Nicholas O’Connell

On Sacred Ground: The Spirit of Place in Pacific Northwest Literature Nicholas O’Connell

Commendation Quotes: As a reader, I'm grateful to O'Connell for amassing his material and presenting it in thought--provoking fashion, and as a teacher, I'm happy to have a book such as this as a starting place for discussing Northwest literature with students. "On Sacred Ground" is of value to anyone interested in the on--going attempt to define and articulate our region's literature. Table of Contents: PrefaceAcknowledgments1. Early Native American Stories2. Journals of Exploration and Settlement3. Romantic Movement4. Realistic Writing5. The Northwest School6. Contemporary Northwest LiteratureReferencesAdditional SourcesIndexBiographical Note: Nicholas O'Connell is the author of "At the Field's End: Interviews with Twenty-Two Pacific Northwest Writers." He is the founder of The Writer's Workshop. Publisher Marketing: On Sacred Ground explores the literature of the Northwest, the area that extends from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, and from the forty-ninth parallel to the Siskiyou Mountains. The Northwest exhibits astonishing geographical diversity and yet the entire bioregion shares a similarity of climate, flora, and fauna. For Nicholas O'Connell, the effects of nature on everyday Northwest life carry over to the region's literature. Although Northwest writers address a number of subjects, the relationship between people and place proves the dominant one, and that has been true since the first tribes settled the region and began telling stories about it, thousands of years ago. Indeed, it is the common thread linking Chief Seattle to Theodore Roethke, Narscissa Whitman to Ursula K. Le Guin, Joaquin Miller to Ivan Doig, Marilynne Robinson to Jack London, Betty MacDonald to Gary Snyder. Tracing the history of Pacific Northwest literary works--from Native American myths to the accounts of explorers and settlers, the effusions of the romantics, the sharply etched stories of the realists, the mystic visions of Northwest poets, and the contemporary explosion of Northwest poetry and prose--O'Connell shows how the most important contribution of Northwest writers to American literature is their articulation of a more spiritual human relationship with landscape. Pacific Northwest writers and storytellers see the Northwest not just as a source of material wealth but as a spiritual homeland, a place to lead a rich and fulfilling life within the whole context of creation. And just as the relationship between people and place serves as the unifying feature of Northwest literature, so also does literature itself possess a perhaps unique ability to transform a landscape into a sacred place. Contributor Bio:  O'Connell, Nicholas Nick O'Connell is the author of several books, including "Beyond Risk: Conversations with Climbers" and "On Sacred Ground: The Spirit of Place in Pacific Northwest Literature". His writing has appeared in "Newsweek", "Outside", "National Geographic Adventure", "Conde Nast Traveler", the "New York Times", the "Wall Street Journal", "Sierra", and many other publications.