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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. Sometimes, with so much tragedy and uncertainty going on in the world, it's nice to focus on a local feel-good story that showcases great spirit and effort. Such is the case for today's show. We're going to talk with the two editors and founders of the River Road Anthology, a collection of short works by more than 150 local and state authors that grew out of a simple reading project years ago. You'll hear how the two women launched the project and turned a huge collection of great local works into a compelling book filled with poetry, short stories and even songs. In our hyper-fast world, with AI seeming to intrude on every aspect of life, the anthology shows that good old-fashioned writing in a bound book can still find its audience. The River Road Anthology editors, Joan Dobbie and Erica Goss. Thank you both for coming in.
Both: We are very happy to be here. Thanks for having us.
Dunne: Joan, I'm just going to start with the most basic question for folks who don't know: What is the River Road reading program? And then, what is the River Road Anthology?
Joan Dobbie: Oh, my. It was the River Road Reading Series, actually. It started in 2014 and continued until 2023. It all started when I got on the bus. I had been in Eugene for a while. Anyway, I got on the bus, and there was Howard Robertson, who had been a friend long ago but I hadn't seen him for years. We started talking, and it turned out that both of us had a new book out, and we didn't have any place to read and push it. All the reading series that were around seemed booked up for the next year. So we decided we'd make our own series. I had been teaching yoga at River Road Parks for a while, and they knew me since '86, so they said we could use the annex, which is a lovely little house right on River Road, for the readings. We started inviting three readers at a time. The only rules were that, at the time, they had to be from Lane County. That was a little split between us, actually. Eventually that changed, but it had to be local, and they could be prose writers, poets or songwriters. It didn't matter, as long as it was their own real work.
Dunne: Did you find there were a lot of people who needed this venue?
Dobbie: Yes, we found so many. We would invite three people we knew, and they would suggest others. It really became popular. Writers were telling each other this was a really good venue. We were videoing all the readings as well, so more and more high-quality writers were coming to read in our series. The venue was great. It's just a beautiful little house, and we were getting pizza at Papa Murphy's. They have a kitchen, so we'd cook it there. It was really going well. This went on for years, and eventually Howard and I separated. He started holding his own series through LCC, and I stuck with the River Road. The only big difference between those two series was that I was inviting people from Portland and farther away, and he wanted to stay with Lane County.
Dunne: Erica, talk about the growth. Did it surprise you how big it's become? And talk about how this community was ripe for something like this to blossom.
Erica Goss: Are you talking about the anthology?
Dunne: Yes, the anthology and the readings.
Goss: I came in in 2017, met Joan that year and started helping out with the River Road Reading Series. I helped out until we ended it in 2023. At that point we had this epiphany: Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow commemorate all the incredible work of the writers who had been part of our series? We decided we would ask each writer to submit some pieces and create an anthology. It always sounds easy, but it grew tremendously during the time we were putting it all together, soliciting work and then creating the book. That was a lot of work, and it was amazing.
Dunne: Talk about the work that went into it. The nuts and bolts of it.
Goss: Joan took on the actual contacting and soliciting of work from the writers, and that was a huge job. She would ask each writer to send a selection of work, and then she, Amanda, Diane and I would select the work we liked and give it a rating. That's pretty common in literary magazines. We would decide based on that which pieces would go into the anthology. That had to be done for each writer, and there are over 140 writers. So that was a lot of work.
Dunne: Joan, how difficult was it to determine what goes in, and probably painfully, what's left out?
Dobbie: Because I did not trust my own editing ability alone, I asked Erica, Diane and Amanda each to take the submissions and rate them one through five. We had decided that each person could not get more than three pages, which turned out to be four pages. What I would do is try to fit pieces according to their ratings. If that didn't work, or if I really liked something, I would take advantage of my editorial power. That's generally how it went. After I selected what would be included, I sent it to the others, and of course everyone had a different idea of what they wanted to change. We would redo sections several times. With some people, it went back and forth five times before we had what was really going in.
Dunne: Erica, you kind of picked it up from there, right?
