Contemporary Authors

• The Lyncher in Me: A Search for Redemption in the Face of History Borealis Books (St. Paul, MN), 2008

https://lccn.loc.gov/2007044847 Read, Warren, 1967- The lyncher in me : a search for redemption in the face of history / Warren Read. St. Paul, MN : Borealis Books, c2008. 199 p. : ill. ; 23 cm. HV6462.M6 R43 2008 ISBN: 9780873516075 (cloth : alk. paper)0873516079 (cloth : alk. paper)

• Ash Falls - 2017 Ig Publishing, https://smile.amazon.com/Ash-Falls-Warren-Read/dp/1632460475/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1514142799&sr=8-1&keywords=warren+read+ash

• Warren Read - http://www.warren-read.com/about_me

  About Us

  The Professional Stuff

  A man of many distractions, I guess I could call myself a writer who teaches elementary school on Bainbridge Island, Washington (or vice versa). I earned both a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Education from Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington (1991 and 1998, respectively). As of June, 2015, I'll have earned my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran Univsersity.

  I'm also an active part of the Puget Sound Writing Project, a division of the National Writing Project. It's a valuable program helps teachers redefine themselves as "writers", thus creating the same opportunities for their students.
  The Personal Stuff

  In 1995 I met my husband Shayne and, in 2000, we adopted our youngest son Dmitry from Russia (he was 17 months old at the time). Soon after, we moved from our home in Central Seattle to a five acre piece of land in Kingston, WA. Returning to the classroom (from school administration) was a gift that presented itself to me, and was one of the most rewarding decisions I ever made.

  Apparently, Shayne and I came to the conclusion that we had too much time, energy, sanity and money, because in 2005 we brought two foster boys into our home, then adopted them a year later.

  Today, the whole brood is 16 (Dmitry), 19 (Dylan) and 22 (David).

  The Other Stuff

  Besides reading, writing and appreciating great films, I'm a huge travel nut. In the past 16 years, I've traveled to/through Southeast Asia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Russia, France, Germany, Guatemala and Belize. In the summer of 2009, Shayne and I revisited our backpacking passions and made our way through Morocco and in the summer of 2010 we took our eldest son through south central China. In 2013, we repeated the experience with our middle son, this time heading to Guatemala and Belize. Both of these were opportunities that were worth every penny.

  Copyright 2009 Warren Read, Teacher and Writer. All rights reserved.

  Web Hosting by Yahoo!

  Kingston, WA
  kingstonguys@yahoo.com

• Ig Publishing - http://igpub.com/ash-falls/

  Warren Read is the author of a 2008 memoir, The Lyncher in Me (Borealis Books), about his discovery that his great-grandfather had incited a lynching in 1920. His fiction has been published in Hot Metal Bridge, Mud Season Review, Sliver of Stone, Inklette, Switchback and The Drowning Gull. In addition, he has had two short plays directed and produced by Tony winner Dinah Manoff. Warren earned his MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.

• Switchback - http://www.swback.com/issues/022/bios/warren-read.html

  Warren Read is an assistant principal on Bainbridge Island, WA, and is the author of the 2008 memoir, The Lyncher in Me (Borealis Books). His fiction has been published in Hot Metal Bridge, Mud Season Review, Sliver of Stone and Inklette. In addition, he has had two short plays directed and produced by Tony winner Dinah Manoff. In 2015 he received his MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. www.warren-read.com

QUOTED: "a moody, haunting foray into rural Americana in the mold of Daniel Woodrell and Christian Kiefer."

Read, Warren: ASH FALLS
Kirkus Reviews.
(May 1, 2017): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Read, Warren ASH FALLS Ig Publishing (Adult Fiction) $16.95 7, 1 ISBN: 978-1-63246-047-9
A man's past haunts the citizens of an isolated, rural Pacific Northwest town.Ernie Luntz has been serving time in Walla Walla for murder and is now being transported by car to a medium security prison when the driver has a heart attack and the car crashes. Ernie escapes and heads for his hometown, Ash Falls. Read (The Lyncher in Me, 2008) meticulously weaves the gritty, hard- knock lives of many men and women from this impoverished, rural town in mountainous Washington into "tight little complicated knots." It's October, a "time of mud and muck and creeping molds," of "gloom and regret." A series of chapters, each titled after a different character (or sometimes two) and told in the third person with frequent flashbacks, are our signposts. Ernie's wife, Bobbie, is a part-time nurse at the high school their son, Patrick, attends. He works at Tin Dorsay's mink farm after school. He's gay and likes Mama T's son, Shadow. Hank Kelleher, who's pushing 60, used to teach at the high school and now sells pot for medicinal purposes to neighbors. He and Bobbie might have had an affair. His sister, Lyla, is married to Jonas Henry. Their son, Eugene, Hank's nephew, is married to Marcelle. The young couple lives in Eugene's parents' basement. Marcelle works as a housekeeper at the Sleep Inn run by Melvin White. Eugene works at Benny's garage. Chapter by chapter we come to know these people, their struggles and fears. We learn that four years earlier Ricky Cordero said "something," maybe directed at Patrick. Bobbie "couldn't tell what." Ernie, a Vietnam War vet who suffered from "demons" and had a "hair trigger temper," beat Ricky to death. In this small town that "can't keep its mouth shut," word of Ernie's escape looms like a threatening thundercloud over the forests and rivers. A moody, haunting foray into rural Americana in the mold of Daniel Woodrell and Christian Kiefer.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Read, Warren: ASH FALLS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2017. PowerSearch,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491002974/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=efd628e0. Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
1 of 5 12/24/17, 1:08 PM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491002974

QUOTED: "Read deftly portrays the competing feelings of suffocation and loneliness that can breed in small towns."

