Brian Doyle is the muddled maundering mumbling muttering shuffling shambling humming editor of Portland Magazine, in Oregon. He is the author of many books of essays and fiction, among them the sprawling Oegon novel Mink River. His new “whopping sea novel” The Plover will be published in April 2014 by St Martin’s Press.
Nonfiction
Spring 2008
No
The most honest rejection letter I ever received for a piece of writing was from Oregon Coast Magazine, to which I had sent a piece that was half bucolic travelogue […]
Winter 2015
The Lake
We are going to the lake. I am with my cousins. It is July. I am fifteen. This morning France blew up an island in the Pacific, to test a bomb.
Summer 2013
A Note on Learning Gaelic
Some time ago I wrote a novel in which there was, surprisingly, a lot of Gaelic, and while I tried to write my own raw rough Gaelic, I had the wit to ask an Irish-speaking friend of mine to check and correct all the silly errors I surely had made.
Winter 2013
Chauncy Street
Many years ago, when I was in my twenties, I worked for a small and obscure newspaper on Chauncy Street in Boston. The newspaper office was also small and obscure, […]
Summer 2012
Four Boston Basketball Stories
Chirping & Warbling
I have written here and there about the time when I played in a basketball league in Boston that was so tough that sometimes guys driving to the hole lost fingers, and one time a guy driving hard to the basket got hit so hard his right arm came off, but he was lefty and hit both free throws, but there are about one million other stories from that league,
Summer 2008
A Note on the Misuse of Adverbs
One time my brothers and I were sitting at a balcony table in an ancient pub in New York City, conducting scholarly research, when my brother Thomas overheard a conversation […]
Summer 2009
Do You Think We Should Pull Over?
Which famously was the question my friend Pete asked me as we were driving in New Hampshire and his car, this was the Datsun, BURST INTO FLAMES! FLAMES WERE SHOOTING […]