Goss: I was working with Joan, Amanda and Diane during this time, but Joan was really the filter for most of the work. Like Joan said, we were rating it and sending it back, then at some point agreeing on which pieces would be included. That alone took a tremendous amount of time, probably a year to a year and a half. At some point we had to put this giant thing into book form. Getting it from emails and submissions, and like Joan said, resubmissions after resubmissions, was a lot of work. Joan and I worked together on putting that actual content into physical book form. That took a lot of time. We had issues with the font and how big it could be, whether it was readable, and everyone had a different opinion. We had to come to a consensus, and there were many discussions. But when most people pick up the book, they're usually amazed at the quality, and that reflects a lot of work among the four of us. The final editing came down to Joan, myself and a copy editor we hired, Kelly Eastland. She's also a poet and writer in this area. She was another set of eyes who came in and tried to correct any errors we missed. We found errors and thought, 'How did we miss that?' That part was very tedious and very long. I personally did not want to let anything go out to the public, because we were representing all of these writers and their work, unless it was as perfect as we could make it.
Dunne: Joan, this is a question for both of you, but I'll start with you. You're both writers. Talk about the work you put together for the anthology.
Dobbie: My own work? Well, I had two poems I really liked and wanted to put in, and like the other poets, I couldn't decide. They're pretty long. Then there was one very short poem I put in because a friend had asked me to make sure it was included, so that one was going in anyway. As for the longer poem, I went back and forth. One was about dying, and the other was about romance. Considering which one I'd rather be out there showcasing, I couldn't decide for a long time. Finally I made a decision, revised it and it's in there.
Dunne: And Erica, what about you?
Goss: You wouldn't believe what a process it was. I wanted three poems to be in this book that were representative of my work. The first one I put in is about trees and thinking about how trees are important to our mental health. These had been written fairly recently when I submitted them. The next poem was one I wrote about a time in my childhood when everything was sort of changing. It was scary but also weirdly exciting. Then my last poem, which is called Chrome Notebook, has become quite popular and has been reprinted a number of times. It's a kind of travel poem I wrote the last time I was in Germany, thinking about everything that had happened there to my family. I think it's a pretty good representation. I want to say that Joan and I both realized, when we were selecting our own work, that we gained a lot more empathy for the people who had to select their work and send it to this team. Their words were being filtered by people whose tastes they may or may not have known very well. It was a really good experience for us to understand what our submitters were going through.
Dunne: Joan, for someone like myself who's never published anything, it always seems so daunting, with big publishing houses and stacks of rejection letters. What does this say about grassroots efforts to get something done at a local level? Does what you did, the end result, show that a very simple grassroots idea can become a book without going through what we all imagine as the traditional submission process?
Dobbie: Oh, absolutely. Although it wasn't only local. Some contributors came in because of COVID, when we moved to online readings and could invite people from everywhere. Those voices are in there too, mostly alongside local writers. I've done a bit of publishing before. Long ago, when I was quite young, I published a book called Before Us. My young daughter had named it, and it was a history of early Jewish settlers in northern New York, in St. Lawrence County. I had done something similar, interviewing people and putting books together with two other people. I had done newsletters before, so it wasn't totally new to me. This was probably the greatest, most overwhelming project I'd ever taken on because of the size and the number of people, but I knew how to talk to people and ask them for what I needed.
Dunne: Erica, is there a favorite piece in the anthology, other than your own work?
Goss: Not really, no. I tend to answer that question like this: When I pick up the book and just open it at random, which is what I love about anthologies, I'm blown away by what I find. I'll think, 'This is brand new. I don't remember reading this before.' Then it comes back to me. Of course, honoring each writer's work is really important to me, because I'm a writer too. I guess I'm just so pleased and touched by the high quality of work in this anthology, and that reflects on the type of people living in Lane County, in Oregon and beyond. There are so many writers here, and they're good, and they don't get a lot of attention and publicity. I'm really glad we were able to do that for them.
Dunne: Joan, what about you?