2 of 5 12/24/17, 1:08 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Ash Falls
Karen Keefe
Booklist.
113.19-20 (June 2017): p57. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Ash Falls. By Warren Read. July 2017.306p. Ig, paper, $16.95 (9781632460479).
This panoramic look at the small town of Ash Falls, Washington, is part rural fiction, part northwest noir. The book opens with convicted murderer Ernie Luntz escaping a van accident as he is transported between prisons. Vignettes build upon one another to reveal whom Ernie murdered and how that act has impacted his wife, his teenage son, a teenage bride, a mink farmer, a drug dealer, and other Ash Falls folks. The backward-looking chapters that lead up to the murder are just as tense as those taking place in the present day. There is a menace in the air, but one senses that it's not entirely due to Ernie's escape. Everyone in the town has things they're trying to escape, and they will all go to varying lengths to get where they want to be. In this fine first novel, Washington State elementary-schoolteacher Read deftly portrays the competing feelings of suffocation and loneliness that can breed in small towns. Pair this with Daniel Woodrell's marvelous Tomato Red (1998).--Karen Keefe
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Keefe, Karen. "Ash Falls." Booklist, June 2017, p. 57. PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com
/apps/doc/A498582715/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=3950b1d1. Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A498582715

QUOTED: "dark and suspenseful debut novel."
"This is a well-crafted, subtle psychological thriller."

3 of 5 12/24/17, 1:08 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Ash Falls
Publishers Weekly.
264.16 (Apr. 17, 2017): p36. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Ash Falls
Warren Read. Ig (Consortium, dist.), $16.95 trade paper (296p) ISBN 978-1-63246-047-9
In Read's dark and suspenseful debut novel, the folks of the Pacific Northwest mountain town of Ash Falls wonder what convicted murderer and escaped convict Ernie Luntz will do if he comes back home. And they have plenty to worry about. Ernie escapes custody from a car crash during a routine prisoner transfer, disappearing into the mountains. In Ash Falls, Ernie's ex-wife, Bobbie, is the high school nurse. She has concerns about their son, Patrick, and the illegal drugs she uses. Hank Kelleher, former high school teacher, now a marijuana dealer, has a soft spot for Bobbie, and worries that Ernie may have known all along. And Patrick is conflicted over his father's unexpected freedom and his hidden wish for him to be recaptured. The townspeople remembers the killing and are consumed with sweaty fear or perverse curiosity, most wishing they lived somewhere else. The sassy, trashy, and very smart motel maid, Roxanne, has seen it all unfold and understands better than anyone: "People walk around this town like a bunch of trapped animals, but the only one trapping them is themselves." The story culminates with a drug deal gone bad, and then Ernie comes back into town. This is a well-crafted, subtle psychological thriller. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Ash Falls." Publishers Weekly, 17 Apr. 2017, p. 36. PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com
/apps/doc/A490820740/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=6e9ec810. Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A490820740
4 of 5 12/24/17, 1:08 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
The lyncher in me; a search for redemption in the face of history
Reference & Research Book News.
23.3 (Aug. 2008): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2008 Ringgold, Inc. http://www.ringgold.com/
Full Text:
9780873516075
The lyncher in me; a search for redemption in the face of history. Read, Warren.
Minnesota Historical Soc.Press
2008
199 pages
$24.95
Hardcover
HV6462
Read, a writer and elementary school teacher, has written a startling memoir that traces the story of a gruesome lynching and his life- changing discovery that he is a descendant of the man who instigated the crime. Three black circus workers were lynched by a mob of more than 10,000 in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1920 on false charges that they had raped a teenage white girl. More than 80 years later, the author entered his mother's maiden name into a computer search engine, followed a link, and discovered that his great-grandfather had incited the riot. The memoir follows the author's discovery and his efforts to take responsibility for his ancestor's crime.
([c]20082005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The lyncher in me; a search for redemption in the face of history." Reference & Research Book
News, Aug. 2008. PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A183481674 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=fc5ff32e. Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A183481674
5 of 5 12/24/17, 1:08 PM

"Read, Warren: ASH FALLS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2017. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491002974/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=efd628e0. Accessed 24 Dec. 2017. Keefe, Karen. "Ash Falls." Booklist, June 2017, p. 57. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A498582715/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=3950b1d1. Accessed 24 Dec. 2017. "Ash Falls." Publishers Weekly, 17 Apr. 2017, p. 36. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A490820740/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=6e9ec810. Accessed 24 Dec. 2017. "The lyncher in me; a search for redemption in the face of history." Reference & Research Book News, Aug. 2008. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A183481674/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=fc5ff32e. Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.

• Bloom
  https://bloom-site.com/2017/09/26/an-intimate-community-murder-and-escape-in-warren-reads-ash-falls/
  Word count: 3228

  QUOTED: "With Ash Falls I felt so much of a greater freedom to tell the story I wanted to tell and direct the experiences of people who, though fictional, I had grown to care deeply about. It was also a more free-form kind of writing, where I sketched out an overall map of what I wanted to have happen, but did not outline it any way."

  An Intimate Community: Murder and Escape in Warren Read’s Ash Falls
  Posted on September 26, 2017 by Bloom Leave a comment

  by Ericka Taylor

  Warren Read’s first novel, Ash Falls, is ostensibly driven by one two-part question: Will the recently escaped, convicted murderer Ernie Luntz return to the eponymous small mountain town still reeling from his violent act? And what will happen if he does? These questions are especially prominent in the minds of Bobbie, a high school nurse and Ernie’s ex-wife, and Patrick, their teenage son. While Ernie’s movements certainly generate tension—for the residents of Ash Falls and the reader—the novel is just as concerned with exploring the many ways in which multiple townspeople have bound themselves up in metaphorical cages.

