News related to Tom Spanbauer

Author of I Loved You Moreand Faraway Places

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

Tom Spanbauer novel, I Loved You More, wins a Lambda!

02 Jun 2015|

27th Annual Lambda Literary Award Winners Announced: Congratulations to Tom Spanbauer, Winner of Gay General Fiction for I Loved You More!


Finalists include:
All I Love and Know, Judith Frank, HarperCollins/William Morrow
Barracuda, Christos Tsiolkas, Hogarth
Bitter Eden: A Novel, Tatamkhulu Afrika, Macmillan/Picador USA
The City of Palaces, Michael Nava, University of Wisconsin Press
Little Reef and Other Stories, Michael Carroll, Terrace Books, an imprint of the University of Wisconsin...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

Tom Spanbauer: Finalist 2014 Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction

10 Mar 2015|

Hawthorne Books is very pleased to announce that Tom Spanbauer’s novel I Loved You More has been selected as a finalist for the 2014 Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT fiction. The winner will be announced on Thursday, April 23, 2015, at The Publishing Triangle’s annual Triangle Awards, to take place at the Tishman Auditorium of the New School for Social Research (66 West 12th Street in New York City) at 7 p.m. The ceremony is free and open to the public, with a reception to follow.  At that time,...Forward

Oregon Books Awards Tom Spanbuer The Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award for outstanding contributions to Oregon’s literary life

04 Mar 2015|

The Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award for outstanding contributions to Oregon’s literary life will be given to Tom Spanbauer. Spanbauer created Portland’s Dangerous Writing workshop in 1990. More than 30 of Spanbauer’s students over the last 20 years have been published and moved on to their own literary and teaching careers, including Chuck Palahniuk, Monica Drake, Robert Hill, Joanna Rose, and Amy Schutzer. Spanbauer is the author of five published novels, including Now Is The Hour...Forward

Congratulations to Tom Spanbauer whose novel, I Loved You More, included as a Finalist for The 27th Annual Lambda Literary Awards!

04 Mar 2015|

The 27th Annual Lambda Literary Awards–or the “Lammys,” as they are affectionately known–kick off another record-breaking year with today’s announcement of the finalists. They were chosen from a record 818 submissions (up from 746 last year) from 407 publishers (up from 352 last year). Submissions came from major mainstream publishers and from academic presses, from both long-established and new LGBT publishers, as well as from emerging publish-on-demand technologies. Pioneer and...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

Author Tom Spanbauer On Real Life With HIV by Allison Frost on OPB’s Think Out Loud

02 Dec 2014|

Portland writer Tom Spanbauer is no less than a legend in some literary circles. A Portland Monthly profile earlier this year called him the “Godfather of Portland’s writing scene.” When we sat down with him in April, it was to talk primarily about his new novel, “I Loved You More,” and about his practice of teaching and creating “Dangerous Writing.”

But we didn’t get to talk too much about Spanbauer’s real life, even though some is reflected in his fiction, including “I...Forward

For your listening pleasure this afternoon: Tom Spanbauer in conversation with Matt Dwyer on Feral Audio.

23 Oct 2014|

“Conversations With Matt Dwyer” is a weekly freeform dialogue exploring people from all walks of life. The guests are as eclectic as they are legendary such as Black Panthers living in exile, guitar legend Wayne Kramer (MC5), and Jason Baldwin of the West Memphis Three. Matt has also sat down with cutting edge authors artists like Jerry Stahl, Paul Krassner and Laurie Lipton. The show is thought provoking, insightful and funny.


The Host: Matt Dwyer is a comedian, actor and writer who has...Forward

Valerie Stivers on I Loved You More, by Tom Spanbauer for HTMLGIANT

26 Sep 2014|

I Loved You More by Tom Spanbauer starts with a slow burn, like an acid trip, of which there are a few in the book: There’s a preliminary period of seemingly aimless hanging out, and just when you start thinking nothing is going to happen, the room lights up, your heart lurches, and everything begins to glow.

Other writers have tried to quantify the transformation that occurs reading Spanbauer’s writing, the feeling of truth as opposed to artifice, the sense that now we’re really...Forward

Amazing HIV+ Gay Men: Ruggedly handsome author Tom Spanbauer has legions of fans. The Idaho native often writes of race, sexual identity, coming of age, and creating family in his many novels: The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon, In the City of Shy Hunters, Now Is the Hour.

