Peter Donahue is Associate Professor of English at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama, where he teaches creative writing and journalism. He holds a PhD in English for Creative Writing and has published several books and many short stories, critical articles, personal essays, and book reviews. Peter’s recent novel Madison House was awarded the 2005 Langum Prize for Historical Fiction. During the residency he worked to complete his second novel, set in post-WWII Seattle and based on the city’s contentious labor movement. The book chronicles the struggles between longshoremen labor leader Harry Bridges and Dave Beck, the legendary strong-arm boss of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
“The month I spent in Oysterville proved one of the most creative and productive periods in my writing career. The fact of residency alone was extremely validating to me as a writer, and gave me the encouragement and confidence to make the most of the time in Oysterville. I owe the Espy Foundation a great debt of gratitude for giving me the inestimable gift of time to write.”
Author Peter Donahue’s June 2006 Residency Evaluation
Please describe for the Foundation the nature of the work you did while in Oysterville.
During the residency, I worked to complete my second novel, tentatively titled The Fire Shall Try, set in post-WWII Seattle and based on the city’s contentious labor movement, particularly concerning the conflicts between Teamsters’ and the longshoremen’s unions. (See residency application for a full description of the project). My goal going into the residency was to complete the first draft of the novel, which I calculated meant writing about 160 pages. In the end, I wrote 180 pages, yet I didn’t finish the first draft. As I told my fellow residents, it was the book’s fault, not mine. As with my 500+-page novel Madison House, the ending of The Fire Shall Try kept receding from me the nearer I approached it—a kind of compositional Zeno’s paradox. However, with the momentum of the significant amount of work I did during the residency, I will complete the first draft this month.
More important than completing the first draft is the fact that I was able to use the intensive writing time allowed by the residency to fully realize and fill out my novel. At the start of the residency, I had at best a tentative hold of the project. By the end of the residency, I had gained a sure grasp of the novel, and its end was well in sight. (A hundred and eighty pages in four weeks will do that.) Indeed, the month I spent in Oysterville proved one of the most creative and productive periods in my writing career. If I had spent the same period working from home, I would have had to contend with innumerable distractions and would have, no doubt, accomplished much less. The license that the residency gave me to set everything else aside and focus exclusively on my writing made all the difference. The fact of residency alone was extremely validating to me as a writer, and gave me the encouragement and confidence to make the most of the time in Oysterville.
Given that my novel is set in the Northwest, the Oysterville location was particularly conducive to my writing. I felt fully steeped in the region. When I wasn’t writing—my writing day was basically 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.—I was exploring the area and thinking about the region. In the end, I included a passage about the Long Beach peninsula and Oysterville, circa 1948, in my novel. Even the social interactions I had with peninsula residents contributed to my project, since many of them, especially the folks who had once lived in Seattle, were more than happy to relate to me their memories of Dave Beck and the Teamsters, Frederick & Nelson department store, the Northwest art scene, and any number of small but telling details of daily life during the period I was writing about.
In all, I owe the Espy Foundation a great debt of gratitude for giving me the inestimable gift of time to write.
Please summarize your professional accomplishments to date and/or forthcoming publications, grants, awards, residencies, etc.
My book publications include the short story collection The Cornelius Arms (Missing Spoke Press, 2000), the novel Madison House (Hawthorne Books, 2005. Winner of the 2005 Langum Prize for Historical Fiction), and the anthology Reading Seattle: The City in Prose (University of Washington Press, 2004). In December 2006, the University of Washington Press and Oregon Historical Society will jointly publish my second anthology, Reading Portland: The City Told. The novel that I worked on during my Espy Residency is scheduled for publication by Hawthorne Books in Spring 2008. In addition to these book projects, I have published more than two dozen short stories in various literary journals, a dozen critical articles on American literature in various scholarly journals, and numerous book reviews in journals and magazines, including my on-going series of “Retrospective Reviews” of vintage Washington State novels in Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History, the quarterly magazine of the Washington State Historical Society. The Espy Foundation residency was the first residency I have received.
Please take a moment to evaluate your living and working accommodations while in residence. Be as specific as possible and please do not hesitate to make suggestions for how we might improve the experience for future residents.
The living and working accommodations during my residency were ideal. I was glad to have been placed in the Bayview House, and I hope the Foundation will continue to use this location for future residencies. It provided ample space for me and my housemate, Laura McGinley. Since we both had a separate wing of the upstairs, we could really keep to ourselves during the day when we were working. Then, when we weren’t working, the downstairs had a lot of living space for reading, making meals, and just hanging out. I appreciated being a short distance from historic Oysterville, which, small as it is, seemed to have a number of ready distractions for the residents in the Guest House. One advantage of the Bayview House was its lack of Internet access. Truly, this was a boon to my writing, not being able to dawdle away my time emailing or surfing the web. At the end of my writing day, I would hop on one of the bikes in the shed and pedal over to the Espy library to check my email, which was all the access I needed.
Polly did a fine job of pairing up the residents. I appreciated being housemates with another fiction writer. After writing all day, Laura and I frequently talked about different elements of craft, from the serious (“How do you deal with plot?) to the silly (“Can a novel have too many tavern scenes? I already have six.”), as well as the writing process in general. We also shared the same interest in books, so we were regularly discussing authors we’d both read or authors we recommended the other person read. Temperamentally, we also got along quite splendidly. As I did with the other three residents: David, Faith, and Shelly. The mix was great. Our keeping company with another—including a road trip to Portland for Shelly’s gallery opening—became a kind of lighthearted early summer romance. I think we enjoyed our playtime together so much because—in addition to just being a smart, felicitous bunch—we all worked so hard each day at our solitary writing desks. I look forward to continuing a fond friendship with all four of my fellow residents.
The Foundation support during the residency was outstanding. Sabrina was always very solicitous, and ready and able to assist us. She and Graeme were great ambassadors for the Foundation and quickly became part of the Espy idyll. Likewise, Vivian and Anne were wonderful support. Polly’s welcoming dinner on June 1 was an excellent way to acquaint the residents with one another. It really helped set the tone for the entire residency. What I also appreciated about the Foundation’s role in the residency was its willingness to set us up and then step aside. As a college professor, I spend a great portion of my life dealing with a bureaucratic institution’s needling demands on my time. Under Polly’s leadership, the Espy Foundation has safely kept itself from becoming this kind of intrusive entity. In fact, the Foundation so effaced itself during the residency that the residents, it turns out, had to reach out to the Foundation rather than the other way around when we wanted to express our thanks. This seems like a small matter, but it makes a difference. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the warm reception we received from Oysterville residents, most especially Sydney and Nyel. The experience would have been significantly diminished without the happy interest they took in spending time with us.
