LEWISTON, Idaho – Pacific Northwest author Tina Ontiveros will read from her award-winning memoir “Rough House” on April 14 at 7 p.m. at the Lewis-Clark State College Center for Arts & History.
The event, which is part of the LC State Visiting Writers Series, is free and open to the public.
Ontiveros is a writer, teacher and author. She was raised below the federal poverty line, mostly living with her single mother on the edge of the Oregon desert. At times, she also lived with her constantly migrating dad in small timber towns around the Pacific Northwest. Today, she lives near the bottom of Mt. Hood and teaches writing and literature at Columbia Gorge Community College. She received her bachelor’s degree at Marylhurst University, located in West Linn, Ore., and then her master’s in nonfiction writing at Goddard College in Vermont.
Ontiveros is the winner of a Pacific Northwest Book Award and is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Her essay, “The Life We Pay For,” was a top 10 most read of the 2019 Oregon Humanities Magazine.
“Rough House” was released in the fall of 2020 and was named a October 2020 Indie Next Great Read. The book shares Ontriveros’ memoir that is more than just a chronicle of hardship. In the book, Loyd is a logger roaming across the timber towns of the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s and 90s, living in trailers and shelters he built for his family. Loyd becomes more nomadic as the timber industry dies and meth begins to spread across the region. Stuck in a lifelong migration between sobriety and chaos, he is forever starting over. Throughout the book, he destroys and rebuilds relationships with Alcoholics Anonymous, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and his children.
The book is narrated through the eyes of his daughter with a child’s sense of awe.
Ontiveros’s work also appeared in Issue 51 of the LC State student publication, Talking River Review. She wrote an essay on teaching and being taught for the publication.
LC State’s COVID-19 protocols will be followed for this event. Participants can view these protocols on the college’s Coronavirus web page.