temporary acclaim. But if you want to be the unique writer of substance you were meant to be and if you want to take on the difficult topics that pertain to social, racial and cultural truths—the truths that impact our world, which might upset some people—then be prepared to accept rejection and vilification with grace, good humor and dogged optimism. Like I do. Be prepared to search for the people who will support you. Your tribe. Those persons who will stand by you and accept you for the person you have become without reservation and without judgment. And lastly, be prepared to receive the inevitable snubs that will come your way by writers’ intent on doing just that for their own transparent reasons. 

I still have a problem with envy, I think many writers do. Mainly, I envy the success of other women, as there are several women writers in Portland who really are not any better or skilled than I am. But they do seem to be luckier. They have the good fortune of knowing the established writers who can help with marketing—who can simply pick up the phone and make things happen. 

Those writers who have the right out of state connections and help lesser known writers get promoted in a way that many skilled but invisible writers in Portland cannot, enjoy a rare privilege. How they use that privilege to help can impact the lives of other writers in profound ways. 

Sometimes the success of a writing career really is a matter of who you know, how you come across socially, how popular you make yourself, along with possessing the adequate writing chops to get the job done. But the most important factor in being the kind of writer you want to be is courage. Instead of writing stories about safe topics, what might be “trending” on social media or even writing about various aspects of the middle class mentality, don't you think you owe it to yourself to pursue topics that are more challenging, more solid or meaningful and see where that takes you, instead?

Much of gaining recognition as a writer resides in that part of yourself that is not afraid what others may think of you if you DO decide to go against the grain, or be experimental. When you cull your imagination and delve into those darker, less understood parts of yourself, you can produce truly wonderful artifacts, which can be meaningful, emotionally cathartic and spiritually transformative.

There is envy everywhere in the world of writers, and the Portland writing scene is no different when it comes to the unspoken pecking order of who the alphas are, who the flavor of the month is, who is squarely in the middle, and who are last in line and, why. I struggle with this reality and so do many other writers in Portland. 

The simple truth, as Friedman suggests in her essay, “Writers and Self-Sabotage,” is that not only will writers sabotage one another, in what they do and in what they don't do but they will sabotage themselves with their self-doubt and their envy. Instead of learning to love their own unique voice, POV and focus, they will “lacerate” themselves with the “sentences” of other writers, unfairly comparing them to their own, and coming up short in the end. 

One thing I'm learning, this past year though, after joining several on-line writing groups and two in-person writing groups, is how important it is to give back. By that I mean, helping other less experienced writers learn the craft. That includes offering to edit their work, (for free) kindly giving them feedback and writing fair and insightful reviews of books you admire. This is something I've been doing for over a year now and it’s extremely rewarding to help other writers, both young and old find their groove and learn that their special way of doing things and their unique voice is okay, too.

With the support of the genuine friends I have who care about me, and the writers and publishers I consider part of my tribe, I'm learning I don't have to be like other writers in Portland. I'm learning that I don't have to be like the kinds of writers who may enjoy more exposure or success than I do, for whatever mundane or random reason. 

I am my own kind of writer. I am different and it’s my difference and focus on the truth, as I see it that makes me stand out, for good or for bad.

It is this difference in my approach to language and that of my sometimes quarrelsome voice which also makes me something of a misfit in the Portland writing scene. People often ask me, “But how could you write about that?!” 

In the end, it will be that uniqueness with my approach to language, my understanding of the truth as I perceive it and my courage which will fully live on after I'm gone.