Goddard College runs residency programs out of Fort Worden for our MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and MFA in Creative Writing programs. We want to celebrate the spring 2021 online residency with the Port Townsend community and invite you to a selection of public events. Please contact claudia.zysk@goddard.edu to receive information on how to join these events.
This is the residency season when we welcome back and celebrate the work of one of our own as our Spring 2021 MFA in Creative Writing Visiting Alumni. We will be joined by the amazing memoirist, Tina Ontiveros. Her Goddard thesis, rough house, is a memoir of family, addiction, violence, and redemption set in the rural spaces of the Pacific Northwest. Tina follows her logger father as he migrates across his wooded territory, cobbling together shelters for his family, burning bridges, and forever starting over. Her advisor, Keenan Norris, says rough house is "a book that hooks its reader and then fully justifies that initial interest," and Deborah Reed says rough house is "reminiscent of Carver if Carver had given a voice to the women and children faced with the troubles and misdeeds of men." rough house was released from OSU Press in Fall 2020, was an October 2020 Indie Next Great Read, and has been shortlisted for the PNBA Book Award. Tina is a writer, teacher, and bookseller based in the Pacific Northwest. Her work explores class, generational hardship, and the social constructs that marginalize the poor. Her essay, “The Life We Pay For,” was named in the Oregon Humanities Magazine’s Top Ten Most Read of 2019. Tina lives at the bottom of Mt. Hood and teaches writing and literature at Columbia Gorge Community College. She was the first person in her family to go to college and she completed her college education while raising her children. As a point of great pride, Tina worked for over 10 years at Oregon’s oldest bookstore.
To purchase Tina’s book, she asks that you support the press that published it or a local indie bookstore near you. Here are some ideas for places to order: https://www.tinaontiveros.com/purchase