  The existence of these metaphorical cages isn’t always immediately apparent. Instead, Read masterfully weaves the plot of Ash Falls so that the connections between characters are slowly revealed, layer by layer. While these intersections may not be obvious from the start, the complexity of the characters themselves certainly is. Flawed and frustrated, Read’s characters take actions (or fail to) in ways that are completely believable.

  [More info about this book at powells.com (new window)] Who the characters are in Ash Falls is at the forefront of the novel, even in terms of its structure. Each chapter is named for and centers on one particular character (or, occasionally, on a set of characters). These various perspectives not only expand the reader’s sense of what can be perceived as an objective fact, but they also help prevent characters from becoming one-note stereotypes. Hank, for example, is always more than a high-school-teacher-turned-pot-dealer. And Marcella is always more than teenaged bride wanting to grow up too quickly: Read allows her the naiveté a reader might expect, but he makes it her own, as when she thinks, “[I]t was probably what married people did anyway. Fight, curse, cry, and then go to sleep, and wake up in the morning like nothing ever happened, like the whole sad thing had been only a dream.”

  There is much to praise about Ash Falls, from its well-developed characters to its strikingly atmospheric depictions of the Pacific Northwest, where “giant nurse logs lay rotting beneath blankets of moss and deer fern and pale yellow lichen, and tags of thick, rippled shelf fungus.” We’re grateful that Warren Read agreed to talk with Bloom about his novel.

  *

  Ericka Taylor: Ash Falls begins with an escape from a prison-transport vehicle, but the novel is just as concerned with characters who are trapped figuratively, held in place by everything from unhappy marriages to economic circumstances to the way they’re perceived. Did you intentionally set out to explore themes of freedom and confinement, or was that something that evolved as you wrote?

  Warren Read: I was always intent on exploring the theme of confinement and emotional claustrophobia. Actually, the element of the mink farm materialized before Ernie’s story. I always knew there would be an Ernie, and that a literal imprisonment would figure into his narrative. But the idea of having him be at the center—kind of, the “emotional maypole” for the other characters—didn’t come until later.

  ET: You’ve noted before that you’re drawn to stories of small-town life, and the community Ash Falls was partly modeled on the small town in the Pacific Northwest, Granite Falls, where your grandparents lived. What do you see as the narrative advantages of setting a story in a small town? Are there corresponding disadvantages associated with that setting?

  WR: The advantage of this setting for me is the opportunity to look closely at how the character interacts with his or her surroundings, and the relationship that one (setting/character) has with the other. A small town sets up certain dynamics and unique challenges for the character: The struggle for individual identity, privacy, the direct impact one character can have on all the others. The writer can consider the idea of an intimate community as a microcosm of society as a whole, and explore how individuals navigating conflict reflect that.

  As far as disadvantages go, just like it is with the characters, it can be confining to the writer. I really hoped to keep the entire story within the town of Ash Falls. When I found myself exploring places outside its borders I struggled with it. Consequently, I found that in some ways, even the characters felt this “shift,” as if they had accidentally discovered an open gate at the edge of their world, however briefly.

  I worked so meticulously to create a world with which I was as familiar as the characters (even drawing out a detailed map of the town, identifying names and places which had meaning to each person). The places outside of Ash Falls were places I knew in my own life (Everett, parts of Seattle) so it was a different feeling writing those scenes. It actually felt more precarious and insecure. In the end, I do think it worked because it seemed that the characters shared those same feelings of anticipation, excitement or dread. If they did not have full domain over their lives in Ash Falls, they had absolutely no control when they were outside its borders.

  ET: Your first book, The Lyncher in Me: A Search for Redemption in the Face of History, is a memoir about uncovering your great-grandfather’s role in the lynching deaths of three innocent men in 1920. Was it the discovery of that lost family history that led you to see yourself as a writer, or was that simply the impetus to dive into a field you already wanted to pursue?

  [More info about this book at powells.com (new window)] WR: I would say the latter. I had always enjoyed writing and there were certain elements that I think always came easier to me. But I didn’t have the discipline to stick with projects when they got challenging. I’d lose interest, or confidence, too easily. With the discovery of the Duluth lynchings, my family’s role in it, and the wonderful work the current community was doing to seek healing, I think I saw a great necessity to try and tell my own story in relationship to it all. So it was not only a story I wanted to tell, but one I felt I needed to tell. That gave me both the motivation to learn what I could about memoir writing, and the determination to stick with it for the long haul.

  ET: Could you tell us more about your writing journey up to that point? Were you a kid who wrote stories and plays? How did you come to appreciate the written word?

  WR: I don’t recall a great deal of prolific writing I did as a child, only that for whatever reason the assignments related to writing (essays, primarily) came relatively easy for me. I know I could write out a coherent paper pretty quickly and do fairly well, grade-wise (though I was always the “B” student, never pushing myself to do the draft work needed for that A). In high school, I wrote for the school newspaper and was mostly called upon by the advisor to “clean up” other writers’ work.

  In middle school through high school, one of my best friends and I would often write short stories and skits, and draw out graphic cartoons that we’d pass back and forth between us. She and I had the shared experience of growing up in pretty significantly dysfunctional households and, luckily, had both discovered our mutual coping skills of finding strange humor in our situations. These skits and comics and stories were horribly dark and probably inappropriate, though. I can’t imagine what would have happened if we’d actually shown them to anyone else!

