Personal Regions: Unusual Places & Stories about People Who Inhabit Them

2007 Fellowship Recipient, Jill Widner, will read from her novel in progress, The Smell of Sulphur, which fictionalizes her experience growing up in Sumatra, Indonesia, the daughter of a petroleum engineer, during the years before and following the Sukarno coup.  The novel is concerned with the blurred line between fiction and memoir; in particular, the body of literature that explores the life and mind of the expatriate child, who, as Pico Iyer puts it, "lives simultaneously in several cultures and yet feels at home in none." Widner teaches English at Yakima Valley Community College.

Creation of Widner’s work was made possible in part by an Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship. Her reading is a  Meet the Artist event, an integral component of the annual Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship award. Meet the Artist events bridge our artistic community with the diverse communities in Washington State, increasing awareness about the vital roles art and artists play in our culture. 

Other writers at the event include:

Peter Chilson will read from his nonfiction book in progress, We Never Knew Exactly Where: Travels Through an African Borderland. The book explores how Africa is changing as colonial borders gradually fall apart. He has published two previous books about Africa, the travelogue Riding the Demon and a short fiction collection, Disturbance-loving Species. Chilson teaches writing and literature at Washington State University. 

Debbie Lee will read from her current nonfiction book project, Wild Lives: A History of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. The book draws on archival research and personal stories from a variety of people who have helped shape this wilderness, including her grandmother who lived the 25 years of her married life in the Selway-Bitterroot as the wife of a wilderness homesteader and forest ranger. The archival scholarship takes on immediacy in the context of individuals whose lives cover themes of loneliness, desire, loss and love in a landscape at once beautiful and hostile. Lee teaches English at Washington State University.

Andrea Clark Mason will read from her nonfiction manuscript titled Continental Divide, a memoir that details her experience traveling the globe and, finally, making a home in the American West. Continental Divide explores what forces come together to forge an identity: geography, culture, desire.  Against her conservative East Coast upbringing and the backdrop of the American West, Mason finds mountains and adventure in unlikely places.  Mason teaches writing and literature at Washington State University. 

Find out more about Meet the Artist

Center for Arts & History

Lewis-Clark State College 

415 Main Street

in the heart of historic downtown Lewiston, Idaho. 

 Please contact Ellen Vieth, Center for Arts & History Programming Coordinator, for more information:  emvieth@lcsc.edu or (208) 792-2317.