26 Aug 2014|

Who says you have to be young and beautiful to attract the masses? Ruggedly handsome author Tom Spanbauer has legions of fans. The Idaho native often writes of race, sexual identity, coming of age, and creating family in his many novels: The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon, In the City of Shy Hunters, Now Is the Hour. His latest,I Loved You More, is a breakaway in that it recalls the story of an older gay man living with AIDS (yes, AIDS, not just HIV) who is reflecting on his relationships...Forward

“Bizarre love triangle,” by Jim Piechota for the Bay Area Reporter

26 Jul 2014|

Ben Grunewald is an outspoken character whom readers will fall in love with.

Jealousy, resentment, fallibility, pain, and regret (a game-changing event involving Hank is foreshadowed at the beginning of the novel) all come to pass, and in the final chapters, the pages whip past as the truth and the beauty of being human and the impact of these raw emotions bubble to the surface. Spanbauer’s prose can be shimmering, poignant, and heartbreaking, but it can also flip on a whim and become droll...Forward

As If Knowing the Answers Ever Changes Anything, by Matty Byloos    

22 Jul 2014|

...CAPABLE OF LOVING BEYOND THE CATEGORIES OF SEXUALITY AND GENDER…


Spanbauer knows that within the novel, there is ample room to unpack the deep complexities that are always living beneath the surface of our relationships. Man to man, woman to man, gay man to straight man, or straight woman to bisexual man. If not for the novel, where would any of us find the space to slow down enough, to pick apart the in-betweens to find something more precise, or else sufficiently slippery, to describe...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

Michael Langan In Coversation with Tom Spanbauer for Polari Magazine

11 Jun 2014|

Michael LanganBoth your own writing and the Dangerous Writing ethos seem to emphasise the importance of truth-telling, the necessity and compulsion of it even, which makes for work that’s urgent and confessional. Is that confessional aspect specifically linked to your Catholic upbringing, or despite it?

Tom SpanbauerOne day I decided to buy a notebook that I would call a Truth Book and write down truths in it that I couldn’t find anywhere else. So I bought this fancy leather notebook and I...Forward

“Boy With Grasshopper in His Teeth: Life As a Dreamy Little Fucker,” words by Tom Spanbauer, photos courtesy of Tom Spanbauer and Sage Ricci,  interview with Diana Welch for Transgressor Magazine

11 Jun 2014|

As a horribly lonely 14-year-old girl in rural Virginia, I found a book called The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon and, simply put, it made me feel less alone. This sense, this promise of belonging, stuck with me long after I had forgotten the name of the man who created the work that had meant so much to me. It was a new feeling, subtle and hungry, and I have been feeding it ever since.

Twenty years later, I found myself in a conversation with a friend about book called In the City of Shy...Forward

Tom Spanbauer: New Audience & Old Friends, by Dave Wheeler for Shelf Awareness

13 May 2014|

Larger publishers interested in more current stories might have been put off by the time frame of the novel, as Spanbauer mentioned in a Lambda Literary interview, but according to him and Michael Sage Ricci, Spanbauer’s partner and publicity manager, the response to I Loved You More from Portland’s Hawthorne Books couldn’t be better. Working with an independent publisher led them to what Ricci calls “sideways marketing,” involving other indie artists and performers to build a broader audience....Forward

Tom Spanbauer’s novel, I Loved You More, earns a Starred Review from Publishers Weekly

06 May 2014|

Spanbauer’s excellent follow-up to 2006’s Now is the Hour chronicles the friendships and love affairs of protagonist Ben Grunewald, a gay novelist fraught with chronic anxiety and living with AIDS. Ben’s anxiety is born from a mix of dealing with his Catholic upbringing, his homophobic father, and his depressed mother in small-town Idaho. He finds a haven in writing and eventually makes a home for himself on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where he meets Hank Christian in a writing workshop....Forward

Tom Spanbauer’s novel I Loved You More reviewed by Sally Hessney for A&U: American’s AIDS Magazine

23 Apr 2014|

I Loved You More is about the power of words. There are many passages in the novel that achieve dizzying heights of unabashed beauty and lyricism—passages describing Beethoven’s Fifth groaning on a turntable during an electrical storm and snow drifting across a room with a wrought-iron wedding-ring bed—but sadly, for Ben Grunewald, words can comprise a requiem for a lost friendship, but they cannot resurrect one.