Dobbie: For 20 years I taught a poetry class here in Eugene, and at the end of each class we put together a little book of poems from the participants. I still have those booklets. Making books has been something I've always known how to do.
Dunne: Erica, is the anthology accessible to all ages? Can someone, whether they're 15 or 75, find something in it that speaks to them?
Goss: Absolutely. I would love to see it used in high school English classes around our area. I would love to see it used at our community college and at the university as an addition to a textbook. It also makes a really good gift. It's got such a variety of styles and subjects. There's nothing in it I would think wouldn't be appropriate for all ages, or for anyone interested in literature, or anyone who just wants to take a break from the stressful world for a few minutes and dive into some beautiful words. So yes, I think it's for everyone.
Dunne: Joan, last question: How do people get it? Tell listeners how they can get the anthology.
Dobbie: Here in Eugene, they can get it at Tsunami Books and at Jay Michaels. I've submitted it to the Kiva but haven't heard back yet on whether they'll carry it. Also, my son Andy, who goes by Doby, has joined us and become an Emerald Literary Guild officer. He's handling publicity for us, and he got us connected to a group called Ingram, which does on-demand printing. I looked online and it's on Amazon, on Bookshop.org and at Barnes and Noble. If you want to order online, you can. The Emerald Literary Guild also has a website: emeraldliteraryguild.org, all lowercase.
Dunne: And I'll put that link on the web post.
Goss: There are so many people in the anthology, and those contributors can get the books at a discount. That has to be arranged through us for now. We're working on possibly making the discount available online, but right now we're handling it directly. We also have books available at all of our readings and public events, so if you come to any of our events, we always have them there. We're willing to sell them out of the back of our car.
Dunne: Very good. The River Road Anthology. We've been talking with two of its editors, Joan Dobbie and Erica Goss. Thank you so much for coming in.
Both: Thank you, Michael. It's been wonderful. Thank you.
Dunne: Now let's check in with our own Rebecca Hansen-White about a sudden appearance of parvo that has dog owners concerned in Florence. KLCC's Rebecca Hansen-White. Rebecca, always great to see you. Thanks for coming in.
Rebecca Hansen-White: Always great to be here.
Dunne: So many dog lovers here at the station. Wanted to talk about a story you recently did about a concerning issue: parvo in Florence. First, just remind people what parvo is.
Hansen-White: It is a dog disease that is highly infectious and can be deadly. It can spread from water bowls, from feces and from going to the dog park. It's one that sets off red alarms for people who work with animals.
Dunne: And what are they seeing in Florence?
Hansen-White: They've had two instances of detected parvo. One was an unhoused person who brought their pit bull into the Oregon Coast Humane Society. He didn't know what was wrong with her, because some symptoms of parvo can look like a lot of other things. Lethargy, loss of appetite and vomiting are all parvo symptoms, but a lot of dog illnesses cause those, too. They tried to treat her, she wasn't getting better, and then they tested her and it was parvo. They did treat her for it and she got better. Then there was another case elsewhere in the Florence area involving a dog with puppies. That dog ended up dying from parvo. So they've detected those two instances in the area.
Dunne: I know two doesn't sound like a lot, but it is highly contagious. That's the big concern.
Hansen-White: Yes. I talked to the Oregon Coast Humane Society about this, and it's one of those diseases where, if one of the sick dogs frequented a dog park, parvo could potentially linger in the soil for up to a year. The best thing you can do, because your dog has to go out and you need to socialize them, is get your dog vaccinated. It is very accessible. It's a very common vaccine given as a series of shots, and it's available over the counter and at the vet. Puppies especially need it. They're quite vulnerable to parvo, as are older or otherwise vulnerable dogs. It is very easy to prevent your dog from getting parvo.
Dunne: Good advice. Rebecca Hansen-White, always appreciate you coming in and talking with us. Thanks so much.
Hansen-White: Thank you.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, we talk about a new entry in the growing solar market, balcony solar, and how a nonprofit and a local legislator are trying to bring it to Oregon. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
