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Book Shopping at Elliott Bay With the New Director of Hugo House
"Do you want to see my favorite nautical book?" asks Sue Joerger, the new executive director of Richard Hugo House. I've invited her to go shopping in her favorite Seattle book shop, and we're currently in the nautical section at Elliott Bay. She picks up Troubleshooting Marine Diesels by Peter Compton.
Joerger started sailing when she was 8 years old, and some of her earliest literary influences were the illustrated sailing stories (with girl sailors, too!) of Arthur Ransome, particularly We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea. And she's been living on her sailboat off and on for the past ten years. "I have one shelf on the boat," she says, "and I only have room for six books."
Joerger took over the top position at Hugo House (Seattle's hub for everything writerly) on June 1, after a nationwide search. The previous executive director left with little or no public explanation last September.
Now in its 13th year, Hugo House has writing classes for kids, writing classes for grown-ups, residencies for writers, residencies for theater companies, a zine archive with over 20,000 pieces, and various curated series and open mics. It's a big transition for Joerger, who's been working for many years with environmental organizations.
Most recently Joerger was the executive director for the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance , a group that keeps an eye out for potential violations of the Clean Water Act in the Puget Sound. She says that she needed a break from the constant "doom and gloom" of the environmental movement and that she's excited to be part of an organization that's helping people create.
Joerger gives the impression of someone who's always moving, always getting things done. She's come to Elliott Bay with her list—mostly of books and authors who've been recommended to her since she started at Hugo House—jotted on a piece of yellow legal paper. "I have so much to read," she says.
First, she picks up Nikki Giovanni's Bicycles and reads a stanza she likes. You can tell she loves reading aloud. ("I've offered to do a dramatic reading of the P&L statement for the staff," she says. "I don't think they're too interested in that.")
We keep moving through the list, making a quick detour past the young adult table, where she picks up Brisingr because her nephew is reading it.
"I like to read along with what he's reading," she says. "I bought him his first Harry Potter."
Reading is a tradition in Joerger's family. Her family didn't have a TV, so they'd sit around with their books at night. She read Moby-Dick at an early age because it came to their house through a classic-of-the-month club, developed an appreciation for mysteries from her father feeding her Graham Greene, and went through extended phases with arctic and antarctic explorers and, later, Russian novelists.
Next on her list is Ryan Boudinot, the local fiction writer who was part of the Hugo Literary Series last November. Many of the people on Joerger's list have been, or are scheduled to be, part of this series, which Hugo House created in 2007 to commission new works from established writers around a group of themes. According to Joerger, the 2009-2010 Series will focus more on local writers than it has in the past, with themes like "Gods and Monsters" and "Truth or Dare."
Joerger flips to a story in the middle of Boudinot's The Littlest Hitler and reads the first few sentences aloud to get a sense of the style. Then she reads the description on the book jacket. This is how she picks all her books. "I don't have a lot of time to spend on books that don't grab my attention," she says. "This one looks pretty interesting."
We spend about 45 minutes zig-zagging between fiction and poetry. (Joerger says she generally reads fiction, even though she writes poetry.) We go from Sherman Alexie in poetry to Junot Diaz in fiction. From Rebecca Brown's fiction and back to poetry for Marie Howe and Linda Bierds, then back over to fiction for Colson Whitehead and Garth Stein.
She reads aloud from Stein's How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets, stopping at the phrase, "A dead girl in a box." ...
"Okay. Now we're going," she says.
In David Foster Wallace, Joerger leafs through Oblivion and tells me that one of the things she enjoys about Hugo House is that everyone who works there is a writer, and they're all different ages and working in different genres—so there's a diversity of tastes.
"At every meeting they go around the table and answer the question, 'What are you reading?' or 'What are you writing?'" she says. Adding: "I think at the board meetings they ask 'What are you reading?' and at the staff meetings they ask 'What are you writing?'"
We spend a little more time in poetry (discussing, not surprisingly, Richard Hugo), and in the nautical disaster books. She reads, from a Hugo-produced chapbook, a poem written by an 8-year-old girl called "How to Be a Good Barbie." Then Joerger goes back and makes her selections.
She is worried that if I write about what she buys, the writers who weren't picked up will feel bad, so I'll just say that she buys three books, one of which was the Stein book. The thing that pushes her over the edge is this book jacket summary:
This is where Joerger confesses that her dream is to play drums in a rock band.
