Talk about a sense of place.
Here are the first inhabitants of the new Seattle P-I Writers in Residence project:
Sherman Alexie
Rebecca Brown
Charles Cross
Pete Dexter
Ivan Doig
Timothy Egan
Ellen Forney
David Guterson
Charles Johnson
Jonathan Raban
Tom Robbins
Ann Rule
Tell me one publisher that wouldn’t want that lineup. A healthy dozen. The Northwest 12.
Here’s the plan:
-One writer will be spotlighted in the PI each month.
-The material can only be “new work, unpublished past work or work excerpted from upcoming books”
Kudos to PI managing editor David McCumber for getting it going. He created the prototype for this when at the San Francisco Examiner but here the writers are strictly regional. I believe they are all Washington State residents but out here the region wins.
This is great news for readers, newspapers (both print and online), the writers and the Pacific Northwest.
I can see it now: The “PI Reader” in stores by Christmas.
Full Disclosure: My blog appears on the online PI and I am not receiving any amenities for my kind words 🙂