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Member of the Month: Teri Fink

At Write On The River, we love the diversity of our vibrant writing community.  Besides hailing from all over our region, Write On The River Members come from every age, background, career and experience.

Last fall we were thrilled to learn of the success of one of our Write On The River Members and Conference attendees.  Teri Fink attended the 2011 Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association’s annual Conference in August and submitted the manuscript of her nonfiction book to their Literary Contest.  Not only was she a finalist (in itself an amazing accomplishment and honor), but her manuscript took First Place in the Nonfiction/Memoir category.

Because of her inspiring success and her consistent support of our organization and Conference, we’re proud to make Teri Fink our featured Member of the Month for February 2012.  She was kind enough to sit down and answer some questions from Write On The River about writing, writers, and reading.

What kind of writing do you do, Teri?

Professionally I write news and feature articles for the Wenatchee School District, and did the same for Wenatchee Valley Medical Center for eleven years. Personally I have had about a dozen nonfiction magazine and journal articles published nationally and locally, and have written a couple of novels that will never see the light of day. Most recently I have written the biography of Isak Gaši, a Yugoslav champion athlete who was interred in a concentration camp during the Bosnian War. The book is called My River Sava.

Writing a biography about a living person must have been interesting.  What was the writing process like?

Teri Fink with Isak Gasi, Wenatchee, WA

I spent one evening each week for about five months interviewing Isak and his wife Jasminka in their home. Luckily for me Isak and Jasminka live here in Wenatchee, and we’re friends, so I’ve interviewed them many times since then, filling in the gaps. I felt strongly that the story needed to be told in Isak’s voice in a first person narrative. Literary agents who read the first chapters from my first draft said my writing didn’t wow them. So I went back, reorganized the narrative, and rewrote the entire book using more literary language. I submitted the book to the Write on the River contest, and the judges talked about what they liked, but said I used too many similes and metaphors. I scaled the flowery language back a bit, submitted my work to the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest, and ended up winning first place in the nonfiction/memoir category.

How does Isak feel about the book?

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November “Member of the Month” : Mark Neher

Member of the Month Mark Neher

If you have attended any Write on the River event or conference the past few years, you’ve probably met Mark Neher.  His intelligence, friendliness,  and positive good nature are infectious, and his laugh-out-loud writings are popular crowd favorites at our “Four Minutes of Fame” Writers Meeting Writers public reading events (click here to see videos of these events, including excerpts of Mark).   Always quick with a handshake, a word of encouragement, or a self-deprecating joke, Mark’s face is a familiar and welcome one at any gathering of local literati.  Behind his ready smile and arched-eyebrow humor, though, there lies an unmistakable seriousness and sensitivity.  His is clearly a seeking soul, and it expresses itself through thoughtful words.  The author of two books (Target Practice, available on Amazon by clicking here, and Saturday Morning Sins, coming out soon), Mark has taken full advantage of all that Write on the River has to offer to advance his craft and network with other writers.  Write on the River is proud to make Mark Neher our very first “Member of the Month,” and he was gracious enough to thoughtfully answer all of our questions.  If Mark is a stranger to you, attend any of our events and he isn’t likely to be for long.

WOTR: How would you describe your writing?

I would like to think my writing is lovable, cute and fun, like a brand new puppy, not quite housebroken. I write humor as well as emotional essays with a spiritual outlook. It is natural for me to combine the two. Humor with a gut and a dark side is funnier. Serious emotional explorations with humor are more approachable. My goal has always been to lay my words down in a way that makes them easy to digest. I am not seeking literary review as much as I am seeking an audience who is moved. To laugh, to cry, or to throw my work in the trash, it’s all okay as long as I’m not boring.

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Another WOTR Member, Another Distinguished Prize!

WOTR Member Takes Home annual Hazel Lipa Prize

Congratulations to Write on the River Member Cynthia Neely, who has won the 2011 Hazel Lipa Prize for environmental poetry!

Cynthia is a poet from Leavenworth, Washington and an MFA student at Pacific University in Oregon. Broken Water won the 2011 Hazel Lipa prize and is now available from Iowa State University’s Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment: http://www.flyway.org/2011/10/01/issue-13-3-now-available/

Of Cynthia Neely’s Chapbook, Derek Sheffield says:

“In Broken Water, Cynthia Neely begins with ancestry and ends with loss, but what persists, what weaves itself through all of these poems is wildness. This collection makes the lyrical case for sustenance in nature. Even the greatest suffering is not too much for the world of bird and wolf, seal and wave. If we can draw our gaze up from a ground littered with shotgun shells, we might catch a glimpse of “the meadowlark, bibbed and shining.” –Derek Sheffield, winner of the inaugural Hazel Lipa Chapbook Award for A Revised Account of the West (2008)

Way to go, Cynthia!

WOTR Member Wins Prestigious Award

Wenatchee Writer Takes Home PNWA Prize

Write on the River Member and Conference-attendee Teri Fink has won the highly competitive Pacific Northwest Writers Association’s 2011 Literary Contest.  Her manuscript faced rigorous competition from nearly 1,000 entries from all over the world.  From those entrants, eight finalists were chosen.   At the PNWA’s annual conference in August, Teri Fink was announced as the First Place winner in the Nonfiction/Memoir division.  Her manuscript, My River Sava, is the true story of Isak Gasi, a Yugoslavian athlete who now lives in Wenatchee and works at Wenatchee Valley Medical Center.

While no guarantee of publication, winning the contest increases the chance of getting the book published, and she received a number of requests from literary agents and editors at the conference to submit the book for their consideration.

Congratulations, Teri!

Member of the Month

Starting soon, Write on the River will be highlighting one of our many Members a month.  You’ll be able to see the diverse, talented crowd of interesting people that Write on the River brings together, and learn more about the writing and lives of some of your literary neighbors in North Central Washington.  Stay tuned for our first featured Member of the Month!