Oregon Book Awards Author Tour

Justin Hocking

Oregon Book Awards authors visit EOU, May 27

May 11, 2015

PORTLAND, Ore. – The Oregon Book Awards Author Tour is bringing Justin Hocking, Cari Luna and Dawn Diez Willis to La Grande and Enterprise May 27-28.

The authors will appear Wednesday, May 27 at 7:30 p.m. in La Grande at the Pierce Library Reading Room on the Eastern Oregon University campus.

2015 winner in creative nonfiction.

EOU faculty member Justin Hocking is the 2015 Oregon Book Award winner in creative nonfiction for “The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld.” John D’Agata, who judged the award, calls the memoir “a lovely, measured and complex examination of how we manage to heal ourselves amidst the messy tumult of the world around us — a quiet and brilliant achievement of both emotion and technique.”

Hocking is the co-founder of the Wilderness Writing Concentration of the low-residency Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at EOU. He teaches non-fiction and is the author of numerous zines and 13 books.

Also on tour are Cari Luna, 2015 Oregon Book Award winner in fiction for “The Revolution of Every Day,” and Dawn Diez Willis, 2015 finalist in poetry for “Still Life With Judas and Lightning.”

The Carl and Sandra Ellston Ars Poetica Reading Series and EOU are working in collaboration with Literary Arts to sponsor the event on campus. 

The next stop for the authors will be in Enterprise Thursday, May 28 at 7 p.m. at the Fishtrap House, 400 E Grant St. Both readings are free and open to the public.