about face : pioneers of pinot noir : dick + nancy ponzi

It's impossible not to be inspired by the Ponzis. 

Even those that work closely with the couple are often surprised and impressed by their respective resumes. And while it's easy to distill Dick and Nancy Ponzi's story down to their successes—one of world class pinot noirs that helped put Oregon's wine industry on the map—their prosperity is firmly grounded in two core principles: family and education.

As history will show, the Ponzis were definitely in the right place at the right time. Naturally, their drive for lifelong learning and a tireless work ethic contributed as well. But when the Ponzis settled outside of Portland in the late '60s, their intent—to grow pinot noir grapes—was assured, but other than that, there were no assurances. No one was making pinot noir wine. And in reality, there was no wine industry in Oregon.

With the family in mind first and foremost, the Ponzi's honest intention was simply to get back to the land and work in a way which would sustainably support their growing family. When the first batch of wine turned out well, the "aroma," as Dick puts it, may have sparked something inside of him, taking him back to a distinctive place in his childhood.

Thenceforth, the perfection of their craft—learning the pinot noir grapes—became a passion for the Ponzis as did promoting the burgeoning wine industry alongside a group of likeminded innovators and risk-takers like themselves.

Always looking to push the boundaries of their own experience and palate, Dick is constantly looking "to expand to see what else will grow." Today, "There's one varietal that no one else is growing [in Oregon]," he says of the Italian white Arneis (which is even quite unique across the entire U.S.), while Nancy adds: "We have learned everything from reading—if you can read, you can do anything."

Collina del Sogno

With 43 of hands-on wisdom as well, Dick personally engineered and oversaw the construction of Ponzi's new eco- and eno-friendly home: Collina del Sogno, a sustainable, 30,000-square-foot, four-tiered, gravity-flow winery built in 2008.

The tradition of award-winning wine continues at this new facility where daughter Luisa, who's held the winemaking reins for two decades, anchors the agricultural side of the winery while son Michel and daughter Maria work on the business side. Via the example set forth by their parents, the founders' established principles of family, education, craft and sustainability are now practiced by a second generation of Ponzis.

What was your experience with wine before moving to Oregon? Better yet, what's your family's history with wine?

Nancy: Dick is first-generation Italian so he has wine culture in his background.

In your blood?

Dick: In my blood, yeah.

Nancy: I, on the other hand, am from Southern California so I knew nothing. After we were married, we moved to Northern California and were living in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains where there are substantial wineries. Dick thought it would be a very nice idea to introduce these little children to the culture of wine—not just having it at the table but doing the whole thing.

Did you have any experience making wine prior to that?

Dick: My family made wines in the Midwest. They would get an annual supply of grapes from California and then the community would get together, make the wine and that would be their supply for the rest of the year—and vinegar, it turned out, later on. [Laughs]

Nancy: The end of that story is: The wine was terrible. [Laughs] We happened to have a vineyard practically in our backyard in Los Gatos so we got permission to go pick some grapes.

And this was in the '60s?

Nancy: Oh yeah, everything is permeated by this is the '60s [laughs]—we didn't have to make wine. At that time, Dick was designing rocket engines. With the Vietnam War, we wanted to disassociate from the government so he quit his job [in aerospace]. We dabbled in a few things, had another child, and, in the meantime, had been playing around with this idea of—not really making wine—but going back to the land—the idea of moving someplace, planting a vineyard. Then Dick got this job with Disneyland designing rides, but we still had the idea of the back-to-the-land thing. So we did. We packed up one day, quit the job, and moved up here.

Dick: I remember when I left home [in Michigan], I said: "I'm going to California, I'll have all the wines I need, and I'll never make any homemade wines." And here, I found myself with these little kids [wanting to] give them an experience—the experience was really was the fermentation of the wines that I remembered as a child. While we were making the wines as an experience for the kids, that aroma really caught hold of me again. And this time, the wines turned out fairly well—that was a surprise. [Laughs]

You two came to the Willamette Valley knowing that you wanted to make pinot noir wine, but honestly, what was going through your head at that time? The Pacific Northwest was not known as a wine producing region at that time? No one was growing pinot noir grapes. What made you think that you could do it?

Dick: We got wind that there was someone [Richard Sommer of HillCrest Vineyard] in Southern Oregon dabbling in wine grapes. We felt that maybe we could do the same thing. We came up here and realized that there were a couple other people doing something similar [to Sommer] but [no one] had gotten very far.

You've been in business for 43 years, so that in itself is quite a success. But you've also been very instrumental at putting the Northwest on the map as a place to produce pinot noir. How did you do what you did?

Dick: First of all, it's the climate—and the climate lent itself well to pinot noir. It felt like Alsace and Burgundy [in France]. But to take on a project like this, it wasn't like imagining: "This is going to be a killer industry. But, it's a possibility that we can make wine and sell it in Portland." 

You just wanted it to be sustainable for yourself and your family.

Dick: That's right, and it was just that. That's why we're located very close to Portland—we didn't want to get too far away. It was safe to find ourselves here, and then when we landed, we found other acquaintances who made us think that this may be a possibility—it's just not that crazy. We really worked together and supported ourselves in terms of exchanging ideas and information. 

Who all was around at that time?

Dick: Dick Erath [Erath Winery], David Lett [The Eyrie Vineyards], Charles Coury [Charles Coury Winery], Richard Sommer, David Adelsheim [Adelsheim Vineyard], and some others too.

Did you share resources?

Dick: Absolutely. There was complete sharing of materials and experiences. The fact that we came to the area that we thought was right and made acquaintances with some other people who were involved with the same crazy notion—that was very supportive and encouraging.

Ponzi has been family-owned and run since the beginning, and currently, all three of your children work for the winery.

Nancy: We did this as a family adventure to start out with, plus we thought it would be good for our children to grow up in a more rural environment where they knew where things came from. There was never any intention to make a family dynasty out of it. 

Dick: No masterplan.

Nancy: People assume that's what we did because it sort of happened.

Right, your three kids have stuck with it, or rather, come back to it.

Nancy: Came back [laughs]. That's it.

Dick: It was just a natural thing. There was no coercion or force. It was pretty marvelous that they found their niches and they do it well.

The family was really the genesis for the vineyard—it's what brought you here...

Nancy: "Papa made the wine for 20 years and I took the next 20"—that's what Luisa says.  

How involved are you in today's company?

Dick: We're always involved. We enjoy doing the tastings and we enjoy reminding people of the history—giving people a perspective of where it all came from.

Nancy: [The industry today] is so much further along. [Lots of] people are coming into it and they feel like they can make and sell wine. And they don't want to support many of the trade [organizations] or promotional things, not realizing that the reason they can sell wine is because somebody did that for them originally.

You set up a market for them.

Nancy: Yes. Otherwise, you're out there making your wine and nobody cares. 

Dick: We were pretty foolish back in the '70s—knocking on the doors in New York City to buy our wines. We had to educate them where Oregon was.

You literally did that?

Dick: Oh yes [laughs]. That was the first 10 years of effort to be accepted. First of all, you'd try to find a distributor—that was very difficult. We did it collectively and that was important.

Nancy: That was the key.

Dick: If you were a lone person knocking on the door saying, "Look how great my wines are." They would just think that it as an accident. But if you had half a dozen people… 

Nancy: You had to have enough participants and wine to really create a market.

Dick: It was important for people to understand that there was more than just one winery here, that there was a dedicated group of people. 

Dick, you've been heralded countless times over the years, receiving numerous awards and accolades for your pinot noirs. It's been said that you set the standard for new world pinot noirs and there's always talk of balancing tradition and innovation. What does that mean to you?

Dick: Pinot noir was kind of a strange grape to deal with and that was one of the things that brought us to growing it. Learning the grape was a big portion of the winemaking. [We did things] in different ways than may have been accepted as the standard. That was part of the innovation—how to make true pinot noir wine. Today, it's pretty much accepted; it's just taken for granted that this is how you raise the grape and make the wine. The process is probably very similar in every winery in Oregon now, and in other places. They've adopted the vineyard style, they've adopted process, and the better wines that are made, are made in small containers and on a very personal level. 

It's evolved.

Nancy: Yes. I think most people don't appreciate what Oregon has contributed to pinot noir. There's a fraternity of pinot noir producers around the world—we know each other and come together and talk about wines. There's a lot more [pinot noirs] now in the world, but the whole thing has risen up, I feel, largely because what's been done in Oregon. We've been the ones that have reached out and made so much of this collaboration happen. It's really been wonderful—we're in the third generation of people making [pinot noir] wines here.

Dick: A lot of it is taken for granted, partly because those who are making good pinot noirs are the descendants of wineries that have supported new winemakers. That's what's really, to my way of thinking, pretty exciting because those who come up here to grow pinot noir do it because they really love and understand pinot noir. And they do, generally, a good job. The yields are very low, but that's what makes these wines so unique. 

Since 2008, you've been in a new facility in Sherwood that Dick, by the way, designed from the ground up. How long did it take you to design this winery?

Dick: We had a lot of history of winemaking before we moved into that building. That gave us advantage—we knew what kind of a winery building we wanted. 

You basically had the opportunity to build your dream winery.

Dick: Exactly. Pinot noir was very difficult to master as a wine because I had to relearn the making of wine from pinot noir [grapes]. It's different in how we establish the vineyards and make the wines—that was a whole learning process. The first 15 years or so was a lot of experimentation and learning so that was the help we got from other participants in the industry—we were teaching each other. That was very significant.

The new facility has been noted for being eco-friendly and highly sustainable. Is there a particular feature of the building that you're particularly proud of?

Dick: The highlight is that we have a lot of space [laughs].

Nancy: Our daughter Luisa is the winemaker and her first comment after her first vintage there was: "I didn't know it was so easy to make wine." [Laughs]

Nancy, you're also involved in improving the working environment, founding ¡Salud!, which provides healthcare services to seasonal vineyard workers through a benefit auction. Apparently it's the only program of its kind in the nation.

Nancy: World. There's nothing like this—it's totally unique. 

What's so revolutionary about ¡Salud!?

Nancy: It's a collaboration, started 25 years ago, between the major hospital here in western Washington County, winemakers and local businesses. Initially, the purpose of was is to celebrate the wine industry, but then we came up this idea of providing healthcare for our workers. The approach has been not as a charity but as something we need to do—we depend on our field workers, unquestionably. This industry would die without field workers. We can't provide health insurance for them but we can provide healthcare for them this way. We actually take the healthcare out to the workers. We use mobile vans to go out into the vineyards and they get amazing preventative healthcare [which] includes dental. And it's not only the workers but their families. So far this year, they have over 3,000 people signed up. 

How does a worker qualify?

Nancy: They have to work in an Oregon vineyard—that's it.

Do specific vineyards participate?

Nancy: No, we provide the service to any vineyard worker.

Dick: It's funded by a group of wineries through an auction. The auction is fed with some of the best wines that are available, and they're not to be sold other than at the auction. Generally, these wines are fantastic because, theoretically, it's a quarter barrel of the best [wines] you have. 

Nancy: And it's not the best wine in your cellar. Everybody makes a special couvée for ¡Salud! so the wine you buy at ¡Salud! cannot be bought any place else. Through the years, ¡Salud! is the one organization I really stay with because I just love it—you see something happening. And it's all done with complete dignity. There's nothing like: "Here's a little something for you." It's: "We owe this to you, so please accept it."

How has the Oregon winemaking industry evolved in your time here?

Dick: We have 450 voices now—that many wineries. In the beginning, we only had half a dozen. And we had pretty much the same mindset: We always had a vision and an understanding that the industry would grow if we could preserve the land so that it wasn't built on. That struggle goes on today. The reason we have so many vineyards now is because that land was saved.

You've also been active on a legislative level to grow the wine industry, and with 450 voices now, there's a verifiable industry and a much stronger voice of advocacy. But I'm sure there are always different voices.

Dick: Yes. In the '70s, there were different voices as well. There were conflicts but they were easy to resolve. The big conflict today is: What kind of privileges should wineries have? Should they have tasting rooms? Well, we went to the legislature in the '70s and asked to have tasting rooms. As we found out, this has become an agricultural tourism now—people want to visit tasting rooms. 

And you were very involved in that?  

Dick: Yes, and that's what helped the industry. If you follow that thinking, liberalize the laws so that these wineries can function and broaden what they can do, you can create this wine industry. This didn't just happen out of nowhere—we had the freedom to have tasting rooms. We did the same thing—we had a brewery [BridgePort Brewing Company] at one time. Breweries could only manufacture beer; they couldn't do anything else. We went down [to the legislature] and changed the laws there and said: "Why can't' breweries have tasting rooms? Or pubs?" We call them pubs now [laughs]. So they liberalized the laws—well, look what happened. 

What's next for you?

Nancy: Dick is creating machines for bar-to-bean chocolate. 

Dick: I'm working with some people who are making chocolate through the bean-to-bar process, but I'm working on the machine, the equipment.

So, chocolatiers are sourcing beans from specific growers around the world and then making their own sustainable chocolate bars?

Dick: It's kind of a new wave that's happening and the taste of the chocolate from one region is so different than from another region. 

Nancy: There's some people in Portland working on this but this is taking it back to the beginning step.

Which could become like Portland's current coffee industry?

Dick: Yes, exactly. It's a lot like coffee, no question.

Sunset from the terrace at Collina del Sogno

What excites you about today's wine industry in Oregon?

Dick: I've always been excited about the growth and the people who are coming in because this is a grape that doesn't draw a lot of people—the yields are low, making it is difficult. There are a lot of negative things about making a fortune with pinot noir. Those who come are pretty serious and try to learn from those who are here. Those are the people that are going to be successful [because] they truly believe in it.

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Read this interview in the summer 2013 issue of About Face Magazine.

about face : the pulse of patrick dewitt

A personal account from the inventive mind of a lauded yet self-effacing author.

Patrick deWitt is the last person to tell you that his most recent novel, 2011's The Sisters Brothers, is award winning—let alone that it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious fiction awards in the world.

In fact, he's the first to tell you that he doesn't really care to discuss The Sisters Brothers. But, he will mention that "I'm working on a new novel. It's like a fable without a moral."

With two successful, yet forcefully dark and divergent books under his belt, the ever-modest deWitt currently has a noteworthy literary career going for himself, including writing the screenplay for Terri, a 2011 film starring John C. Reilly, while Reilly's production company also bought up the film rights to The Sisters Brothers.

Born on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in 1975, deWitt is a high-school dropout who has bounced around between Canada, Washington and Southern California, ultimately settling in Oregon. 

His time working the bars of Los Angeles informed his debut novel, Ablutions, in which deWitt documents and embellishes upon drunken and drug-addled experiences of alcoholics and addicts tossed by the Hollywood wayside. But when pressed for what egregious details might actually be based on his own life, deWitt cagily pleads the Fifth, contending, "I was actually asked by the publisher’s legal department not to discuss this, sorry."

And the work that inspired his biggest success came not from his own past but that of another century entirely when deWitt stumbled on a Time-Life book about the California Gold Rush at a yard sale in Northeast Portland. Readily mentioning that The Sisters Brothers "is a departure from Ablutions," or vice versa, deWitt's Wild West tale of two murderous brothers—dubbed "cowboy noir" by The New York Times—has earned the writer local and international notoriety as he took home the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction at the Oregon Book Awards in 2012 as well as two Canadian literary awards in 2011.

That said, deWitt hardly thinks "my body of work is sizable enough for a highlights reel, frankly."

Making his home in Portland for the last five years, deWitt is engaged in growing his body of work by writing his next novel, which is set to be delivered to publishers before the end of the year. But in the interim, he spent some time composing emails back and forth with About Face Magazine “because, like most writers, socializing is something I've never quite mastered.”

You seem to be a steadfast West Coaster. From Vancouver Island to California and Washington, now you're smack dab in the middle. What brought you to Portland in the first place?

I’d been living on an island for two years and the idea of moving to a larger town was appealing. We zeroed in on Portland for all the reasons everyone else zeroes in on Portland. Also, we didn’t know anyone here, and I liked the idea of starting over as a perfect stranger.

I’m listening to Rye Coalition’s “Jimmy Walkover” as I type this. 

I've read that you were a high-school dropout, didn't go to college, and you've never taken a writing course. How did you find writing to be your calling? Or, did it find you?

I started reading when I was a very young chicken, and I bought into the sanctity of the novel in a way that almost embarrasses me. It’s the only thing I’ve ever really been interested in, to tell you the truth. I was a terrible student. I still can’t do long division. I literally can’t do it.

What is it about the novel that's so alluring and important to you? What “embarrasses” you?

Well, the endlessness of language and storytelling, I guess. The musicality and beauty of a well-crafted sentence. (See? Embarrassing.) As a young reader, it just seemed to me that the authors I responded to were having so much fun, and this was appealing to me. I had anxiety about becoming an adult, specifically relating to the looming threat of drudge work, and so when the notion of writing fiction (both for a living and as a way to live) came to me, I was hugely relieved.

Tell me about your average work day.

This is boring, but you asked for it: I wake up and work for a couple hours, then there’s the afternoon which consists of: reading, listening to records, book/record shopping, bike riding, press stuff, hands-off socializing, eating, erranding, movie-going, etc. I’ve been drinking at the Red Fox a few nights a week lately.

Does your afternoon routine provide inspiration or help you rejuvenate for the next morning of writing?

It provides distance from the work on the one hand, but then also, it’s from this distance that a good many of the breakthroughs take place. When I’m working on a long-term piece like a novel, it’s day in, day out.

What are you listening to now? 

Trio’s “Broken Hearts For You and Me.”

You mentioned that you're working on a new novel and that "it's like a fable without a moral." What else can you tell me about it?

It’s still coming together but I think it’s going to be like Moby-Dick on land with a love story pushed through its chest.

I can’t say where the ideas come from. One minute they’re not there, and then suddenly they are. It seems unwise to try to guess at their point of origin, actually. The process is so blurry; best to give it a wide berth and hope whatever’s happening keeps happening.

Is love a new frontier for you? In your writing, that is.

I’ve never tried to re-create the feeling of love before, I don’t think. Not easy, currently.

How have you attempted to inspire this re-creation?

I’m relying on imperfect memory.

Any clue when the novel will be completed?

If all goes well, I imagine I’ll have a rough draft in a year, year and a half. 

Now I’m listening to The Everly Brothers’ “I Wonder If I Care As Much.” 

In the past, you reported that you were writing a story about a corrupt New York investment banker who discovers that he’s about to be arrested so he skips the country to start a new life in France. This obviously isn’t the same book then, is it?

No, it’s a different novel. Here’s what happened with the banker story: I started it a few months before The Sisters Brothers came out, thinking I’d have time to work on it in addition to doing press and travel stuff, which with Ablutions hadn’t been particularly grueling. Well, The Sisters Brothers kept me busy to the point that I didn’t have time to write for a year, almost a year and a half, and by the time I revisited the banker story, I’d lost my affection for it. I fought against this for a few months, but finally I had to recognize there wasn’t anything I could do to save it.

If what you’re working on now is a completely different story, what happened to the previous effort? 

It’s in the failure graveyard, with the others. I could probably pull a short story or two out of it, but right now I can’t look at it because it’s too painful.

What else can you tell me about this “next” novel then? I know you spent three months in Paris this last year for a residency and the previous book idea had involved France as a setting. Did your time abroad have any influential inspiration on the setting of the book?

It’s set in a vaguely Central European location, in a vaguely distant time. I’ll point to the fable as the primary inspiration, but also certain other novels, such as Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, with bits of Moby-Dick or Frankenstein or Dracula or Robert Walser’s Jakob Von Gunten.

Your first two novels have been vastly different in terms of setting—and this next one seems to chart new territory as well—but both have been somewhat dark, exposing the seedier elements of life in a captivating way. There's also been humor amongst the murkiness, and characters that may seem "bad" or "misguided" on the surface but are relatable and understandable. Where have these characters come from?

This sounds like a question for my therapist.

Well then, are any parts of your novels based on yourself and your own experiences? Are they based on observation or invention?

There’s a bunch of autobiographical stuff in Ablutions. With The Sisters Brothers, I tried to step away from that type of thing but wound up siphoning all my pseudo-philosophical heart-garbage into the character of Eli. 

But, yes, there’s also lots of room for invention.

The Sisters Brothers is also set to become a film as John C. Reilly's production company optioned it and I hear he intends to star as narrator Eli Sisters, yes?

This is true, and I’m pig-in-shit happy about it.

Is there any other news about the upcoming film or your involvement in the making of it?

I’m involved to the degree that I wrote the screenplay, but from here on out there’s not much for me to do other than cross my fingers and cheer the others on.

At one point, you described The Sisters Brothers as a departure from Ablutions. Is your new book a departure from The Sisters Brothers and back to Ablutions? Or somewhere new altogether?

It feels different than either of those but I don’t know that I can verbalize how, because it’s a shade on the early side, and because I’m not all that cognizant of my own process. Something is either functioning or not functioning, and right now it’s functioning, so all other concerns are irrelevant.

I tend to not look back at or consider what I’ve already done, but of course, there must be some overarching tone or attitude, as it’s all manufactured in the same location.  

What are you listening to now?

Ford Eaglin, “That Certain Door.”

Your first and second novels were dedicated to your father and mother, respectively, but Ablutions says for "the last of the old, bold pilots." What did your dad, and mom, do?

To clarify: They’re not dead. They live in Portland, too. My mother is a photographer and recovering shit-disturber. My father is a contractor. The dedication you mention stems from the saying, “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.” I heard that and thought, “Not true.”

Who'll get the next dedication?

It’s still up for grabs at this point. 

What else besides writing keeps you busy in Portland?

I’m not by nature an outdoorsy type but it feels obscene to live here and not take part, so I do a bit of fly fishing and skiing and camping, etc. It’s a great drinking town. And the food is incredible. I was in Paris for a residency earlier this year, and time after time, I’d sit down to a 200 euro meal that just wasn’t nearly as good as the food here. 

Where would you go to spend the equivalent of 200 euro on a meal in Portland?

The Laurelhurst Market’s steak frites have been a favorite for a few years now, and the drinks are excellent there.

What other old favorites around town do you keep coming back to?

Again, the Red Fox. I love Liberty Glass. I’ve been eating breakfast at Sweedeedee on Albina. My favorite drink is Redbreast Irish with ginger beer and a lemon wedge. I need a new drink but I can’t seem to make the change.

What do you listen to your music on? And what's playing now? 

I have a record player. I’m not listening to anything, now. I’m listening to the heater pushing air.

Although you said, “I don’t think my body of work is sizable enough for a highlights reel,” what moments of your career or professional recognition that you’ve received would you put on your resume?

As far as resumes go: I bid them a bitter farewell on the day I started writing full-time, and I pray to God I’ll never have to compose another for the rest of my life. In moving houses recently, I unearthed an old resume from my early 20s, actually. Under “qualifications” I wrote: “Pleasant disposition.” That was it. My lone selling point. The sad part is, it wasn’t even true.

And, what are you listening to now?

The B-side of the Eaglin 45, “By The Water.”

Bonus! A discarded sidebar idea that AFM chose not to use

Patrick’s Picks: Although deWitt thinks his daily routine may sound boring, who wouldn’t want to spend their afternoons reading, listening to records and watching films? Here are a few of his recent and all-time favorites:

Records:

Spielt Eigene Kompositionen, Tsege Mariam Gebru

Michael Hurley, all records

Looks Like Rain, Mickey Newbury

Bach: Toccatas, Vol. 1, Glenn Gould

Bo Diddley is a Gunslinger, Bo Diddley

Venus in Cancer, Robbie Basho

Books:

The Big Why, Michael Winter

What’s for Dinner?, James Schuyler

Manservant and Maidservant, Ivy Compton-Burnett

Morte D’Urban, J.F. Powers

Jakob Von Gunten, Robert Walser

Impossible Object, Nicholas Mosley

Movies:

The Servant, Joseph Losey

Il Posto, Ermanno Olmi

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Werner Herzog

A Prophet, Jacques Audiard

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Read this interview in About Face Magazine.

about face : robyn tenenbaum : live on stage for an airwave audience

For more than two decades, Robyn Tenenbaum has been captivated by the spontaneous and unexpected moments that happen on the live stage, as well as the audience’s reaction to those sudden bursts of artistic expression, humor, theatrics, or improvisation.

Whether promoting concerts or producing radio variety shows, one of Tenenbaum’s core principles is the idea that live entertainment should not just amuse people but also incite discovery. As the co-creator and executive producer of her own show, Live Wire! Radio, which airs weekly on OPB, Tenenbaum ambitiously translates this unique live experience to the airwaves.

Branding Live Wire! as “radio variety for the Jon Stewart set,” Tenenbaum sees her show as “a cultural curator for the rich arts and culture scene here in Portland, throughout the region and beyond.”

“It’s hard to put the words to the feeling you get—that sense of community you get when you come to a show, that sense of knowing you can get a lot of your culture in one night,” Tenenbaum relates.

Nevertheless, “It really is a radio show,” Tenenbaum says, grounding herself. “There’s so many more radio listeners, so we really always try to remember that, and that the live show is then sort of a bonus.”

Hailing from San Francisco, Tenenbaum spent the '90s working for Bill Graham Presents, studying the way the storied impresario and concert promoter was able to arrange different acts together—whether it was rock with jazz or just an unlikely pairing—to expose audiences to new sights, sounds and schools of thought. “People would come for one act and would be exposed to another,” she says of the bills Graham used to book.

Falling in love meant moving to Portland in 2000, where Tenenbaum likes to say, according to her official bio, she “gave birth to a boy, a girl and a radio variety show.”

Tenenbaum says the concept came together serendipitously in 2003 when mutual friends and random connections introduced her to Jim Brunberg, Live Wire!’s technical producer as well as the owner of Mississippi Studios, and Kate Sokoloff, the show’s other co-creator and “the driving force in the early days,” Tenenbaum says.

Entering its ninth year, Live Wire! is looking to push more boundaries as well as revise and rejuvenate old routines in ways that will engage both the live and listening audiences.

But, as Portlanders, the best way to truly capture the experience is to attend a live show. Tenenbaum states, “Our mission is to harness the intimacy of the theater experience and the power of the public airwaves to enliven, inspire and engage communities.”

How often do you encounter people that just don’t understand what you’re doing? How do you explain the show to them?

It seems that many people in Portland have either heard Live Wire! or heard of Live Wire!, because people in Portland love their OPB, and with great reason.

When we do encounter people who don’t know what we do, we try to explain it a few different ways:

“It’s a radio variety show that incorporates live music, interviews, performance, and original comedy.”

“It’s a radio show taped on stage and it’s a live theatrical event.”

“It’s radio variety for the ADD Generation.”

It’s one night of great arts and culture. In one night, because we tape two shows back-to-back, an audience member will get exposed to two bands, two interviews with a filmmaker or author or thought leader, and essayists or storytellers or a piece from a local theater production. Plus, they will get some comedy from our talented cast as well as a few unexpected elements that we don’t even plan for—that’s the really fun stuff. All of this occurs at the Alberta Rose Theatre, which is a beautiful and intimate venue that’s a great place to spend an evening.

We like to entertain people in a way that makes them think differently. We love when Live Wire! becomes the conversation around the water cooler the next day at the office, or when something sticks with someone enough that they want to share it with friends. Inevitably, people’s minds are opened to a new idea or band or something they didn’t know about before. That’s the best part. And because there’s so much variety, everybody takes home a different favorite part of the show. It’s all just a smorgasbord of great entertainment that’s provocative too.

One of the things we hear from people who come to a show for the first time is, “I had no idea this was what this is. I’m definitely coming back and bringing friends too.”

Photo by Jennie Baker

In your experience, how do you make a show that’s engaging for the live audience but also translates well to radio?

That’s always the great challenge because the live audience is the only audience we can see, so we’re always tempted to make the show for the live audience, and yet, our radio audience is far bigger and far vaster. We’re constantly making sure that we’re not doing anything that alienates the listener or making the show feel too live—where people when they’re listening feel left out of a joke. We’ve definitely grown in this area throughout our experience.

For me, the biggest thing is not forgetting the radio audience and to really make it sound like something that you can listen to if you’re driving in your car or hanging out in your kitchen, because it’s just a really entertaining show and because things change up every five to seven minutes, in a true variety show format. You get that opportunity, both as a live watcher and a radio listener, to stick with it or leave the room and come back and get a restart button for the next segment. So, hopefully we’re achieving that, but that’s something that we’re always trying to hone.

You have to use your live audience to make the best radio show you can make. Because we’ve had so many people who are theater-oriented within our organization, it’s been really important to us to make a very polished live show.

We’re charged by every live show because they’re so much fun to make and they’re so much fun to be at. I always feel blessed and I get a front row seat for all of this amazing entertainment and wonderful talent. So, it’s fun to be able to see and be here, but again, that’s 1 percent of our audience, compared to the listening audience.

What are the most exciting shows for you?

The most exciting shows are shows that strike that perfect combination of funny, informative, great music, and totally entertaining. We love incorporating our guests in sketches or in something off the wall.

Have some recent examples?

I loved when Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) strapped on an accordion and sang (and danced) Prince’s “When Doves Cry” with the house band. He gave it a little Latin flair that sent the audience rolling in laughter. Comic book author Brian Michael Bendis was being interviewed by Courtenay while his colleague/illustrator Mike Oeming stood behind them and drew an amazing image. We then had an impromptu auction and auctioned it off to a lucky audience member. I love the unexpected, and fortunately, we get a lot of that in our shows. Sometimes more than we wish for...

Is there a conscious consideration to try and maintain a balance of local and nonlocal names on the show?

Yes and no. We cast our net wide, to local and national. We’ve got great, great relationships with publicists in New York for authors, and we have wonderful relationships with the arts communities here in town, so we’re always keeping an eye on what theater company is opening when and what’s happening. It’s kind of a combination of us putting our feelers out, and people calling us. There’s so much talent right here in Portland, and we’ve always tapped into that.

But what happens in the green room backstage at shows is one of my favorite, most remarkable things because there are so many different relationships and collaborations that are starting to brew backstage at a Live Wire! show. There have been quite a few things that have come from that, and it has just been people who meet people who share the same stage.

It’s all sort of a conscious decision. Like I said, there’s so much talent—there’s so much literary talent right here, there’s so much musical talent here—that it’s a great place to focus on.

What kind of exposure are you getting on the radio as well as through other outlets, like online?

We are currently heard throughout the entire state of Oregon through OPB, and in Southern Oregon and Northern California via Jefferson Public Radio.

Within the public radio system, we have garnered the attention of a few key people. This is important to us as we continue to distribute our show independently. Ideally, we would like to take on a marketing partner who can help us get heard by more station program directors. In the meantime, we will continue to grow through our current channels and by coming up with new ideas to be heard.

Social media has been a powerful tool for us as well. We are building our audience by splicing up the show into small segments so new audiences can get a taste of the show before committing to a full 59 minutes.

Are you finding that the rest of the nation outside of Oregon is interested in Live Wire!? Are people seeking it out?

Yes. I mean, it’s a big nation so we have a lot of territory to cover, and we’re one of very, very few shows that is an independent production. There are all these other shows in the system, and many of them are backed by NPR or PRI or American Public Media, but we’re really an independent production and always have been. It’s a bit of a challenge, yet certainly not impossible, and we’ve certainly made a name for ourselves across the country by being around so long and by doing what we do. We’ve been told that we’re the best of all the live variety stage productions out there. So that’s flattering to hear.

Does being completely independent give you some advantages or freedom?

Certainly. We still have to stick and want to stick within the FCC guidelines and regulations, and we don’t try and push the boundaries… well, we try [laughs]. We do try and push the boundaries, but not in any way that would get anybody into trouble… we hope. If NPR or PRI called us up tomorrow and wanted to help us distribute our show, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

We’re open to all the possibilities of where Live Wire! can go, and our main goal is we want more ears to hear us. We want to be sustainable. We are a nonprofit and not many people realize that. We feel like we’ve always been the show from Portland, but not about Portland. We feel the spotlight has been on this town and this state nationally so much in the past few years that broadcasting a show from Oregon feels like it could be, and is, and should be, appealing to the rest of the country—because it’s not like we’re this provincial show—we’re not focusing on Portland so much as we are focusing on the voice of Oregon, Portland and the Northwest. We’ve had some good successes with it, and we hope to get out further in the world. We love what we do so much we want to be able to continue doing it.

As you look to update, allowing the show to evolve over time, what sort of values does Live Wire! adhere to?

We always want to be fresh, we always want to be engaging, we always want to stay relevant, we always want to have a sense of whimsy, we want to be provocative—these are the value words we talk about. When we book authors or write sketches or design the show, it’s important that it fits some or all of these descriptions: authentic, smart, provocative, innovative, fresh, quality, whimsical, informative, entertaining.

How might the show look and sound a little different this upcoming season?

As we do every summer, we take a look back at every aspect of our show and we ask ourselves what’s working and what can work better. Sometimes we get so used to doing something that it becomes routine and we don’t think to change it. This annual sit-down forces us to take the time to focus on the show as a whole, to pay attention to the little things and the big things, and it gives us the opportunity to freshen things up. Our hope is that it ultimately takes the show to a new level.

One of our main objectives right now is to continue to build our podcast audience and our radio listenership in other states. With this in mind, we try to listen to our shows with new listener ears.

We are experimenting this fall rather than making sweeping changes. This season in particular, we are going to change the way we open the show. Tune in or come to a live show to see or hear how we’ll execute it!

We plan to incorporate a new segment dedicated to food and food culture here in the Northwest and beyond. It’s such an important part of who we are and how we build communities that we would like to highlight this for the rest of the country. It’s something everyone can relate to.

We have a segment in most of our shows that involves the audience. This season we are going to try out a few different ideas to see what works for the show and what inspires the audience. Perhaps a “Dear Live Wire!” segment, where our audience can ask us anything, or a segment called “Badvice.” We thought about a segment called “Things you probably can’t say on public radio,” which may be funny. Until it’s not. Again, stay tuned.

You can catch bi-weekly Live Wire! performances at Alberta Rose Theatre from now through December, or the radio broadcast every Saturday night on OPB at 7pm. Please visit livewireradio.org for more information on upcoming show lineups and ticketing as well as on-air schedules.

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Read this interview in About Face Magazine.

about face : allen nause’s next act

Continuously taking risks as an actor, teacher, traveler, and the first and only artistic director at Artists Repertory Theatre, Allen Nause’s retirement is hardly the final act.

Those retirement plans may not go into effect until June 2013, after Allen Nause has once again guided Artists Repertory Theatre into new territory—that of another artistic director. But when he bows out, Nause will have led Artists Rep for 25 years.

Having built Artists Rep into Portland’s second-largest theater company, the advisory hand of Nause will leave creative and professional fingerprints all over the organization, yet still allow his successor to forge his or her own path as Artists Rep maintains its mission: “Artists Repertory Theatre challenges artists and audiences with plays of depth and vibrancy staged in an intimate environment.”

The reason that Artists Rep flourished under Nause, becoming a sustainable business with an annual budget of $2.2 million, was due to his ability to simultaneously work in the past, present and future. Even with the constant flow of productions in the present, Nause always stayed conscious of his company’s history while progressing forward according to Artists Rep’s declared mission and his personal creative vision. This awareness helped Nause foster dedicated actors and audiences as he sought risks and faced them head on, enabling growth for everyone involved.

Part of that development included collaboration outside his culture. An avid traveler, Nause has taught, performed and directed plays across the world—from Africa to Asia and the Middle East, in locations as diverse as India, Hungary, Vietnam, Pakistan, and Israel.

It’s the current durability of Artists Rep that makes it the ideal time for Nause to recede from the stage. “I wanted to leave the company when I was really at my strength,” Nause says, “and help move the transition, be part of that. You know, I don’t plan to really retire. I can’t imagine retiring, in the truest sense—going to Florida and playing golf six days a week.” Already planning to continue his acting, directing and traveling, Nause also hopes “to stay involved as much as I’m invited to at Artists Rep.”

At present, Nause is producing the musical Next To Normal. “I’m involved in every show that we do,” Nause explains. “I help casting. I work with the directors and designers, just to be somebody to bounce ideas off of and to give feedback.”

Define what an artistic director does.

I get to help, enable, promote the making of art. Specifically, I do that by selecting a season, hiring the directors, directing a couple of plays myself, casting, fundraising. I always like to say I’m working in the present—I always have a project I’m working on. I have one foot in the past because Artists Rep has a history, a vision and a mission, and we try to stay true to that. But we’re also moving forward, so I’m also working in the future. I really love that part of it, the strategic planning—planning for the season, planning for what Artists Rep is going to look like in a few years. That’s the overview, and then specifically, I oversee all artistic and production elements at the theater. We have an administrative head, and I’m the artistic head. I supervise all the production, technical elements, designers, actors, directors, et cetera.

Did you first come to Oregon for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival?

Yes. In 1975, I was living in New York City and I got a telegram under my door asking, “Would you come out and work at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival?” That got me back to the West Coast, which is really my love. I worked there for about three years and then went up to Seattle. I went back to Ashland in the mid-80s, back to Seattle, and then fate brought me to Portland. It’s one of those towns that I always kept going through on my way to Seattle or down to Ashland. I always really loved it, but ended up working here because my then-wife got a job in Portland. I thought, I can base in Portland and work all around the country. The only problem was that we had a six-year-old kid [laughs]. I took one job out of town and I said, “I’m not doing that again. I’m going to find a way to stay in town.”

Instead of focusing on my acting, I started focusing on my directing. I started directing at various theaters in town, and then this little company named Artists Rep was looking for an artistic director. Vana O’Brien, who was one of the founders and who’s still with the company, said, “I think you should apply for this, Allen.” And I said, “I don’t know anything about being an artistic director” [laughs]. She said, “I think you have all the right qualities.” What better way to learn but with a tiny company? I’d worked at these huge, monster companies—the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Seattle Rep, the largest companies in America—but at this little, tiny company I thought I could really make a difference. I could really learn and it’d really be a hands-on experience. Then in three to five years I’d use that to move to another company. And I’ve just been here ever since [laughs].

I’ve heard that the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1975 was special. You’ve been quoted saying, “If you go through and look at that company in 1975 it reads like a Who’s Who of American Theater.”

[Laughs] Right.

You were there with talent like William Hurt, an Academy Award-winning actor, Jean Smart, and Denis Arndt, who directed your first production this season, God of Carnage. Tell me about a memorable experience from that early period in your career.

There’s something about acting and theater... I think when most people see someone on stage they go, “Those people must be so confident, self assured and having fun.” But the opening night of Much Ado About Nothing when I was playing Benedick (Benedick comes on late in the first scene, so I’m waiting backstage), I just remember absolute fear, believing I could not walk out on that stage. Then my cue came and I just had to go. You walk into the fear. In retrospect, I understood that in order to actually move ahead and grow as a person, you need to look at your fear and walk into it. There have been times in my life since then when I think, oh, I’m too afraid to do that, or, why do I think I could do that? I just find the courage to walk into it and that’s where most of my growth has been, as an artist and as a person, when I’ve actually done the things that are the toughest for me.

Have you experienced anything like that recently?

I experience it all the time. Every time I face a new production as an actor. You still have self-doubt and you wonder if you’ve got the stuff to really do this role. Every new show as a director, it’s like you’re going into unknown territory. The thing about really good artists is that they’re not repeating themselves. Each project, you’re going into new places of discovery and that’s scary because we like to do what we know. But good artists go some place they’ve never been, and that’s scary because that implies risk and risk means you could fall flat on your face [laughs].

Speaking of unknown territory, what was going through your mind when you accepted the job as Artists Rep’s first artistic director?

I thought, what the hell am I doing? They’re going to catch on to me any day [laughs]. Nobody goes to school to be an artistic director; there’s no program. Essentially you’re hired for your artistic taste, your ability to have an artistic vision, and your leadership abilities—the ability to inspire other people. And then, the nuts and bolts of it, you learn on the job. It was a perfect thing for me because I’ve absolutely loved it, especially the visioning part... the looking out to “Where can this company go?” Within the very first weeks I was thinking, what do I want this company to look like in five years? And I remember saying to myself, “As soon as I feel that this company isn’t moving forward anymore, then I’ll probably do something else.” But the company has kept growing, it’s kept moving ahead. I feel confident now that I can pass it on to the next person and they can take it even further. It’s been an amazing growth. We started as a company with a budget of about $125,000 to now $2.2 million, and we have our own space—two theaters. It’s just been this slow, steady growth because we’ve been committed to a longtime mission that’s been pretty clear for us.

You helped build Artists Rep into Portland’s second-largest theater company, where you’ve stood for some 10 years now. As the number two player in town, you’re currently balancing in this theatrical middle ground—you don’t have the budgets, stages or productions that Portland Center Stage has, but you’re not on the bottom rung anymore. How do you plan to maintain the intimate, thought-provoking performances that challenge audiences as you continue to grow, reaching a large enough audience to sustain your future operations?

We have this attitude that we try to do a lot with a little. If you looked at what we actually budget for sets and costumes, we actually create quite a bit with a little. We have that attitude, but we always like to say we’re fiscally conservative but artistically hungry, risky. I think it’s articulating a clear mission, knowing who you are, and staying true to that mission. It’s also important that you don’t rest on your laurels. We always have to have things we’re shooting for and working towards. Staying true to our mission has held us in good stead.

And what is your mission?

To challenge audiences and artists with plays that matter, that are about our lives. Plays that are premieres—to Portland or a world premiere—or a classic that’s reimagined. The part that I keep coming back to when I’m looking at work is this: How does it challenge us? How does it make us see ourselves as human beings in a different way?

Artists Rep has been selected for numerous awards during your tenure, but how have these achievements affected your life?

Awards are nice and I’m always touched and honored, but we don’t work for awards. The “Shakespeare in American Communities” grant that we got from the NEA was exciting. It enabled us to do something that is a part of Artists Rep—it’s not in our mission per se, but it’s a part of our character—and that’s international collaboration. We were able to do this project with a Vietnamese company, where we had American actors working with Vietnamese actors, each bringing their own culture together and creating a piece that had us look at each other’s culture. By looking at each other’s culture, it told us more about ourselves. We were able to tour that, not only in Vietnam, but in five states in the United States and here in Portland. It was life changing for all the actors who worked on it; it was life changing for me. And the people who saw that production—it was an eye-opening piece for them.

How was it life changing for you?

For one thing, I got to go over and live in Vietnam for five months. I had to work with all these cultural differences with these actors, these incredible actors over there, but we certainly had cultural differences that we had to confront. And when you confront cultural differences, it really tells you a lot about yourself. You really see yourself in a new way. It pushed me in every way possible: artistically and as a human being. I made bonds with people there that I still have today, and it started me on this path of doing international work. I recently did a piece in Pakistan, and I’ve worked in Jerusalem and India. Artists Rep has taken three international tours.

I think this is so important because I feel the world is shrinking—our communication today is amazing, and we’re not nearly as isolated as we were 20 years ago—and it’s really important that we get out there and work with people. It’s when we work one on one with another culture that you really begin to understand that other culture, and you find the humanness in each culture. You find the things you share, celebrate your differences, and solve problems together. That’s what we do when we create theater—we work together, we solve the problem of getting this play up. The problems are magnified a hundredfold when they’re cross-cultural.

Even though you’ll be involved with Artists Rep and the selection process of a new artistic director, retirement must mean you’ll be looking forward to traveling more.

I do plan to do more of that. One of the things that I always try to do when I do international work is find a way to bring some of it back here. For example, bringing the Vietnamese piece here. We brought over an actor from India to be in one of our productions. I’m trying to get a Pakistani actor to come over and be in our next season.

You’re also considering returning to Pakistan in the future?

Yes, but that’s not finalized yet. The State Department is interested in me going there so we’re trying to work that out. That would be next year.

Tell me about your past experience there.

My experience was fabulous. I worked with a young company in Islamabad. I directed Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple in English. They were eager to learn because there is almost no training. They were very interested in an American approach to the work, and I worked a lot on bringing some of the kinds of approaches to the work that I use here—basic acting stuff for us, but it was stuff that they hadn’t been exposed to there. I found them very welcoming, kind, enthusiastic people.

What was the biggest challenge you faced?

Again, the cultural differences. I had a really short time to do this fairly big project. There’s a different attitude toward time, so a 6 o’clock rehearsal start time didn’t necessarily mean that. But the problem
for me was a 10 o’clock end time was absolute because that’s when the electricity shut off [laughs]. So if we started 15 minutes late, I couldn’t go 15 minutes over.

What is special about live theater?

It’s ultimately risky. Anything can happen.

Risk taking has defined your career to some extent.

When you sit down and there’s a live actor in front of you, the potential is endless. In a movie, as brilliant as they are, it’s always going to be the same, every time you watch it. But every performance is different. The audience makes it different. It’s that communication between the two; it’s a very special thing. They’ve been doing the death knell on theater since movies came in, and then television, but I think theater just keeps getting stronger because nothing can replace that live experience.

What’s special about the current theater community in Portland?

One of the gratifying things about Portland is there’s a lot of smaller companies right now that are doing really interesting, challenging work. There are three or four of them that could go on that path to creating an institution that has some longevity and growth. Sometimes we see companies come and go. I never wanted Artists Rep to be one of those companies. I felt it was more important to build a company that could be sustained beyond me, and I think there are some young companies right now that are laying really good groundwork. There’s just great work being done and new people moving here all the time.

People think that we’re all in competition, but it really isn’t that way. The more successful other companies are, the better it is for us because it attracts artists. It keeps the community vital. We can’t employ all the actors here, so they have other places to work. It enriches the community.

You’re leaving behind some pretty big shoes to fill. Have any advice for your successor?

[Laughs] I’m really excited about the next stage of Artists Rep and being part of that. Back when I came to Artists Rep in ‘88, it was such a small company. The company now has an opportunity to do a national search and get someone that’s a really good fit. What’s important is for that person to have one foot in the history [the past], and certainly their heart in the present. But also looking to the future, they need to have their own vision that grows out of who we are now, where we’ve been, and where we’re going. And that’ll be different from mine. The only advice I would have is, continue to take risks and be true to the mission of the company and true to your own vision.

Could you possibly envision the next person to be here for 25 years as well?

Yes, I can. It has been, for me, a truly gratifying company to work for. This company is going nowhere but up and better and stronger.

And how do you hope to continue to grow after your retirement?

I’m going to continue to act, and I have continued to act as long as I’ve been here. That’s really been good for me and good for the company because I give myself that ultimate risk occasionally. It’s really great [laughs] for the big things, the risk and the creativity, but also the small things... I get to see what actors go through to work here—what the dressing rooms are like, if the heat’s not working. I always tell people when we start rehearsal, “I’m not the artistic director anymore. I’m just an actor.” And I really feel that way. The biggest thing for me in the next few years as I transition into retirement, will be focusing more on myself as an artist, moving away from some of the administrative stuff. I’ll be able to work at other companies and direct other places. I enjoy doing all those things because each is a challenge in a different way.

What’s your next acting role?

I’ll be auditioning [laughs].

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Read this interview in About Face Magazine.

about face : chelsea cain : stumptown's serial thriller

Climbing the concrete stairs to “the house that Heartsick bought,” you may step around a child-sized mass lying discarded on the porch. The pale violet coloration may be due to the ever-wintry nights, besides, who knows how long it has been neglected since the rains began.

But, upon closer inspection, it may just be the purple bicycle of a six-year-old girl, the kind that might have a clamorous bell and a white basket affixed to the front. As soon as you notice a pair of training wheels on a nearby patio table, the excited yips of two ankle-snorting Boston terriers greet you through the glass door.

Welcome to the petrifying, SE Portland house of New York Times bestseller and thriller author Chelsea Cain.

Penning gruesome tales of serial killers, Cain has written four bestselling thrillers in her Gretchen Lowell Series, but she points out that she may be the only “serial killer fiction” writer who does so with a pink Disney pop-up palace in the corner of her third-floor, attic office. Publishing almost a book a year since 2007’s debut Heartsick, Cain likes to refer to her genre as “detective fiction,” and with her fifth book now completed, she’s already beginning to nurture the seeds of book six, ready to “watch it grow,” as she puts it. “There’s not a story I want to tell any more than this one,” she swears.

But remember, her four-part series which also includes Sweetheart, Evil At Heart, and The Night Season, is the sadistic saga of a psychopathic, violent, female serial killer (named after her childhood elementary school) and the cops who hunt her—all conceived by a smiling, sociable wife and mother. But it’s possible that these all-too-common designations make Cain even more apt to write murderous thrillers... along with a few other peculiarities.

A childhood adoration of Nancy Drew alone will not craft a serial thriller. More morbid childhood fascinations with forensic pathology and disturbing medical texts help, but so does having a “formative serial killer of your youth” and presiding over the neighborhood pet cemetery. Cain’s thrillers are engulfing page-turners with a cinematic quality, which she calls her “big love letter” to British cop shows. So when she says, “My life is very much defined by movies, and also by TV shows, good and bad,” she means it. She married her local video store clerk and there’s a Gretchen Lowell film in the works. She has the ability to “get away with a lot” while terrorizing her audience just enough to enthrall, crafting thrillers that are guilty pleasures for all parties involved.

A NW native, spending her childhood in Bellingham, WA, Cain first came to Portland under “dark and muddy” circumstances when her mother’s cancer had metastasized. After trying to leave on several occasions, she’s not only found a home in Portland but also the setting for her bestselling thrillers—from the isolated corners of Forest Park to the flooding Willamette River.

“I had to come back enough times that I was choosing it rather than circumstances forcing it on me,” explains Cain.

What about Portland kept bringing you back?

There was something essential about this place. A lot of it is the natural beauty. And there’s something in my books that explores this feeling, in particular to the Pacific Northwest, of the danger and beauty of our surroundings. Many people move to Portland and sacrifice financially, but they live here because they want to be here and be a part of all that this city and the area have to offer. So they go up on the mountain and they’re killed by avalanches or killed by sneaker waves at the coast; they drown in currents, they get lost on timber roads, and I love that. And then new people put on their jackets and go out into the forest the next day. I think that the metaphor of the danger of beauty is very much at work in the serial killer I write about in my series.

Portland plays such an important role your in writing, not only as the place where your stories are set but also with regard to the events that happen in your novels. How much of your writing is based on real life events or actual experiences you’ve had?

A lot of it is based on real life. The whole Vanport backstory is all true in The Night Season, and the present-day flooding is based on the 1996 floods, which I was here for and paralleled my mother’s death—as she was dying the city was flooding. That probably influenced me a lot. But I wrap in a lot of what I love and know about Portland in the books. And in my version of Portland there are a lot of serial killers [laughs], and yet I hope that I still communicate a real love of this city despite that. I love that in my books—all of these people are being murdered right and left, there’s a new serial killer in town every two months menacing Portlanders, but in the book people still feel lucky to live here. I think that speaks to a certain sort of Portland spirit.

The books, because of the Portland setting, do very well in Europe and I will get international journalists who will come over and will want me to take them on a tour of my Portland. Inevitably they'll ask me to take them to Archie's house. Or to Gretchen's house. And I have to explain that they don't have houses because they're not real people. So they'll say, "Take us to a place that Archie would live in."

Where have you taken them for Gretchen's house?

I took them to Vista, the heights where NW 23rd sort of comes up to Park. I think I got out of showing them Archie's house.

Just show them any dingy apartment complex...

Right, exactly [laughs]. This [question] has become so unexpectedly common. Readers will try to find locations from the books, and in The Night Season, there is a house that I describe at 20th and Division. As any Portlander knows, there is no house there. I did that very specifically because it was a house where lots of bad things were going on and I had to give a specific address for the plot to work, but I didn't want some poor schmuck who happened to live there [laughs] to wake up every morning to see people with worn paperbacks standing in his yard.

Have you ever thought about choosing a different location as the setting?

No. I think this is such a great location. It’s a pleasure to live in a city that makes a great setting for these books because if I get stuck I can just walk to a street corner and look around. In the next book, book five, there are some scenes that are set in St. Helens. I’m trying to get out of town a little bit but not too far [laughs].

Do you have a title for the next book?

No. I have some working titles, but not one that’s set.

Will it have the word “heart” in it?

I’m actually trying to decide if I should go back to “heart” or not in the next book. Gretchen Lowell is back, but we moved away from the “heart” thing with the last book.

I saw a blog post you wrote that said, “Don’t put the word ‘heart’ in the title of your book if you want lots of men to buy your book.”

[Laughs] Right. And then there’s that.

There’s an inherent contradiction in Chelsea Cain. How does a polite, buoyant...

[Laughs] Buoyant? Ouch.

No, no, you’re very cheery...

I know, I get this a lot [laughs].

So, how does a friendly, warm mother and wife come to write about a twisted serial killer?

I used to think that this stuff went on in everybody’s head and I was just writing it down, but I think that that’s not right [laughs] based on the small sample size of people I’ve polled. I think I have a pretty violent imagination. It’s why I’m a vegetarian. Even as a little kid I always loved those books that would show pictures of terrible tumors and conjoined twins and things that could go wrong. When I would go out walking I would always keep an eye peeled for a dead body.

Or roadkill?

Yeah! When I found roadkill I would always want to bury it. I had a pet cemetery. I thought all of this stuff was very middle of the road until people started asking me ques- tions... actually I was kind of a macabre little shit [laughs] now that I think about it. But thriller writers are some of the happiest, funniest people I know and I think it’s because: one, we’re very well compensated, and two, we get it all out on the page. There have been times when I’ve been stuck in traffic trying to get over the Interstate Bridge, and the only thing that stops me from going ballistic is knowing that I can murder someone later that day. I can take all that...

In your writing?

No, no. Literally. [Long pause]... in my book! [Laughs] I can take all of that rage and I can find some really creative way to kill somebody.

So, how many of your ideas come from pent up personal rage?

Oh, I get ideas from all over the place—a lot from the Metro section of the Oregonian actually. Just the weird little paragraph stories that you see about the demented way people behave in public toward one another. I think that my mind goes to murder sooner than most people’s. We’ll be talking about something and I’ll immediately think, how can that be used to kill somebody? So, I think I’m in the right profession [laughs].

As you sat down to write the first book, Heartsick, were you planning on writing a thriller? Had you ever written anything that gory before?

No. When I first sat down to write that book I was pregnant with Eliza, so I definitely think hormones were to blame for part of that. I came up with this idea and started writing it, but I actually had a contract to be working on another book, Confessions of a Teen Sleuth, a parody of a Nancy Drew book. I think part of what drove me to write Heartsick was that it was something that I wasn’t supposed to be doing. I wrote the first half of it without even telling my husband I was working on it; it was totally this book on the sly. I kept working on it and after a year of editing, I became a lot more attached to it and started seeing it as a series because I had all these ideas and I didn’t want to ruin that first book by cramming them all in. I took, what I considered at the time, a great personal risk by writing it as if it were going to be a series in the sense that I didn’t answer a lot of the questions. You can say you want to write a series but publishers kind of like to throw one out there and see how it does before they agree to sign a contact for multiple books.

Have you ever regretted writing certain details in a previous book because you want to change something in the current story?

Oh God... constantly! Here’s my advice to anybody out there who’s thinking of writing a commercial thriller series: Don’t ever mention a date. That is my greatest regret in Heartsick. I had all of these dates and once you do that then you are tied to them forever. You’ll notice as the books go on I become more and more oblique about time... “It was about two years ago...” [laughs] from whenever you’re reading this.

You began writing your first novel while pregnant and, amazingly, finished it after giving birth to your daughter.

Yeah, Eliza was a baby in the bassinet asleep by the desk as I was finishing it.

Did being a new mother influence or even change the ending of your first book?

Umm, no. Maybe it should have [laughs]. And she’s—for the record—a very well-adjusted child [laughs].

Because it is a story about teenage girls being brutally raped, mutilated and strangled before being ditched in the Willamette River.

Yeah... I think it will be harder to rape and mutilate teenage girls when Eliza is a teenage girl. Until then, frankly, they’re thrillers; teenagers are fair game. But I think it certainly will be harder. When she’s thirteen I doubt I will be murdering thirteen year olds.

Or maybe you’ll have more material to work with?

Right. I’ll be murdering scads of thirteen year olds! [Laughs] There’s something about pregnancy; my husband and I took these classes at the hospital before Eliza was born and they’d show these childbirth videos over and over again. They’re really graphic bloody, gory videos in which nothing ever went right. There’s that aspect to pregnancy, something kind of essentially violent to it. And there’s something about the way that your body changes that I think definitely changed my relationship to gore.

In what way?

When you’re pregnant and certainly when you have a little baby, your life is all about body fluids. You know, it desensitizes you in a way that’s very natural. You’re just up to your knees in it all the time. In some sense that may have been why I was able to be as graphic as I was in a way that I didn’t really even see. When I sent that book in my agent made some comment about it being “graphic” and I wrote back, “Really? Graphic? Moi?” [Laughs] I wasn’t aware of it because my world was very graphic. The books on pregnancy I was reading were much more graphic than anything I was writing.

Tell me how the Green River Killer inspired your first book.

I was watching this episode of Larry King in the middle of the night and he was doing this show on the Green River Killer. Having grown up in Bellingham, he was sort of the formative serial killer of my youth. [Laughs]

I don’t think I have a formative serial killer of my youth.

I’ve only just now learned that other people don’t have formative serial killers of their youth. I also have a favorite serial killer, John Wayne Gacy. Some people probably haven’t thought about this. I was ten when they found the first bodies, so growing up he was just the thing that went bump in the night. As kids we thought that it was quite possible that each of us might be his next victim. I was very aware of them finding some new victim every couple of years and that there was this task force of people looking for him. That narrative just played out on the periphery of my childhood. They caught him 20 years later, and so I’m watching this and it’s all sort of coming back to me.

On Larry King they had footage of one of the cops talking to Ridgway [the Green River Killer] in an interview room, and I was so struck at just how convivial it all was on the surface, that they seemed like old friends, laughing. On one hand, they were two guys who had known each other for 20 years on different sides of the same case. And on the other hand, there were all these levels of manipulation and this high-stakes agenda, and I loved that from a narrative point of view. I immediately thought, wouldn’t it be interesting if the killer were a woman? Because it adds that sexual complication, and that is where the idea of Archie and Gretchen sprang from. So, I have Larry King to thank [laughs].

Technology is really changing the publishing world right now. Do you know how many of your sales are electronic?

Evil At Heart, which came out two years ago, was 11% ebook sales. A year and a couple months later The Night Season came out—52% ebook sales. [Imagine] that growth in a year, and sales for The Night Season were way up. In my genre, ebooks do very well because people really want to read them right away but they don’t need to keep them.

I have very mixed feelings, like every author. I think ebooks are great—it’s content. We’re not in the business of selling paper, right? We’re selling content. It gets people content and makes it easy for them to read books. I worry a lot about bookstores because bookstores are where record stores were ten years ago. Just like there are still some really cool record stores, there’s still going to be some really cool bookstores but there’s going to be 90% fewer out there. People get to choose now with their wallets which bookstores they want to keep. We’re already making a choice by ordering from Amazon rather than walking six blocks to Powell’s or some other independent bookstore. And that’s fine, but I think people need to be aware that they are making those choices.

Favorite bookstores?

[Laughs] That’s a very political question for me. I grew up in Bellingham, WA so Village Books is not only one of my favorite bookstores, but I literally spent hours there every day. My mom had a garden nursery right next door. When I was a kid, they just let me sit there and read books for hours every day, so I owe them a great debt of gratitude. The smell of downtown Powell’s when I walk in that store—there is no more beautiful elixir to me, all those used books. That is my favorite smell in the world.

What’s your place in the literary world? Do you ever see yourself writing something besides thrillers?

Writing a “real” book? [Laughs] No, I’m very happy here. I don’t have a nagging desire to write something “important” because I wrote that book. I was 23 years old. It was called Dharma Girl. It was a valentine to my parents, and especially my mother. She died two months before it came out, and touring with that little book was a way to keep her alive a little longer. I am lucky to have found a place in the world for that book when I was so young. Now I get to entertain myself. And I get to murder people for money. Why would I ever want to do anything else?

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Read this interview in About Face Magazine.