To read the entire review go to A&U: America’s AIDS Magazine.

“Can I Get a Witness: Tom Spanbauer’s I Loved You More Delivers History Straight to Your Heart,” by Paul Constant for The Stranger

23 Apr 2014|

Tom Spanbauer has been publishing novels since the late ‘80s. Over time, his role as a writer has shifted from outsider to beloved teacher of a whole new generation of novelists. His voice is a teacher’s voice—chatty, friendly, and capable of relating the greatest of heartbreaks in the warmest of voices. Spanbauer’s newest novel, I Loved You More (Hawthorne Books, $18.95), is a living, breathing testament to the confusion and danger and sadness and elation of what it felt like to be a young...Forward

Author Tom Spanbauer Talks Teaching And Writing on OPB’s Think Out Loud with David Miller

22 Apr 2014|

Portland author Tom Spanbauer is a pillar of the city’s literary community. He’s been teaching writing for more than two decades and his star-studded roster of former students includes Chuck Palahniuk and Monica Drake. And many others count him as a mentor and influence on their work. Spanbauer teaches what he calls “dangerous writing,” with a conversational style, and plot lines that don’t shy away from intensely personal material.

Spanbauer’s own works include five novels. The...Forward

I Loved You More: love, sex and hope for true belonging, by Barbara Lloyd McMichael for The Seattle Times

21 Apr 2014|

In his new novel “I Loved You More,” Portland author Tom Spanbauer follows one man’s entanglements with love, sexuality and relationships.

I Loved You More is breathtaking for its audacity. Spanbauer is unflinching as he looks at physical need and carnal desire. The book is punctuated with graphic sex and disturbing hallucinogenic trips. It is laced with frustration and profanity — including some truly crackerjack lines that cannot be repeated in this newspaper.

On the other hand,...Forward

“‘I’m trying to find the tone that is me:’ Tom Spanbauer on Writing, Longing, and Living Dangerously,” by Nick Mattos for PQ Monthly

18 Apr 2014|

Tom Spanbauer is a local treasure. As an author, he has made an indelible imprint upon the landscape of modern queer fiction; as a teacher, his Dangerous Writing method of approaching creativity has influenced some of the city’s most notable authors including Chuck Palanuk and Monica Drake. PQ Monthly’s Nick Mattos hung out with Spanbauer at his home in SE Portland to have a long talk about his new novel I Loved You More, the various forms that longing can take, and the way that the...Forward

Tom Spanbauer, Chuck Palahniuk, and Lidia Yuknavitch at PNCA hosted by Monica Drake

18 Apr 2014|

Monica Drake at PNCA hosts a reading event with Tom Spanbauer, Chuck Palahniuk, and Lidia Yuknavitch at PNCA.

“Dangerous Writing,” by Oriol R. Gutierrez Jr. for Poz Magazine  

14 Apr 2014|

Renowned author Tom Spanbauer returns with a novel about HIV/AIDS, aging with the virus and falling in love.

I Loved You More is the fifth novel by Tom Spanbauer. As a gay author, he often delves into the themes of sexuality and relationships. Such is the case with his new book, which is out in April.

Although much of his writing is based on his personal life—being born in 1946 in Idaho, going to graduate school in New York City in the 1980s, and now living in Portland, Oregon—Spanbauer...Forward

“Room to Write,” by Tom Spanbauer as Guest Blogger for Powell’s Books, April 11, 2014

14 Apr 2014|

Tell us about the places you have written. The actual place where you set up your writing desk. Were there windows you looked out of? What did you see?

