Brian Doyle
Brian Doyle edits Portland Magazine at the University of Portland. He is the author of six collections of essays, two nonfiction books, two collections of “proems,” the short story collection Bin Laden’s Bald Spot, the novella Cat’s Foot, and the novels Mink River, The Plover and Martin Marten. He is also the editor of several anthologies, including Ho`olaule`a, a collection of writing about the Pacific islands. Doyle’s books have seven times been finalists for the Oregon Book Award, and his essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion, The American Scholar, The Sun, The Georgia Review, and in newspapers and magazines around the world, including The New York Times, The Times of London, and The Age (in Australia). His essays have also been reprinted in the annual Best American Essays, Best American Science & Nature Writing, and Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies. Among various honors for his work is a Catholic Book Award, three Pushcart Prizes, the John Burroughs Award for Nature Essays, Foreword Reviews’ Novel of the Year award in 2011, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2008. He is the 2015 winner of the Willamette Writers Distinguished NW Writer award.
On your nightstand:
Just finished Tim Egan’s Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, about the great photographer Edward Curtis, and Helen Macdonald’s riveting H is for Hawk. Up next: Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account, which is the U of Portland’s Campus Reads this year, before she visits here Feb 15. Then back to Silver Surfer comics for a while.
Do you prefer reading print or ebooks?
Print. I see enough electric sizzling muddle all day at work.
If you could spend a day with an author, who would it be?
Robert Louis Stevenson, who loved fine wine and was by all accounts one of the great table talkers of all time.
What book made the biggest impression on you as a kid?
Kidnapped. I’d never read a book with such verve and dash and headlong in it before.
What’s your writing routine? Are you an early bird or a night owl?
Early. Who in heaven’s name can write at night? Night is for wine and kissing and sleeping.
Besides writing, what’s your passion?
Basketball, kids, hawks, kids, my lovely bride, basketball, and kids. Also kids.