My Graduate Reading

As part of my MFA graduation week, I read from my thesis (which is also my second book), The Fifth Season: A Daughter-in-Law's Memoir of Caregiving. 


Thanks to my friend John Engler for recording the reading, which is about thirteen minutes long.

Kyoko Mori says this about Through the Veil

Through the Veil didn't win the Oregon Book Award, but the judge, Kyoko Mori, wrote a lovely review of my book. Mori is the author of the memoir Yarn: Remembering the Way Home (2009). She has also published a book of essays, a memoir, and three novels. Her work has appeared in The American Scholar, The Missouri Review, Harvard Review and elsewhere. Here's what she says about Through the Veil.

In writing about the years she lived in the Middle East, Lisa Ohlen Harris displays her skills as a trained ethnographic observer and as a memoirist. In one single sentence, she can present facts, evoke a sense of irony, build suspense, and communicate the absurdity of the situation: “Carrying that symbol of peace [an olivewood dove from an evangelical Christian bookstore in Jerusalem] wrapped in tissue paper, I came out of the shop and stepped off the curb to avoid an Israeli soldier with machine gun ammunition draped across his chest, like the banner of a beauty queen.” Her portraits of the women she encountered are respectful, empathetic, and yet unflinching. She does not hide her own confusion when a woman who seemed to befriend her seemed puzzlingly distant—only to write to her years later about how her departure had broken her heart. Some things will always remain a mystery, like the blue eyes of the veiled women who surrounded her in a market place in Damascus. The book leaves these mysteries intact while shedding light on all it can. In addition to the compelling portraits it offers, the book’s ultimate strength is in its ability to imagine and understand how the American narrator might have come across to the people she encountered.

Through the Veil is now available at independent booksellers throughout Oregon, or you can order online. There's a Kindle version available now, too!

Manzanita Author Tour

This past weekend Todd and I traveled to Manzanita, on the northern Oregon coast, as part of the Oregon Book Awards tour. I arrived early at the Hoffman Center in Manzanita and met Susan Denning, the Literary Arts program director. We shook hands, then hugged—how could I do anything but embrace this woman whose name I will forever associate with the best email I received all year? My friends Lynn and Colleen from my Newberg writing group arrived—familiar faces from home! I spotted one of the other authors, K.B. Hixon, who introduced himself as Ken and pulled his wife Sandy over to meet me, too. I shook hands with the third reader, Emily Chenoweth, just before we took the stage together, and I was first to read.

The spotlights were bright and hot (just like my theater days in college—I’d forgotten!), so I scanned the room and smiled and pretended to make eye contact as I gazed blindly out toward the house in between paragraphs. I was surprised how easily I was able to look up from the page as I read; these words and cadences came from my heart when I wrote them five years ago, and I have many phrases memorized simply because they are mine. Ken read after me, a wonderfully fragmented excerpt from his novel, A Painter’s Life, which is constructed like a scrapbook, like the linguistic equivalent of an artist’s studio, like stepping for a moment into the workings of a painter’s mind. Oh—and Ken's book is really, really funny.

And then Emily Chenoweth got up to read. Emily, who not long before the reading was carrying her infant daughter in a front carrier, read a chapter from her novel about a dying woman and her young daughter, Hello, Goodbye. The mother, grown frail from cancer, wonders how she’d ever hated her wide thighs that bore her up so faithfully, how she had neglected to worship her own strong body while she had it. All I could think as I listened was, I must read this book.

Local and visiting writers were then invited for an open mic. Lynn read—wonderful stuff—three poems I knew and one I didn’t. Lynn slipped out without hearing what I heard during conversations after the event: Who was that visiting poet? I hope she comes back. I really enjoyed her reading—does anyone know who she is? I half expected to find Lynn’s glass slipper outside the Hoffman Center when we left at the end of the evening to walk a few blocks to a local writer’s home for a glass of wine and a very relaxed private reception.

I have to tell you that I love Susan, Ken, and Emily. I love them. They’re all so down to earth, so honest, so unpretentious. I want Ken and Emily to win the Oregon Book Award, both for the quality of their writing and for who they are. They can’t both win, because they’re up for the same fiction prize, but there was no sense of competition between them, only camaraderie. What a privilege to read together, to relax and visit and enjoy one another.

The next morning after a walk on the beach, Todd and I checked out of the hotel and joined the others for breakfast together at a local café. Susan held up her camera and interviewed Ken, Emily, and me. I really need to work on keeping my eyes open while I’m talking!

This weekend I heard some great writing by wonderful people. I’m so grateful for the writing community I’m a part of, both here in Newberg and in the state of Oregon. Thank you, Oregon Literary Arts!

I'm Back!

Snow mixed with the early morning rain, and my sixteen-year-old quipped, “They should cancel school. We can’t possibly drive in this dangerous weather.” My poor deprived kids. The rest of the country has been hip deep in snow more than a few times, while here on the West Coast we’ve had a very mild winter.

The thirteen year old stayed home with a cold today, which means I skipped out on my office hours to keep her company and do my grading at home. By noon the sky cleared to patches of blue and intermittent sunshine. Fuzzy buds paw their way out of the tips of the aspen branches, while crocuses and tulips—maybe even some daffodils—push up like green periscopes all over the garden.

June is only four months away—and my freezer is still full of berries from last summer! My daughter mixed berries and flour and sugar in proportions that seemed right to us both. I preheated the oven while she forked together a topping of oatmeal and brown sugar.

I return to this blog with nothing of consequence to report. Just a taste of the seasons all jumbled together and offered to the ones I love.

Oregon Book Award Finalist

Through the Veil has been selected as a finalist for creative nonfiction in the Oregon Book Awards. The winner will be announced at the end of April. Can you believe it? Here's how happy this makes me.

If you haven't had a chance to read the book yet, you can buy Through the Veil from Amazon or from your local bookseller.

Comfort Food

I'm so pleased to let you know that my essay, "Comfort Food," appears in the September 2010 issue of Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction.

End of August

Sure enough, our maple leaves are turning their faces to greet autumn. I have blogged my first year in Newberg: autumn, winter, spring, and summer.

When I first moved from Southern California to Oregon as a teenager, my friend Michelle gave me a five-year diary to record my new life. Each page bore a date and five divided spaces for daily entries underneath. When I filled the first year—that first hard set of seasons at a new school with my California friends far behind—I dropped down to the second tier and began again on January 1. Seventeen years old instead of sixteen. A junior now, thinking of college and future—no longer a sophomore grieving a California childhood left behind. Each day of that second year I was able to measure loneliness, a new crush, a choir solo, a part in the play, against my first year in Oregon.

Blogs aren’t set up for this kind of annual self evaluation. Too many clicks and calculations—who can trouble with going back? There’s no blog template that will allow me to hold one year just outside another like tree rings.

I remember some things even without searching the blog’s archives. Last summer was hotter and seemed longer. I thrilled to see those first red leaves on the maples when I returned home from my graduate residency in mid-August. This year the leaves began to turn even before I left for Washington. Last year I was eager to taste fall. This year I am not so sure. But my feelings don’t matter: autumn, like Aslan, is on the move.

This morning my outdoor thermometer showed 46 degrees as I brewed my coffee and put on socks. This evening the breeze is fresh but yet balmy through my open bedroom window. The past few nights have been quiet as winter. No frogs, no owls, no raindrops. But tonight I hear through my window a multitude of crickets, and just above the shadowy treetops I can glimpse the full moon.