"You should totally make that happen at Hugo House," I say.
"Yeah," she laughs. "Maybe I will."
Joerger started sailing when she was 8 years old, and some of her earliest literary influences were the illustrated sailing stories (with girl sailors, too!) of Arthur Ransome, particularly We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea. And she's been living on her sailboat off and on for the past ten years. "I have one shelf on the boat," she says, "and I only have room for six books."
Joerger took over the top position at Hugo House (Seattle's hub for everything writerly) on June 1, after a nationwide search. The previous executive director left with little or no public explanation last September.
Now in its 13th year, Hugo House has writing classes for kids, writing classes for grown-ups, residencies for writers, residencies for theater companies, a zine archive with over 20,000 pieces, and various curated series and open mics. It's a big transition for Joerger, who's been working for many years with environmental organizations.
Most recently Joerger was the executive director for the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance , a group that keeps an eye out for potential violations of the Clean Water Act in the Puget Sound. She says that she needed a break from the constant "doom and gloom" of the environmental movement and that she's excited to be part of an organization that's helping people create.
Joerger gives the impression of someone who's always moving, always getting things done. She's come to Elliott Bay with her list—mostly of books and authors who've been recommended to her since she started at Hugo House—jotted on a piece of yellow legal paper. "I have so much to read," she says.
First, she picks up Nikki Giovanni's Bicycles and reads a stanza she likes. You can tell she loves reading aloud. ("I've offered to do a dramatic reading of the P&L statement for the staff," she says. "I don't think they're too interested in that.")
We keep moving through the list, making a quick detour past the young adult table, where she picks up Brisingr because her nephew is reading it.
"I like to read along with what he's reading," she says. "I bought him his first Harry Potter."
Reading is a tradition in Joerger's family. Her family didn't have a TV, so they'd sit around with their books at night. She read Moby-Dick at an early age because it came to their house through a classic-of-the-month club, developed an appreciation for mysteries from her father feeding her Graham Greene, and went through extended phases with arctic and antarctic explorers and, later, Russian novelists.
Next on her list is Ryan Boudinot, the local fiction writer who was part of the Hugo Literary Series last November. Many of the people on Joerger's list have been, or are scheduled to be, part of this series, which Hugo House created in 2007 to commission new works from established writers around a group of themes. According to Joerger, the 2009-2010 Series will focus more on local writers than it has in the past, with themes like "Gods and Monsters" and "Truth or Dare."
Joerger flips to a story in the middle of Boudinot's The Littlest Hitler and reads the first few sentences aloud to get a sense of the style. Then she reads the description on the book jacket. This is how she picks all her books. "I don't have a lot of time to spend on books that don't grab my attention," she says. "This one looks pretty interesting."
We spend about 45 minutes zig-zagging between fiction and poetry. (Joerger says she generally reads fiction, even though she writes poetry.) We go from Sherman Alexie in poetry to Junot Diaz in fiction. From Rebecca Brown's fiction and back to poetry for Marie Howe and Linda Bierds, then back over to fiction for Colson Whitehead and Garth Stein.
She reads aloud from Stein's How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets, stopping at the phrase, "A dead girl in a box." ...
"Okay. Now we're going," she says.
In David Foster Wallace, Joerger leafs through Oblivion and tells me that one of the things she enjoys about Hugo House is that everyone who works there is a writer, and they're all different ages and working in different genres—so there's a diversity of tastes.
"At every meeting they go around the table and answer the question, 'What are you reading?' or 'What are you writing?'" she says. Adding: "I think at the board meetings they ask 'What are you reading?' and at the staff meetings they ask 'What are you writing?'"
We spend a little more time in poetry (discussing, not surprisingly, Richard Hugo), and in the nautical disaster books. She reads, from a Hugo-produced chapbook, a poem written by an 8-year-old girl called "How to Be a Good Barbie." Then Joerger goes back and makes her selections.
She is worried that if I write about what she buys, the writers who weren't picked up will feel bad, so I'll just say that she buys three books, one of which was the Stein book. The thing that pushes her over the edge is this book jacket summary:
Evan had a hit single, but that was ten years ago. Thirty-one now, he's drifting, playing in a local band and teaching middle-aged men to coax music from an electric guitar.
This is where Joerger confesses that her dream is to play drums in a rock band.
"You should totally make that happen at Hugo House," I say.
"Yeah," she laughs. "Maybe I will."
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