Host Kathleen Stephenson speaks with Oregon author Gina Ochsner about her novel THE HIDDEN LETTERS OF VELTA B. a story within a story, set in Latvia. Inara is dying, and during her last few days on earth she shares her grandmother Velta’s letters with her son, Maris, named after his uncle. Young Maris—who has the gift of near-ultrasonic hearing thanks to a pair of remarkably large and fuzzy ears—learns of the sacrifices made by his family, Latvians who must learn to share their country with an influx of immigrants. “
Gina Ochsner teaches at Corban University where she also directs the Portals Writing Conference. Ochsner also teaches with the Seattle Pacific Low-Residency MFA program. Ochsner has been awarded a John L. Simon Guggenheim grant and a grant from the National Endowment of Arts. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Glimmertrain and the Kenyon Review. She is the author of the short story collection The Necessary Grace to Fall, which received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and the story collection People I Wanted to Be. Both books received the Oregon Book Award.
A novel entitled The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight received the Grub Street Book Prize in 2011 and was long listed for the Orange Prize in 2010. She lives in Keizer, Oregon.
Gina Ochsner will be at Wordstock as part of the panel, "Skeletons in the Closet: Family Secrets" With: Jade Chang , Adam Haslett , Gina Ochsner , John Freeman, November 5th @ 10:00 am - 11:00 am, Winningstad Theatre – Cirillo-Cooke Stage, 1111 SW Broadway
She will also appear at Lit Crawl Portland: Mushroom Foraging with Gina Oschner and Alexis M. Smith, November 4th @ 6:00 pm - 6:45 pm, The Cleaner’s at the Ace Hotel, 1022 SW Stark Street
- KBOO