Faraway Places was written at 211 East Fifth Street, Apt. 1A, in Manhattan. My apartment was a studio about nine feet wide and not a lot longer. I got the apartment for free and $400 a month for being the super of three buildings on East Fifth. There were two long, narrow windows facing East Fifth Street, but I always had the rust-colored...Forward

“Writing about the Dead and Bringing Them Back to Life,” by Tom Spanbauer as Guest Blogger for Powell’s Books, April 10, 2014

10 Apr 2014|

In my novel, In the City of Shy Hunters, there were so many dead friends to write about. There’s a line in Shy Hunters: “It’s the responsibility of the survivor to tell the story.” As I was writing the book, I felt the wisdom of that line very keenly. And since I was the one responsible, I had to get the story right. In order to get the story right, I had to go back to the Manhattan of the ‘80s and tell everything I knew that was true about those days, everything that was true about that place....Forward

“Tom Spanbauer: Truth Through Fiction,” by Cathy Camper For Lambda Literary Review

09 Apr 2014|

Back in 2006, I interviewed Tom Spanbauer for The Lambda Literary Review when his book Now is the Hour was published. He is well known nationally as the author of that book and others, including Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon and The City of Shy Hunters. And in Portland, OR where he lives, as a teacher for his Dangerous Writers classes. His publisher, Hawthorne Books, notified me that his latest novel I Loved You More would be published this month, and I was very happy...Forward

“What’s Allowed and What’s Forbidden,” by Tom Spanbauer as Guest Blogger for Powell’s Books, April 9, 2014

09 Apr 2014|

What for you is the relationship between writing and death? Not just literal death but dying emotionally, psychologically, spiritually. Dying to one’s own ego, dying to what’s allowed and what’s forbidden. Writing about the dead and bringing them back to life through writing?

I’ll try to answer this part of the question: What is it like for me to die to what’s allowed and what’s forbidden? Part of the fictive invented I is that you get to be braver, bigger, stronger than you really are. There...Forward

“Writing Where It Hurts,” by Tom Spanbauer as Guest Blogger for Powell’s Books, April 8, 2014

08 Apr 2014|

You write about things that are deep and painful. Do you emotionally relive the painful feelings and experiences? Does the process of writing your novels bring pain or relieve it?

I write about things that make us human. There is a great Zen saying that goes: when you meet someone, look them closely in the eyes, for inside those eyes a great battle is waging. Really all of us human beings are essentially in the same place. We are on a battlefield. Each battlefield may be different, but in the...Forward

“One Crucial Tip for New Writers,” by Tom Spanbauer as Guest Blogger for Powell’s Books, April 7, 2014

08 Apr 2014|

If you could dispense with a single point of advice/wisdom to a new but promising writer, what would it be? And why?

Your best friend is in town and you haven’t seen him or her in years. You have something very profound that has happened to you that your friend does not know about yet. You go to a bar and after two margaritas you begin to tell her/him this very important thing that has happened to you. Remember, you are intimate with this person. You don’t have to keep up any appearances....Forward

Dangerous Writing Is Writing and Lying, by Tom Spanbauer Editor Matty Byloos, Editor’s Choice, April 8th, 2014 Fiction is the lie that tells the truth truer…

08 Apr 2014|

Author Tom Spanbauer talks openly about the difference between the kind of writing he teaches, which is rooted in personal history and told through the filter of close personal narrative, and thinly veiled memoir writing that one might refer to as a Roman à clef, wherein a writer pens a story about real life, and then thinly veils the fiction by merely changing characters’ names.

+ + +

There are generally one of two assignments for people first starting out in a Dangerous Writing class....Forward

I Loved You More by Tom Spanbauer,” by Rachel Wexelbaum for Lambda Literary

07 Apr 2014|

Before delving into any of Tom Spanbauer’s books, it is best to take note of the two central principles of his school of Dangerous Writing:


1) What makes writing dangerous is something personal, very small, and quiet… to go to parts of ourselves where there is an old silence, where it is secret, where it is dark and sore… to go to where we’ve never gone before, writing down what scares the hell out of us. Eventually to the very foundation and structure of how we perceive, and in this...Forward

Tom Spanbauer Author of I Loved You More Interviewed by Christopher Carbone on April 3, 2014 for Kirkus

03 Apr 2014|

Spanning two decades and a lifetime’s worth of heartache, Tom Spanbauer’s fifth novel, I Loved You More, reckons with the complex truths of adulthood: love, illness, loss, betrayal and friendship. It’s also an honest depiction of how men—gay and straight—treat other men.

