Often hailed as the Godfather of Portland’s literary world, author Tom Spanbauer spent nearly three decades shaping a generation of Pacific Northwest authors through his “Dangerous Writing” workshops. The author of five novels, including “The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon” and “I Loved You More,” Spanbauer died Sept. 21, 2024 after a long illness with Parkinson’s.

Hundreds went through Spanbauer’s “Dangerous Writing” courses which started in 1991 with a small cohort of authors which included Chuck Palahniuk, Monica Drake and Suzy Vitello. Subsequent writing groups branched out from there and counted Lidia Yuknavitch, Chelsea Cain and Cheryl Strayed among authors influenced by Spanbauer’s work.

OPB’s “All Things Considered” host Crystal Ligori looked back at Spanbauer’s life and legacy with author Suzy Vitello, Spanbaurer’s partner of 22 years Michael Sage Ricci, writer and illustrator Gigi Little, and editor and publisher Rhonda Hughes.

The conversations have been edited for length and clarity.

Suzy Vitello

I was enrolled in an extension class from Portland State University in fall of 1991. I walked in there and instantly, he took my hand in both of his and he looked me in the eye and he said, “I’m glad you’re here”. And it was just like, ‘What? Who is this magical person?’ And then he gave us an assignment: Write something that after you are different. Just something about his mannerism, and his total presence and that assignment sort of coalesced, worked together. And I wrote something that scared the holy crap out of me. That’s part of, I think, the magic of his combination of persona and instruction that leads a person into that place that they’ve had buried for a long time.

Then when that concluded after six weeks, he invited me to join this small group that he had assembled in his John’s Landing house on Thursday nights. The whole mood was one of this combination of safety and danger because you felt like you needed to confess. It’s almost like he was this priest that he set up this whole environment where people felt compelled to tell the truth.

He had a particular way of translating institutional language patterns into his own way of bearing witness. He called it ‘Burnt Tongue’. It’s like the lie that tells the truth truer, as he always said. All of those novels that I’ve written–I now have number six coming up next year–they all have that element of unresolved issues specifically around grief. And so when I get to those hard places, definitely Tom comes into my head.

Michael Sage Ricci

I met [Tom] in early 2002 in Wolf Creek, Oregon and it was love at first sight.

I think the most important part about ‘Dangerous Writing’ is not the minimalism, it’s not the tricks of language or the sayings people have. But it’s really about not being afraid to be truthful from your heart. Even if it hurts — Tom would call it, ‘the word that hurts.’ And I think that was Tom’s measure because there’s a lot of people who went through and came out of ‘Dangerous Writing’ who can write a mean sentence. But Tom was like, “If I don’t feel anything, who cares?” It’s not worth it to not write the truth of our hearts.

He always had a sense of being othered. He always had a sense of being on the outs, and he was always putting his nose down and writing it out to kind of connect to all of it. All of his books have a variation on his home story and none of it’s ever completely the “truth,” but all of it is how Tom was formed and how he felt about all of it. He is fictionalizing things, but it is also biographical. I think that’s always been a little titillating to Tom’s fans, of, ‘How much of this is the truth? Are you lying to us? Is this memoir? Is this fiction?’ And Tom very carefully, and sort of coyly, skirted that and goes, ‘Nope, I have the right to lie to tell my true feelings.’

It’s a cliché now: the world’s hungry for authenticity, but it’s always been that way to him, and that’s why he started teaching. He loved nothing more than people coming in and they were just fine writers, but it wasn’t special and it wasn’t their language and their story. He loved when he could crack that open with a student and all of a sudden these things would come out that nobody else could possibly write.

Gigi Little

I was in his workshop from 2005 until it disbanded in, I want to say, 2017. So I was in there for a really long time and it didn’t take long for you to become a friend rather than a student. He helped me to find my own voice, find something that was authentic, and go to what he always said was, ‘You go to the sore places.’ Find your stories in yourself and in the places where you are hurt —and that’s what makes writing more personal and more real. I remember thinking how the basement, we just called it ‘the basement’, was a sacred space and what it felt like to feel privileged to be down there and to be learning from him.

It’s not like you read a book and it’s sort of branded as a ‘Dangerous Writing’ type of writing. But I can just tell when something has that sort of authentic feel that Tom teaches. And sort of the flip side, and maybe more often, when I pick up a book that doesn’t do that, I go, ‘Hmm, that’s not Dangerous Writing. That could use a little Tom.’

I’m so glad that my life got touched by his, and so many of ours got touched by his.

Rhonda Hughes

I was honored to work with Tom Spanbauer as editor and publisher of his novels, “I Loved You More” and “Faraway Places”. One of my most cherished memories is working with Tom, Sage Ricci, and Liz Crain to promote “I Loved You More”.

I sat at the table with Tom and his ‘Dangerous Writers’ for a short time early in my career not to become a writer, but to become a better editor. Tom taught me how to be a decent editor. I fell in love with Tom Spanbauer. I mean I had a mean crush on him. As did so many others.

Tom was immensely talented, kind, generous, and a terrific dancer. I’ll love him always.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2024/09/27/remembering-novelist-and-dangerous-writer-tom-spanbauer/