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The Interview: Bookbag Talks To Jeffrey Dunn

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Summary: Jill enjoyed Radio Free Olympia, a story blending prose and poetry with themes of ecology, folklore, love and loss. She didn't think it was the easiest read, but a rewarding one.

Date: November 2023

Interviewer: Jill Murphy

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Jill enjoyed Radio Free Olympia, a story blending prose and poetry with themes of ecology, folklore, love and loss. She didn't think it was the easiest read, but a rewarding one.

• Bookbag: When you close your eyes and imagine your readers, who do you see?

Jeffrey Dunn: Folks who love language and have a deep appreciation of place. The flora. The fauna. Certain striations of rock. Certain slants of light. And folks more affected by the old-fashioned, the more elemental, the less industrial and digital influences of our surroundings. An audience who knows the energy of the trees and streams and stones.

• BB: What led you to write?

JD: The nature of my mind. I was born with an active interior life and resented the intrusion of school, bolting out the door for home on the third day of kindergarten. When my grade nine English teacher read us Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar and then asked us to write something in response, I wrote a story about a man in jail cell talking to a penguin. My teacher said he liked my story. He then read it to class. I was reborn.

• BB: And who are your most admired authors?

JD: Richard Brautigan got my motor running as a teenager, and Tom Robbins pushed the whimsy in more complex directions. Recently, I’ve been blown away by Anthony Doerr and Linda Lappin. I love nature writing from Barry Lopez to Annie Dillard as well as deep eco-studies like Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book on mosses and all of Bernd Heinrich. Love the poet Gary Snyder, and Sylvia Plath still sticks in my mind after all these years. Patti Smith rocks my world. Throw in some serious cognitive psychology from Stanislas Dehaene and Steven Pinker. I’m always reading at least three books from different genres at a time. The mix keeps me from going stale.

• BB: Radio Free Olympia is rooted in the natural world and the mysteries it contains. Do you spend much time in the wilderness yourself?

JD: Not as much as I’d like. I’ve always felt better outdoors and even better in the woods. Growing up, I would have lived in the woods if my parents had let me. Loved turning over rocks for crayfish and mudpuppies. Loved walking off into unknown places. When my little family and I moved to the Olympic Peninsula, the immense conifers and ever-present rain came down and enveloped us. It was hard, but I shed my skin and emerged a friend to the slippery jack mushrooms and the Pacific tree frogs. Raven sat up in a tree and said I could stay.

• BB: What drew you to write a book with these diverse ways of storytelling?

JD: As I explained in Radio Free Olympia’s introduction, I felt compelled to give voice to the Olympic Peninsula. It wasn’t about a character or a plot. It was about a place, and if you listen, you will find that places are a multitude—a caw-caw-phony, as Raven likes to say. I let each voice take on its most natural form. Something similar? Read James Joyce’s Ulysses, his collection of voices that represent Dublin, his antinovel of place. Of course, organization was a challenge, how to present the voices in a form readers could follow. The proof is in the reading.

• BB: If you could persuade the government to make one environmental policy, what would it be?

JD: Get their heads out of their factories and cellphones and into the wild. To lose the wild is to lose our humanity.

• BB: What in life brings you the most joy?

JD: My wife. My son. My dog and cat. A walk outside. A new book to read. A blank page to fill.

• BB: Will you write more about the Olympic Peninsula? And will we, your readers, ever meet Petr and the other characters in Radio Free Olympia again?

JD: I’m incubating a complex new novel set in the Spokane River drainage, the place currently transforming me. Here, Saint Patrick converts to Buddhism and comes to 2023 Spokane, but wouldn’t it be fun if Petr and Baie brought their friends out of the rainforest and into ponderosa pine country? Stay tuned.

• BB: What's next for Jeffrey Dunn?

JD: Wildcat, An Appalachian Romance (early 2024) is set in the rust belt of Appalachia and follows a retired English teacher who returns to his hometown, where a once-closed hotel has been reborn as a collective. As he explores the transformed community, he unearths a world of sustainable industries and rediscovered friendships. But amidst the triumphs, dark shadows of the past and personal history resurface, weaving a narrative of love, loss, and magical transformation. Wildcat knocks the rust off Appalachia.

Whiskey Rebel (late 2024 or 2025) is set in the untamed landscapes of the Columbia Plateau and follows two drifters as they embark on a daring quest to distill tax-free whiskey and redefine the meaning of freedom. Whiskey Rebel challenges societal norms, delves into the complexities of the American experiment, and introduces a cast of quirky characters on a journey to discover their own unique recipe for freedom.

• BB: Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions: few authors give so generously and thoughtfully of themselves.

You can read more about Jeffrey Dunn here.

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