Barbara Drake, professor emerita of English at Linfield College, is a finalist for a 2016 Oregon Book Award.
She is competing for the Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction for her memoir, “Morning Light: Wildflowers, Night Skies, and Other Ordinary Joys of Oregon Country Life.” The book describes Drake’s life in western Oregon’s Yamhill Valley and the lessons and adventures that arose from living in the country. What Drake thought would be a temporary relocation turned into an appreciation and exploration of rural life. Ultimately, she and her husband decided to remain living in the rural countryside as long as possible. “Morning Light” articulates the couple’s farm life experiences, which include training herding dogs, encounters with a man who lived on their farm 80 years before, and lessons in family and natural history.
Drake taught composition and women’s studies at Michigan State University before coming to Linfield College in 1983 to teach creative writing and develop the English Department’s new creative writing major. In addition to “Morning Light,” she is the author of “Peace at Heart: an Oregon Country Life,” which was an Oregon Book Award finalist in 1999. Drake’s books of poetry include “Driving One Hundred,” “Love at the Egyptian Theatre,” “What We Say to Strangers,” “Life in a Gothic Novel,” “Bees in Wet Weather” and “Small Favors.” Her writing appears in numerous literary magazines and anthologies.
The Oregon Book Award winners will be announced at the 29th annual Oregon Book Awards ceremony on April 11 at the Gerding Theater at the Armory. Heidi Durrow, author of “The Girl Who Fell From the Sky,” will host the ceremony.
Learn more about the Linfield College Department of English.