  I went through a phase in college where I was writing stories for my friends—sort of parody pieces that cast them (and co-workers) into scenarios that were kind of “burn after reading” pieces. From there, most of what I wrote was like that—fun, low-audience pieces usually wrapped around satire and dark humor. At one point I started an anonymous blog entitled, “Vivian Delacourt: A Woman on the Edge,” a serial, noir thing written from the point of view of the wife of a diplomat in the 1950s, who also happens to be a government assassin. It was a fun, experimental thing that was my sort of “secret” way to do something creative and subversive and weird. It still exists out there in the cyberworld, though I’ve not done anything with it in years.

  In my late thirties I started to push myself to create something more substantial, but even then I was too focused on what would “hit” in the literary world, rather than what was interesting to me. I worried too much about what the next big thing would be, how I could “land” something, and of course my writing was forced and inauthentic and unsustainable. Like most aspiring novelists I have a few terrible novels buried in my filing cabinet. But I suppose I had to go through that.

  I would say that the point at which I hit that “aha” moment as a writer was not until my early forties, when I discovered literature that clicked with me as a writer, that put on the page the kind of writing I really wanted to do (Ironically, my bookshelf up until then was primarily nonfiction). Kent Haruf, Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, Ron Carlson, Annie Proulx—there were writers whose words grabbed hold of me in the same way that Steinbeck and Hemingway had carried me through my high school years. I’d forgotten how language and depth of character could pull me in so completely. It was a domino effect, where I finished one and set out to find another in the same vein. That, and the sense that these stories paralleled the kind of films I loved most (films of Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, Gus Van Sant) showed me there was actually an audience for more quiet, contemplative, character-driven stories.

  ET: Back to those contemplative characters in Ash Falls: The novel is populated by characters who are connected to each other in ways that aren’t immediately evident when we first meet them. As the novel progresses, those relationships are slowly revealed until the reader essentially “catches up” to the town’s collective knowledge. In fact, because the reader has access to multiple perspectives, the reader ultimately becomes more knowledgeable about certain key events than the town members are. How much were you consciously playing with how information travels or is distorted in communities?

  WR: It was all intentional, though the precise threads of connectivity evolved over time. There were elements of backstory between some characters that I’d sketched out but never used. For instance, there is a rich narrative between Patrick, Marcelle and Bobbie that only lives in my notes. But I knew exactly the connections between each person when I began.

  ET: The novel revolves around multiple core characters, and we get intimate access to each of them through your close-third POV. What was it like inhabiting the POVs and emotions of such a varied group of characters with such different motivations? What was your process and how did accessing each of those perspectives change you as a writer?

  WR: I spent a good deal of time developing profiles of each character, using a variety of writing activities I’d learned over the years. For each person, I had a photograph tacked to a cork board over my desk. These were images I’d found online, or photos of people I knew whose likenesses inspired the character (forever anonymous, by the way!). I created interviews and backstories for each. Then with each chapter I’d pause, review all of my materials again (including what had happened to the person so far), and jump right in.

  One exercise actually found its way into the book. In the chapter in which Bobbie walks through the grocery store and runs into both Patrick’s former counselor and Lyla, I wove in portions of what I call “habits and routines.” These are things about Bobbie that others might not know, the kinds of things she used to do, or still does, that provide the under-layer of who she is as a person. I did this kind of activity for each character and decided at a late date to include this in the book for her.

  ET: Each chapter of Ash Falls is named for the character (or characters) whose story is central to that section. We first encounter Hank in a chapter titled “Hank Kelleher,” and later chapters are variously labeled, “Hank (Henry) Kelleher,” “Hank,” and “Henry Tomas Kelleher.” What were you conveying with these variations?

  WR: As we get to know the person, the various nuances of even their names have meaning. The way friends or family refer to them, what their parents might have called them once. It’s that whole reality we all live, where we are one person at work and perhaps a different person when we are with our significant other, and a completely different person when we are alone in our bathroom under harsh lighting, staring at ourselves in the mirror. I also wanted to use the names as chapters because, in the end, the story is really about the people.

  ET: The people in Ash Falls are not only trapped, in one way or another, but they also deal with their circumstances in largely unconventional ways. What do you enjoy about creating these transgressive characters, who are often so often struggling to escape?

  WR: For me the challenge is to create characters that the reader can relate to, even if that character does not respond in ways that make sense to who we are as rational, relatively functional people. I try and seek pathways that are unexpected, yet plausible to both the character and the real world in general. Those of us who have lived through a dysfunctional world understand that the logical solution (“Why don’t you just leave?”) isn’t the reality of the person existing in that space that doesn’t always include logic. Emotions, fears, codependence and enabling are powerful drivers, and they can trap a person just as securely as a cage. Still, in spite of those obstacles, you have a person who refuses to stop searching for that escape, always determined to find the better place that he or she knows is waiting.

  ET: Speaking of finding a better place…roughly a decade passed between the publication of your memoir and your enrollment in Pacific Lutheran University’s MFA program. What inspired you to pursue that degree?

  WR: I’d always enjoyed writing but was still developing my craft and trying to find my voice as a writer. The memoir was a hard book for me in so many ways. I was a relative “novice,” the material was so personal and the structure of what I was trying to do was so complex. While it surely has its flaws, I am proud of it. But I’d always wanted to write fiction and I felt that after all that time—even with the experience of writing one book, numerous writer’s workshops, conferences and writing groups, I’d developed my skills about as much as I could on my own. I wanted a more intense focus, and the time was right in my life to jump in. It was a model and structure (low-residency, high/focused faculty engagement) that worked perfectly for me. I don’t regret it for a moment.

  ET: What was different about your experience writing Ash Falls compared to The Lyncher in Me?

