Now available wherever books are sold!
- Photo by Steve Horn
Iris Graville is a writer and teacher, bookseller and bookbinder, and a retired nurse from Lopez Island, WA. Her profiles and personal essays have been published in national and regional journals and magazines. She holds a Master of Nursing degree from the University of Washington and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts where she served as nonfiction editor for Soundings Review. Iris is also the publisher of SHARK REEF online literary magazine. She blogs regularly about writing and spiritual matters.
As a writer, Iris strives to give voice to the untold stories of ordinary people. She had her first taste of the thrill of helping people tell their stories as a feature writer for her high school newspaper in a small town in southern Illinois. Years later, as a nurse in Indiana and Washington, she listened to patients in hospital rooms, exam rooms, homes, and schools and experienced an uncommon intimacy as they shared their fears, hopes, grief, and pain.
Her first book, Hands at Work—Portraits and Profiles of People Who Work with Their Hands, received numerous accolades including a Nautilus Book Gold Award, Independent Publishers Award, and an Indie Next Generation Book Award.
Hands at Work was inspired by a showing of Summer Moon Scriver’s black-and-white photographs of hands. Scriver’s images of strong, weathered, soiled, muscled hands digging potatoes, knitting, kneading dough, and spinning wool suggested a passion for the kinds of work that have become rare for many Americans. This hard-cover coffee table book is available at Lopez Bookshop, other independent booksellers, Amazon.com and online at this site.
Second Book Released October 2016
BOUNTY: Lopez Island Farmers, Food, and Community
This 124-page book combines photographs, profiles, and recipes to present an intimate, behind-the-scenes view of what it takes to bring food from earth to table on Lopez Island. Photography by Steve Horn, Summer Moon Scriver, and Robert S. Harrison; profiles by Iris Graville; recipes created by Chef Kim Bast. Available at Lopez Bookshop.
Book 3 Released September 12, 2017
Iris’s memoir, Hiking Naked—A Quaker Woman’s Search for Balance (http://homeboundpublications.com ) is a personal narrative of what she learned in the remote mountain village of Stehekin, WA about work, community, and leadings of the Spirit (as well as dealing with six feet of snow in the winter, ordering groceries by mail, and living without a telephone).
Available for purchase at Lopez Bookshop, Homebound Publications Online Store, Quaker Books of FGC, Indiebound, and everywhere books are sold.
Upcoming Events for Hiking Naked
June 2018
6/6-10/18 –Pacific Northwest Quaker Women’s Theology Conference, Canby, OR. Speaker at Plenary Session 6/9: ABIDING IN GOD: IN DARKNESS AND LIGHT
6/13/18, 7:00 PM at Lopez Island Library Memoir Writing Workshop
Writing memoir is your opportunity to capture your life—or more likely a part of your life—on the page. In this two-hour class, we’ll explore craft techniques such as characterization, setting, scene, dialogue, and reflection to show readers the main character—YOU. The class will include readings, in-class exercises and prompts, and a toolbox of resources to help you on this writing journey.
6/21-23 Chuckanut Writers Conference, Whatcom Community College, Bellingham, WA
- 6/22, 10:15-11:15 AM, PANEL – Writing Home: Place-Based Prose and Poetry
Featuring: Kathleen Alcalá, Claudia Castro Luna, Iris Graville, and Frances McCue
Moderator: Mary Vermillion - 6/22, 4:00 – 7:30 PM Faculty Reading and Book Signing
- 6/23, 1:30 – 2:30 PM WORKSHOP – The Profile Essay as Genre—Telling Other People’s Stories
- 4:30 – 5:00 PM – Faculty Book Signing
6/24, 11:00 AM – Bellingham Friends Meeting Reading and discussion.
7/25-29, Workshop, “Spiritual Memoir – A 21st Century Take on Quaker Journals,” and book signing at North Pacific Yearly Meeting Annual Session, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA. Theme of the gathering: “Uprooting Racism.” Register here.
Click here for more upcoming events.
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