The novel follows the interconnected lives of three people: Ben Gruenwald, a gay man who is sometimes in relationships with women and narrates the story; Hank Christian, a straight guy who forges a bond with Ben...Forward

Tom Spanbauer: A Primer, and A Review Of His Latest Novel, I Loved You More, by Rob Hart for LitReactor

02 Apr 2014|

I’ve been planning to write this for months, and I’ve done everything I could to put it off. The reason for that is because I am afraid to write it. No matter what I write, I’ll never get across the thing about Tom Spanbauer’s writing that touches me so deeply.


The sensation of reading his books is that, while you’re reading them, it’s like he’s placed his hand on your chest, the warmth and pressure and intimacy of it reassuring you that you are alive, and you are not alone.


That doesn’t...Forward

“Books: Tom Spanbauer’s 1st Novel in Seven Years, I Loved You More, is For Sure the Real Deal,” by Michael Goldberg for Days of the Crazy Wild

02 Apr 2014|

Tom’s book is 466 pages of heartbreak. Think about the love affair that went so wrong for you, the one that tore you down, left you devastated and in pieces. Yeah, that’s this book.

When the I Loved You More starts, everything that Ben is going to tell us has already happened. And Ben reveals right up front, in the first nine pages, that this story is about a love triangle, and that Ben ended up the odd man out. Tells us right at the start that Hank married Ruth. In other words, tells us...Forward

Excerpt of I Loved You More by Tom Spanbauer in The Nervous Breakdown

02 Apr 2014|

The Maroni

What I’d like to do now is take the opportunity. To say what I couldn’t even think that Wednesday evening in Jeske’s class, 1985. The scariest thing about myself. If I were to have spoken it out loud.

I was impotent.

By that time of my life, my thirty-seventh year – heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, top or bottom, threesomes, orgies with men and women, with a whip in my hand or chained to the radiator, whatever way two or more people can get together sexually. Drunk or...Forward

Interview Part 2: Novelist Tom Spanbauer Editor Colin Farstad, Interview, March 31st, 2014 ...I’m more in the world than I’ve ever been…

01 Apr 2014|

Part Two: On Writing, Teaching, and Legacy: An Interview With Novelist Tom Spanbauer

NAILEDHow did you get into writing, Tom?

SPANBAUERWell, I got a Bachelor’s in English at Idaho State University because I always wanted to write. I was always writing short stories and poems. They were all pretty bad, but my professors were nice to me. When I went to the Peace Corps, I spent a lot of time writing love letters to my girlfriend back home. I loved the idea that I could capture something very...Forward

Review of Tom Spanbauer’s I Loved You More: “The Bermuda Triangle of Love,” Melissa Duclos for Book Trib

01 Apr 2014|

Contained within the simple geometry of a love triangle are all the ingredients for an engrossing plot. There are characters (desired and desiring, therefore compelling); conflict (fights and lies and changes of heart); and resolution (someone will win, someone will lose, the triangle will be broken apart). Is it any wonder, then, that we return to these stories again and again?

In his newest novel, I Loved You More (Hawthorne Books, April) Tom Spanbauer manages to give readers a fresh look at...Forward

Interview with Tom Spanbauer at Possible Architect Podcast hosted by Trevor Dodge.

29 Mar 2014|

Trevor DodgeIn our discussion about his latest novel I Loved You More, Tom Spanbauer discusses his personal and creative growth up and out of eastern Idaho, and how the myriad forms of repression he experienced there helped shape his maturation, sexual awakening, and emergence as one of contemporary fiction’s most compelling voices and influential teachers.

To listen to the podcast, go to Possible Architect Podcast hosted by Trevor Dodge.

Tom Spanbauer’s I Loved You More goes deep into an intense love triangle: book review, By Angie Jabine/Special to The Oregonian

25 Mar 2014|

It’s a classic triangle and it unfolds with all the wit, sexual candor, and humility that Spanbauer can summon. All his novels, and this one in particular, embody the advice a rock critic once gave his young protégé: “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we’re uncool.”

To read the entire review, go to The Oregonian.