  WR: With Ash Falls I felt so much of a greater freedom to tell the story I wanted to tell and direct the experiences of people who, though fictional, I had grown to care deeply about. It was also a more free-form kind of writing, where I sketched out an overall map of what I wanted to have happen, but did not outline it any way. With The Lyncher in Me, I had to structure it completely ahead of time, and there was such a feeling of self-consciousness the whole time. Was I representing these very real people fairly and accurately? Was I portraying myself in the way I’d hoped? I would say, though, that the greatest difference was (for this novel) the joy of being able to play with language, and to allow myself to view the world through the eyes of someone I had created completely from my own head.

  ET: Our readers are especially interested in writers who publish their first books after the age of 40 and who have had other professional identities outside of their writing lives. You’re currently Assistant Principal at both Sakai Intermediate School and Bainbridge High School, and you’ve also taught 4th grade. How do you think having a career in education shaped you as a writer?

  WR: I’d say that I have always tried to embrace for myself the same lessons I teach my students, about always seeking to improve my work, to listen with an open mind to feedback on my writing. I also try and live by the mantra that we are all constant learners, that as far as I have come with my own skills there is still so much more for me to learn.

  ET: Since your memoir, you’ve published Ash Falls and a number of short stories, as well as written three plays. What writing are you working on now?

  WR: I’m about 100 pages into a new novel. I don’t want to give too much away but I can say that it takes place in a small, rural setting—this time in northeastern Washington State. I was enamored by a term that one reviewer used to describe Ash Falls: “Grit Lit.” I would say that this new project is definitely within the same genre, perhaps even more so.

  Bloom Post End

  Ericka Taylor has served as the Assistant Fiction Editor and Assistant Managing Editor for the literary journal, Willow Springs, and is currently working on a novel.

  Granite Falls image via Granite Falls Chamber of Commerce

• The Seattle Times
  http://old.seattletimes.com/html/books/2004280927_warrenread14.html
  Word count: 2078

  QUOTED: "I wasn't looking to see how bad a person he was. What struck me is that when we look at something like mob violence or murder it's sometimes so much easier to look at it as black and white. That a person is either bad or good. But the reality is that they're people just like you and me and they are uncles and grandparents and I think that it's much more realistic and unsettling to realize that the concept of evil is in everyone. That it's in the shades of gray within all of us."
  "The lyncher in me. It's that piece of me that is too often willing to jump to a conclusion based upon an experience that really is prejudice. And prejudice simply means to prejudge something. And I think a lot of us have that and we're not always willing to admit that because it's uncomfortable."

  Bainbridge author Warren Read writes about 1920s lynching involving his great-grandfather

  Bainbridge Island schoolteacher Warren Read sat down at his PC one evening to research his family tree. And what popped up on the screen...

  By Florangela Davila

  Seattle Times staff reporter

  Author Warren Read in his fourth-grade classroom at Bainbridge Island's Capt. Charles Wilkes Elementary School.
  Enlarge this photo

  KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES

  Author Warren Read in his fourth-grade classroom at Bainbridge Island's Capt. Charles Wilkes Elementary School.

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  Author appearance

  Warren Read will read from his book, "The Lyncher in Me: A Search for Redemption in the Face of History," at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Elliott Bay Book Co., 101 S. Main St., Seattle. Free.

  Bainbridge Island schoolteacher Warren Read sat down at his PC one evening to research his family tree. And what popped up on the screen was a newspaper story screaming the ugliest of truths: On June 15, 1920, in Duluth, Minn., a mob pulled three black men from their jail cells, beat them and hanged them from a lamppost downtown. Among those responsible for the deaths: Read's great-grandfather, local businessman Louis Dondino.

  And what made the discovery even more horrifying was a photo taken of Duluthians standing proudly with the bodies of the men. Such was the norm back then, images of lynchings later turned into souvenir postcards.

  Dondino is not seen in the photograph and it's not known how close he might have stood to the scene. But he was one of three men held responsible for the lynch mob, sentenced to five years in jail.

  Fast forward some 80 years, when Read, 40, uncovers his startling past. That he was connected to something so appalling leads him back to Duluth, to publicly apologize on behalf of his family.

  Now he's written a book, the just-released, "The Lyncher In Me: A Search for Redemption in the Face of History" (Borealis Books; $24.95). It's a powerful story not only about racial prejudice and mob violence, but how an individual faces all sorts of ugly truths and takes responsibility. Alcoholism, physical and sexual abuse also marred Read's childhood and he chronicles that too.

  The book's preface quotes W.H. Auden: "Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table."

  Read took a break from teaching fourth grade at Capt. Charles Wilkes Elementary School last week to be interviewed.

  Q: Did you know you had a book in you?

  A: I had done some writing before. I had initially thought I would fictionalize the story but at some point I realized it would be ridiculous because there was enough that really needed to be told. And I realized it was also more than just the story that happened. It was my personal journey through it as well. That stemmed from people asking me, "Well, why would you go and apologize?" I hadn't really thought about it. I thought it was just in my nature. And so it really just compelled a lot of this self-reflection and facing issues that I really hadn't faced, which was surprising because I thought I had already dealt with that stuff.

  Q: Did you figure out why you needed to make that public apology?

  A: One of the things I realized is I have this need and this belief in taking responsibility. And my father [who was convicted of statutory rape of his stepdaughter, Read's sister] and my stepfather never really did. [Read writes in his book that his stepfather physically abused him.]

  When I initially wrote up the idea for the book it was more about the concept of apologizing. I looked up different examples when corporations had done it, or hospitals. I remember reading that this particular hospital had this policy about apologizing in malpractice situations and it was found that the hospital had substantially less payouts.

