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Penelope Scambly Schott
Penelope Scambly Schott’s verse biography A is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth won an Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Recent books include Lovesong for Dufur and Lillie Was a Goddess, Lillie Was a Whore. Published in 2014 was How I Became an Historian. Penelope lives in Portland and Dufur, Oregon where she teaches a notorious poetry workshop.
Tell us about your early reading, your nightstand reading, your passions apart from writing.
When I was in my early teens, I read a lot of Joseph Conrad and Thomas Hardy. Conrad made me want to be a hero, and Hardy filled me with a sense of tragedy. Then I went on to study history. Now I mostly read poetry I can understand (I’m less willing to read poetry I don’t understand) and non-fiction, particularly local history, archaelogy, biology, and folklore. Next to my bed is a pile of magazines: poetry journals, Science News, Discover, Smithsonian, The New Yorker. Apart from writing, my passions are my dog, hiking, and the little town of Dufur. Most of my poems start in Dufur, no matter where they wander from there.