Interview: Novelist and Teacher Tom Spanbauer Editor Colin Farstad, Interview, March 20th, 2014 ...I’m just a part of human suffering…

20 Mar 2014|

At sixty-seven years old and living with AIDS, novelist Tom Spanbauer still teaches a weekly writer’s workshop called Dangerous Writing in the basement of his home in Portland, Oregon. On April 1st, 2014 Tom Spanbauer’s latest novel I Loved You More will be published by Hawthorne Books.

When I first sat down with Spanbauer, he had recently finished I Loved You More. The novel’s focus is Ben, an Idaho-raised writer living in New York City, and his friend Hank, a fellow Columbia student....Forward

Discovered today in Hot Type at Vanity Fair by Elissa Schappell

19 Mar 2014|

“Tom Spanbauer, gifted anatomist of messy emotions and rangy sexuality, returns with I Loved You More.”

To read more Elissa Schappell, go to Vanity Fair.

“Tom Spanbauer: The Godfather of Portland’s Writing Scene: Local authors Cheryl Strayed, Chelsea Cain, Monica Drake, and others tell us why Spanbauer is at the heart of Portland’s literary world,” by Aaron Scott for the Portland Monthly

19 Mar 2014|

WRITERS’ TEACHER
THE SAGE OF TOM SPANBAUER, PORTLAND’S LITERARY MENTOR


1990 Spanbauer, with one novel published and another on its way, founds Dangerous Writers, a workshop informed in part by his experience with famed minimalist editor Gordon Lish.


1996 Early DW student Chuck Palahniuk releases the group’s first breakout hit, Fight Club. Palahniuk wrote the book that would make his name, as well as the initially unpublished Invisible Monsters, during five years in Spanbauer’s class....Forward

Tom Spanbauer I Loved You More National Book Tour

17 Mar 2014|

At A Glance National Book Tour for Tom Spanbauer and his new novel, I Loved You More out April 1, 2014.

Please check back for frequent updates.

Art Briefs by Nick Mattos, PQ Monthly

20 Feb 2014|

Tom Spanbauer is the favorite author of many a Portland queer, and for good reason — he infuses the world with magic. His novels including “The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon” and “Faraway Places” explore the themes of of race, sexual identity, and the ways that individuals create their own families to prevail over shortcomings that exist within their true biological families with a magical realism that demands comparisons to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Francesca Lia Block.  His...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

Announcing the debut of Tom Spanbauer’s I Loved You More book trailer

24 Jan 2014|

Click this link to watch the trailer.


I Loved You More is a love story triangle akin to Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot and Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, only with a gay narrator who charms men and women alike. Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, said, “This is Tom Spanbauer’s wrenching and beautiful masterpiece.”

Special thanks to Mark Levine for the vision and filming, to Kevin Meyer and Michael Sage Ricci for the collaboration, and to Cadens Johnson for the lovely music....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

I Loved You More is a love triangle akin to Jeffrey Eugenides’The Marriage Plot and Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, only with a gay narrator who charms men and women alike. Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, said,  “This is Tom Spanbauer’s wrenching and beautiful masterpiece.”

Tom’s previous novels have also garnered exclaim and a dedicated readership. About Faraway Places the New York Times Book Review said, “A taut, brutal narrative… that comes to hypnotize, shimmering like the brilliant sun on...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

Tom Spanbauer’s novel I Loved You More foreign rights sold to Mandadori in Spain!

07 Oct 2013|

Tom Spanbauer’s novel I Loved You More foreign rights sold to Mandadori in Spain!

Former Portland Mayor Sam Adams Tweets that Tom Spanbauer’s novel, I Loved You More, is great

11 Apr 2013|

Former Portland Mayor Sam Adams Tweets that Tom Spanbauer’s novel, I Loved You More, is great, and includes this photograph of Tom reading.

We agree that I Loved You More is great, and it will be on shelves April 1, 2014!

Tom Spanbauer’s new novel, I Loved You More, to be published by Hawthorne Books Valentine’s Day, 2014.

30 Jan 2013|

Hawthorne Books is proud to announce the acquisition of Tom Spanbauer’s novel, I Loved You More, to be published April 2014!