  I was really struck by that and it [the initial book concept] was a lot more on the nature of apology but people kept asking, What is it about your nature that led you to this?

  Q: Your great-grandfather would have been how old at the time of the lynching?

  A: Around 39 or 40.

  Q: Your age.

  A: Right.

  Q: So as you're researching the past how did you handle learning about it?

  A: What makes it surreal is that you're reading this documented information and it's your family member. For my mother it was a different experience because it was someone she knew and loved. For me, what kept coming to mind was my grandfather [Louis Dondino's son]. Because he was 13 at the time and I'm thinking, here's his father and he's going to jail and I'm thinking about all the stuff that happened with my dad [who also went to prison and who Read visited in jail as a young boy]. Talk about parallels!

  On the one hand I'm trying to understand the nature of mob violence and that's a very detached way of looking at it. And on the other hand I'm trying not to allow any excuse for it. I'm reading through this and in my mind it's barbaric, the actions of my great-grandfather.

  Q: What was your great-grandfather's role in the lynching?

  A: I know that initially my great-grandfather was charged with first-degree murder but I have no real explanation as to what exactly brought about the charge. [He'd later be convicted on charges of inciting a riot.]

  We know for sure he was driving the truck that was rounding people up. We know for sure he was there during the storming of the jail. That he kind of grabbed the fire hose. The fire truck had gone down there and the police were trying to use the hose to blast the mob back and the hose got away from them so members of the mob grabbed it back. I know my great-grandfather was there because there was testimony about it.

  Q: Was the book motivated by you wanting to reconcile whether Dondino was a monster?

  A: I wasn't looking to see how bad a person he was. What struck me is that when we look at something like mob violence or murder it's sometimes so much easier to look at it as black and white. That a person is either bad or good. But the reality is that they're people just like you and me and they are uncles and grandparents and I think that it's much more realistic and unsettling to realize that the concept of evil is in everyone. That it's in the shades of gray within all of us.

  Q: The book's title has a double meaning and you acknowledge some of your own racial prejudices. That's a rarely-heard admission.

  A: I don't want to make a blanket statement for everyone but most of us, I think, have prejudices that are ingrained in us that we're not aware of. Some of it comes from life experiences and some of it comes from maybe negative interactions we've had with any group of people in our past. Some of it comes from the media.

  The lyncher in me. It's that piece of me that is too often willing to jump to a conclusion based upon an experience that really is prejudice. And prejudice simply means to prejudge something. And I think a lot of us have that and we're not always willing to admit that because it's uncomfortable.

  Q: In that one chapter you talk about how you and your partner — two white men — move into Seattle's Central Area and then you begin to curse your surroundings. And how you had an inclination to — but didn't actually use — racial epithets about the drug dealers and the teenagers in their music-blaring cars.

  A: I think I've always understood that we all have an impulse to paint any one group with a broad brush. Men will make a blanket statement about women. People will make a statement about gays. And I don't think we always recognize that as being prejudiced, but it is. I think I've always been aware of that but for me to really sort of dig in and recognize it and place it upon myself was sort of a first.

  It's not something that I'm proud to admit and I don't want it to come across as me being racist but I think part of it is really looking at the inherent racism that's in society that really affects us all. And a lot of us who are progressive, liberal people might say, "Oh, I'm not prejudiced." But I think it's important to recognize that a lot of us really are and we try not to let it drive our actions but it taints us.

  Q: The lynchings stemmed from false accusations by a white woman that she had been raped by a black circus worker. Does it surprise you that no one else has ever come forward to acknowledge their family's participation in the lynchings?

  A: I can't criticize anyone else for not coming forward. I know one of the things that's not in the book is that I was able to connect with a descendant of Irene Tusken [the girl who alleged rape] and for a while we talked and he was real supportive of what I was doing. At some point I thought we might be able to have a real conversation and I might be able to work it in [the book]. In the end I just stopped getting responses from him and I just let it go.

  Q: You show us the ugliest of human behavior: included in the book is an image of the lynching postcard. You also write a bit about modern hate crimes: Matthew Shepard, James Byrd.

  A: I remembered seeing the book "Without Sanctuary," a collection showing all these postcards. I remember seeing that and thinking this is so voyeuristic and so inhuman. And I hadn't really connected the concept of lynching to hate crimes. It was once I read the back story and the mentality [of mobs] that I connected to it and I thought it's still alive and well.

  Q: And your reaction to how that word — lynching — is used so casually these days?

  A: Infuriating. We think of all this stuff in the past and I think people get real flippant about it and they don't realize the pain that's associated with it. I liken the comment — "I'm going to call for a lynching party" — to someone saying I'm going to corral him into a gas chamber, about someone Jewish. It would just be so ugly and yet the term "lynching party" is so blasé.

  Florangela Davila: 206-464-2916 or fdavila@seattletimes.com

  Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

• Minn Post
  https://www.minnpost.com/arts-culture/2008/04/remorse-led-lyncher-me
  Word count: 939

  QUOTED: "Ideally, an apology should come from the person responsible, but I believe that if that perpetrator is unable or unwilling to apologize, to the receiver of an apology it can still mean something, especially if it comes from someone who's connected to the perpetrator. ... When I went to Duluth, I felt compelled to apologize on behalf of my great-grandfather. This huge wrong had been committed, and I felt this huge remorse on behalf of my family."

  Ordway Center for the Performing Arts generously supports MinnPost's Arts & Culture coverage. Learn why.
  Remorse led to 'The Lyncher in Me'
  By Amy Goetzman | 04/01/08
  The Lyncher in Me

  Warren Read apologizes for the sins of his Duluth great-grandfather in "The Lyncher in Me."

