Author Ruth Ozeki
Literary Arts / OPB
On this episode, we bring you a talk from Ruth Ozeki. It was the culminating event of the 2023 Everybody Read’s program.
Every year, the Multnomah County Library chooses one book they hope the whole city will read. Between January and April, the Library, and their partner organizations, host events based around the themes of the book, and they distribute thousands of free copies—thanks to the Library Foundation—to readers of all ages from across the county. At Literary Arts, our role is to bring the author to town for a talk in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.
The 2023 Everybody Reads program featured Ruth Ozeki and her novel A Tale for the Time Being.
Ozeki is the author of four novels, several of which have been international bestsellers. She is also a filmmaker, a teacher, and, astonishingly, also an ordain Zen Buddhist Priest. In many ways, all of these facets of her professional and spiritual life can be found shaping and influencing A Tale for the Time Being.
Ozkei’s talk is both fascinating and refreshing for her candor about how hard the work of writing fiction can be— a process for her that is, by her own account, frustrating, time consuming, mysterious, and deeply rewarding. The story of how A Tale for the Time Being was completed— and it almost wasn’t— is a ten-year journey interrupted and upended by personal and world events, and sustained by the voice of Nao, the main character, that kept talking to Ozeki the whole time.
Bio:
Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. She is the award-winning author of three novels, “My Year of Meats,” “All Over Creation,” and “A Tale for the Time Being,” which was a finalist for the 2013 Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, won the “Los Angeles Times” Book Prize, and has been published in over thirty countries. The “Los Angeles Times” called the novel “exquisite,” the “Washington Post” called it a “dazzling tapestry of metaphor and meaning,” and the “Oprah Magazine” declared it “masterfully woven.” Her latest novel is “The Book of Form and Emptiness.” Her nonfiction work includes a memoir, “The Face: A Time Code,” and the documentary film, “Halving the Bones.” She is affiliated with the Everyday Zen Foundation and teaches creative writing at Smith College, where she is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities.