TWO WRITERS CHOSEN FOR
INAUGURAL NORTH COAST WRITERS’ RESIDENCIES
READINGS at the AVA Gallery and Arts Center, 10th and Duane:
Cecilia Hagen: Wednesday, July 17, 6-8pm
Andrew Zing: Friday, August 2, 6-8pm
Cecilia Hagen: Wednesday, July 17, 6-8pm
Andrew Zing: Friday, August 2, 6-8pm
Two regional writers have been selected to participate in the first annual North Coast Writer’s Residency, which was developed collaboratively by the Astoria Writer’s Guild (AWG) and local arts non-profit Astoria Visual Arts (AVA). The residency program offers both established and emerging writers a unique opportunity to launch new endeavors, revise works in progress, or conclude longstanding projects. The program seeks to provide writers with writing time and space in an idyllic setting: the Spotted Goat Cottage on the Long Beach Peninsula, which features panoramic views of Willapa Bay, Long Island, and the Willapa Hills.
“We had 20 excellent applicants, which was terrific considering it was our first foray into this realm,” said AWG Board President Marianne Monson, chair of the Selection Committee. “And all the submissions were truly fabulous. We passed the best of them on to Lisa and Buzz to determine which candidate would be awarded the residency.” Lisa Smith, President of the AVA Board, and her husband, author H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger, host the residents and were asked to make the final selection decision.
“It definitely was not easy,” said Smith. “The finalists we reviewed were so impressive and their work so compelling that we decided to award two summer residencies rather than just one. Both will benefit from the uninterrupted quiet and creatively charged setting the residency affords.”
The two selected writers are Cecelia Hagen and Andrew Zingg.
“We had 20 excellent applicants, which was terrific considering it was our first foray into this realm,” said AWG Board President Marianne Monson, chair of the Selection Committee. “And all the submissions were truly fabulous. We passed the best of them on to Lisa and Buzz to determine which candidate would be awarded the residency.” Lisa Smith, President of the AVA Board, and her husband, author H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger, host the residents and were asked to make the final selection decision.
“It definitely was not easy,” said Smith. “The finalists we reviewed were so impressive and their work so compelling that we decided to award two summer residencies rather than just one. Both will benefit from the uninterrupted quiet and creatively charged setting the residency affords.”
The two selected writers are Cecelia Hagen and Andrew Zingg.
A 40-year resident of Eugene, Oregon, Cecelia Hagen is a much lauded poet who has edited both literary and commercial magazines, taught writing to all ages, hosted a reading series held at the local library, co-founded and worked for a youth-writing organization, and generally done, as she wrote in her application essay, “anything and everything that promotes writers and the written word.” Hagen’s poems are read daily by Eugene transit users: Part of a public art project, her work is engraved on the doors of the electrical box at each stop of Lane Transit District’s EmX line. Hagen plans to use the residency to assemble her most recent poems into a new manuscript. “The one-week time frame [will] supply the freedom and focus I need to complete this work and have a manuscript ready to submit for the fall reading periods of many small presses,” she wrote. Hagen’s residency runs from July 14 through July 21, 2019.
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Andrew Zingg is an Astoria resident and writer of literary non-fiction, in which he “strives to tell personal stories with larger cultural resonance.” Zingg’s current project is a memoir that centers on his quest to understand the legacy of his grandfather, an American photojournalist who abandoned his wife and three small children in 1964 to move to Brazil, where he eventually became a cultural icon. While a graduate student at Oregon State, Zingg pursued the project as his MFA thesis and completed a first draft of a book, an excerpt from which won the University’s 2018 Creative Writing Award for Nonfiction. Zingg plans to use his time as writer-in-residence at the Spotted Goat Cottage to finalize his book for publication. His residency runs from July 28 through August 4, 2019.
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Both writers will give public readings during their respective residencies at the AVA Gallery and Arts Center, which is located on 10th and Duane Streets in Astoria. Cecelia Hagen will read on Wednesday, July 17, 6:00pm. Andrew Zingg will read on Friday, August 2, 6:00pm.