  It started out as a casual Internet genealogy search, the kind millions of people undertake every day. With a little free time and a little Google, Warren Read thought he might uncover some interesting family connections, or even a little history. What he found shocked him. An article in the now-defunct Duluth alternative weekly Ripsaw recounted the infamous Duluth lynchings of 1920. Three black circus workers were accused by a white couple of rape. A mob pulled the frightened — and innocent — young men from their jail cell, beat them, and hung them in a public display of violence that was then made into a postcard. One of the three men who led the mob was Louis Dondino, Read's great-grandfather.

  Read had never heard this bit of family history, despite the fact that Dondino had actually spent time in jail for his role in the murders of the young men. He investigated it further, and ultimately decided his family needed to apologize to the families of those killed, and to the black community at large. Since those who actually committed the crime were dead or lost to history, he took on the task himself.

  In 2003, Duluth dedicated a haunting monument to the three men, and Read spoke at the ceremony, offering a tearful apology on behalf of his family for the crime. But Read wasn't done saying sorry yet. In March he published "The Lyncher in Me," a memoir that recounts the incident and his family's involvement, as well as the aftershocks that traveled down the generations in the form of alcoholism and dysfunction, impacting Dondino's descendents.

  Read, a teacher who lives on Bainbridge Island in Washington state, is in town this week to talk about his book and the value of atonement.

  MinnPost: You aren't responsible for the events of 1920. What is the value of an apology "once removed"?

  Warren Read: Ideally, an apology should come from the person responsible, but I believe that if that perpetrator is unable or unwilling to apologize, to the receiver of an apology it can still mean something, especially if it comes from someone who's connected to the perpetrator. I can boil it down to playground psychology: Ideally, a bully should apologize for his behavior, but if he doesn't, to his victim it still means something if one of the bully's friends comes up later and says, "You know, I am really sorry that happened, and I don't agree with it."

  When I went to Duluth, I felt compelled to apologize on behalf of my great-grandfather. This huge wrong had been committed, and I felt this huge remorse on behalf of my family. This was a way of taking responsibility for my family's actions.

  MP: How do you think the concept of reparations fits into this idea?

  WR: It's hard to deny the effects that the slave trade still has on our society, in terms of racism, disenfranchisement and education, but I think that it's a tricky thing to work through. Even though we're 150 years past the emancipation proclamation, there's proof that time alone doesn't heal the wounds.

  MP: Are you nervous about returning to Duluth, now that you've written your book?

  WR: A little bit. If there's someone bothered by what I've done, that's where it's going to show up. I can deal with it. It was my choice to put myself out there and I don't expect anyone else to do it. [After the 2003 dedication ceremony in Duluth, a woman came up to Read and admitted that her ancestors, too, were involved.]

  There have been a few comments about dragging up the past. I knew going into this that I would run into people who didn't agree with what I was doing. Some people want to leave the past in the past. But I think it's very important to look back, in order to go forward. I liken it to driving: You don't look in the rearview mirror the whole time you're driving, but you do need to look at it now and then, and it helps guide you to where you're going.

  MP: You've met the descendants of Elmer L. Jackson, one of the men killed. Does your apology help them?

  WR: I think it has, and I know it's helped me. This was a secret in my family for so many years, but for those folks, the idea of violence and lynching was never a secret — it was something they lived with for many years. They never had the option of denying an unjust past, while my family denied that for a long time. The idea of embracing something really painful, which is something that community does every day, can be really healing.

• The Mecury News
  https://www.mercurynews.com/2008/03/08/descendant-of-lyncher-finds-redemption/
  Word count: 600

  QUOTED: "A reader who slogs through the meandering story line of the book’s second half will be rewarded with a happy ending. Despite its shameful history and depressing background, Read’s story ends on a high note—one of redemption, optimism and joy."

  Descendant of lyncher finds redemption
  By Associated Press |
  March 8, 2008 at 7:35 pm

  As Warren Read sifted through his family history, he knew his discoveries wouldn’t be pretty.

  But even with lowered expectations, Read wasn’t prepared for what he found – he’s the great-grandson of a man who served time for instigating a notorious tragedy in which three black men were lynched for a fictitious crime.

  Instead of hiding the secret as so many had done before him, Read decided to publicize the tragedy and apologize for his family’s role in it. The result is his first book, “The Lyncher in Me,” an unflinching memoir that traces Read’s family dysfunction back through the generations to the night of the 1920 lynching.

  The details of the attacks are riveting. The violence began after a young white couple visited the grounds of a traveling circus that had stopped in Duluth, Minn., that summer. For reasons unclear, the couple fabricated a story about how the woman was abducted and raped by black circus workers.

  In the ensuing uproar, six young black men were swept up and thrown into jail. But some didn’t remain there for long. Within hours, a number of white men – including Louis Dondino, the author’s great-grandfather – whipped a gathering crowd into a frenzy of violence.

  The mob crashed its way into the cells of Elmer Jackson, Elias Clayton and Isaac McGhie, dragging the men across the street where a noose was hastily strung over a streetlight in the town square. Within minutes, the three were dead.

  The shameful moment was captured in a photograph that was later turned into a postcard. Read includes the photo in his book, a surreal shot of a white crowd posing in front of two hanged men. The victims are bare-chested, their shirts in tatters around their bound wrists. It’s easy to overlook the body of the third victim sprawled in the street.

  But here’s where the story starts to lag.

  Throughout the first half of the book, Read describes his genealogical research in the context of his own childhood abuse. There are a number of digressions, including needless analogies comparing his family history to the plants in his garden. Still, these interruptions can be forgiven thanks to the fascinating accounts of the lynching and its consequences.

