News related to Faraway Places

by Tom Spanbauer

Carlos Pons Guerra includes Tom Spanbauer along with the other great artists as an important interdisciplinary influence.  “... I hope my many sources of inspiration, the worlds I like to inhabit artistically-–in this case, Jean Genet, Almódovar, Tom Spanbauer, ballet archetypes-–are also there, too.”

15 Sep 2016|

“Mariposa: A trans, Caribbean re-imagining of Madame Butterfly,” by Gareth Johnson for Gay Star News


Carlos Pons Guerra’s new work in development for DeNada Dance Theatre is Mariposa – a transgender, Caribbean reimagining of Madame Butterfly.


Pons Guerra’s piece transports Puccini’s iconic orientalist libretto to a distant Cuban port in the 1950s – creating a tale of sacrifice, transgenderism and hope between a Caribbean rent boy and an American sailor.


An exciting cast will...Forward

Behind the Curtain: Meet the People Who Make the Portland Art World Possible. Who really creates high culture’s high season? The local specialists behind the scenes. By Fiona McCann for Portland Monthly Magazine

24 Aug 2015|

PAGE MAKER


The designer behind every Hawthorne book


Adam McIsaac: CREATIVE DIRECTOR / Hawthorne Books


Forty-one books, on subjects ranging from Portland food to lobotomies: that’s the entire oeuvre of Hawthorne Books since the small independent publisher started in 2001. Adam McIsaac has designed—from cover to cover and each page in between—every single one. “Every letter in those things, I’ve touched, for good or ill,” he says. “I’ve always been fascinated by the shape of...Forward

OPEN LETTER: DISCLOSURE AND CONJURANCE, BY TOM SPANBAUER

29 May 2015|

“WE MUST LOOK INWARD AT THE WILDERNESS.”


I’m always writing things down on slips of paper. One day, I found this quotation on a slip of paper laying on my writing desk. The problem with the quote I’m about to give you is that I have no idea where I found it. So blessed be the person who said this. If any of you out there recognize this quote please tell me.

Quote: “Heidigger coined the idea of disclosure. Our highest dignity as human beings, what really sets us apart from everything...Forward

Q&A: Portland author Tom Spanbauer on writing, teaching and his latest novel I Loved You More, by Ghoncheh Azadeh

27 Feb 2015|

Ghoncheh Azadeh: Was there a specific experience that drove you to write?

Tom Spanbauer: I started writing when I was just a kid. In the eighth grade I won a contest for writing an essay on John Barry, father of the American Navy. I was always a strange kid, off to myself. I lived in a Mormon community and was the target of many a bully. I really couldn’t relate to much in my life other than school. As I got older, I wrote poetry, bad poetry, mostly as a way to communicate with myself....Forward

Welcome to Late Night Conversation. Tonight our featured guest is Tom Spanbauer in conversation with guest host, Lidia Yuknavitch.

15 Jul 2014|

Welcome to Late Night Conversation. Tonight our featured guest is Tom Spanbauer in conversation with guest host, Lidia Yuknavitch. Tom’s latest novel I Loved You More was recently published by Hawthorne Books. Other titles by Tom Spanbauer include Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon, and Now Is The Hour.

Lidia Yuknavitch is a Portland-based author with titles available from Hawthorne Books. Lidia’s books include The Chronology of Water: A Memoir and the novel Dora: A...Forward

Tom Spabauer’s Personal Author Website is Live!

12 Feb 2014|

Tom Spanbauer is the critically acclaimed author and founder of Dangerous Writing. As a writer he has explored issues of race, of sexual identity, of how we make a family for ourselves in order to surmount the limitations of the families into which we are born.

His five published novels Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon, In The City Of Shy Hunters, Now Is The Hour, and I Loved You More (Hawthorne Books, April 2014), are notable for their combination of a fresh and lyrical...Forward

Tom Spanbauer honored by LGBTICONS: Celebrating LGBT people of achievement

14 Nov 2013|

When the words one believes to be the truth about oneself are actually written, they take on a power that is no longer exclusively controlled by the writer. The spin that could be applied when the ideas were merely in a person’s mind or coming out of a person’s mouth melt away. The words lay the heart bare for all to see. Those words become a separate entity, an unflinching, unvarnished document of the self.—Tom Spanbauer

Tom Spanbauer is a critically acclaimed author and the founder of...Forward

Being Queer in Idaho, by Tom Spanbauer, for Nailed, Editor Matty Byloos, Editor’s Choice, October 28th, 2013

28 Oct 2013|

Just about every piece I’ve ever written has something to do with Idaho. If not directly, then indirectly through the examination of my life and my family and how I was brought up. After all, it all happened in Idaho: way out of town, Pocatello, on a one hundred and sixty acre farm. My overly zealous Catholic mother, my distant dry-drunk father, an older sister who dressed me up as a girl until I went to grade school, the Mormon community I was bussed through every day to get to the St....Forward