  In the second half, though, the book takes more of a self-congratulatory tone.

  Read seeks redemption by apologizing to the victims’ families at the dedication of a memorial to the fallen men. Granted, what Read does takes courage, and the challenge of finding the proper words to comfort the victims’ descendants is daunting. But he drones on in excessive detail about any number of unrelated events.

  Still, a reader who slogs through the meandering story line of the book’s second half will be rewarded with a happy ending. Despite its shameful history and depressing background, Read’s story ends on a high note – one of redemption, optimism and joy.THE LYNCHER IN ME:

  A Search for

  Redemption in the

  Face of History

  By Warren Read

  Borealis Books, 196 pp., $24.95

• Star Tribune
  http://www.startribune.com/one-man-s-atonement/16658236/
  Word count: 881

  QUOTED: "Read's deeply emotional book plays back and forth between his abusive upbringing, the lynchings and his journey of discovery. For some readers, there might be a little too much 'personal work' on family matters. But Read's journey of regret and redemption is powerful."

  One man's atonement
  Warren Read, a schoolteacher from Kingston, Wash., tells of the terrible discoveries he made when he started to shake his Duluth family tree.
  By ROBERT FRANKLIN Special to the Star Tribune
  March 14, 2008 — 5:51pm
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  Genealogical geeks often rejoice in discovering a ruler or a rogue in their families. But Warren Read's emotions turned to horror and shame when he tapped into his family history on the Internet and found that his great-grandfather -- his mother's beloved grandpa -- had been a leader of a lynch mob in Duluth.

  "The Lyncher in Me" is a book of family stories -- of poverty, dysfunction, incest, alcoholism, child abuse -- and the sin of Read's great-grandfather. What makes it most interesting and worthwhile, however, is what Read, an elementary school teacher in Washington state, did about his discovery.

  He took responsibility, apologized publicly and traveled thousands of miles to expiate a wrong that happened decades before he was born.

  The lynching has been examined anew in recent decades, first through a book by Duluth native Michael Fedo (published in 1979 and reissued in 2000), then again in 2003 during a dedication of a monument to the victims in downtown Duluth.

  It is a ghastly chapter of Minnesota history.

  On the night of June 15, 1920, Elias Clayton, 19, Elmer Jackson, 19, and Isaac McGhie, 20, all black circus workers, were hanged from a lamppost after a 19-year-old white woman reported that she had been raped.
  THE LYNCHER IN ME

  By: Warren Read. Publisher: Borealis, 197 pages, $24.95. Review: A powerful and earnestly told story of one man's efforts to atone for his great-grandfather's role in the 1920 Duluth lynchings.

  Events: 2 p.m. March 30, Common Good Books/Swedenborgian Church, 170 Virginia St., St. Paul; 7 p.m. April 1, St. Paul Public Library Merriam Park Branch, 1831 Marshall Av., St. Paul; 7:30 p.m. April 3, Barnes & Noble Galleria, 3225 W. 69th St., Edina; 3 p.m. April 5, Barnes & Noble, 1600 Miller Trunk Highway, Duluth.

  Of related interest: "The Lynchings in Duluth," by Michael Fedo (Borealis); "To Remove the Stain: The Trial of the Duluth Lynchers," an article by Augsburg professor and Minneapolis Schools Supt. William D. Green (Minnesota History Quarterly, Spring 2004); the Minnesota History website, collections.mnhs.org/duluthlynchings/.

  Irene Tusken had met up with her boyfriend, Jimmie Sullivan, at the circus. The two disappeared for a while. She went calmly home to bed after the alleged rape; Sullivan waited hours to disclose the "details" to his father. Six black men were arrested after the allegations were reported to police. Meanwhile, rumors circulated that Tusken was dying from her wounds (a doctor who examined her later found no physical evidence of assault), and a mob of incensed vigilantes began to form.

  Egging them on in his green pickup truck was Louis Dondino, Read's great-grandfather. In fact, a prosecutor said later, without Dondino, there would have been no riot.

  With instructions not to use firearms or clubs against the mob (of more than 5,000), a pale line of defense outside the Duluth jail was quickly penetrated. After beatings and a mock trial, the hangings began.

  Dondino, then 38, eventually was charged with first-degree murder. He was convicted on a lesser charge, and spent a year in Stillwater State Prison before moving to Washington. Before he died at 77, he became a gentle hero to Read's mother, "a figure of unconditional love, of warmth."

  Read's deeply emotional book plays back and forth between his abusive upbringing, the lynchings and his journey of discovery. For some readers, there might be a little too much "personal work" on family matters.

  But Read's journey of regret and redemption is powerful.

  It was time, he decided, to "drop the denials and excuses and take responsibility -- as a man, family member, as a member of humanity."

  Read first traveled to Duluth, where he made a tearful, heartfelt apology before 2,000 people at a memorial to mark the 83rd anniversary of the lynchings. He addressed Clayton, Jackson and McGhie by name, apologizing for the "unreason and bigotry," the "ignorance and self-righteousness," the "hysteria and ... injustice" that cost them their lives and deprived them of "the opportunity to create a legacy of your choosing."

  Then he sought to find someone -- anyone -- related to the victims, a journey that took him to Topeka, Kan., and Pennytown, Mo., where Jackson's family had lived.

  Read, who is gay, knows a little something about being the object of blind hatred. But it's much to his credit that he also knows, and seeks to understand, his own potential for evil, which we all share.

  Robert Franklin, a retired Star Tribune reporter and editor, is a senior adjunct faculty member at the University of St. Thomas.

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