July 21, 2008

An award-winning author is coming to Squaw Valley discuss his experience spending a winter alone in a remote cabin on the Rogue River.

The Squaw Valley Institute will host a book reading and signing of John Daniel’s book, “Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone,” at the Resort at Squaw Creek on Wednesday, Aug. 6 at 7 p.m. Daniel will sign books from 6:30 to 7 p.m. and after the event. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., with a no-host bar available. Squaw Valley Institute requests a $10 per person donation at the door. Children under 12 and students with identification are free.

Inspired by writings of Henry David Thoreau, “Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone” is an account of Daniel’s four-and-a-half-month experience of solitude in a remote Rogue River cabin. It is also a memoir of his father's life and career in the American labor movement, as well as a coming of age story in the 1950s and 1960s. It is the recipient of the 2006 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Award.

“The book seems to always draw lots of questions when I read from it,” Daniel said. “I've found that people are intrigued to hear what it's like to spend such a long spell in solitude.”

Originally from South Carolina and raised in the suburbs of Washington, DC, Daniel has lived on the West Coast since 1966. He began to write in the 1970s and in 1982 received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University, where he earned his master’s degree in English and creative writing. He now makes his living as a writer and lecturer around the country.

Daniel has been awarded the Oregon Book Award for Literary Nonfiction in both 1993 (“The Trail Home”) and 1997 (“Looking After: A Son's Memoir”), as well as a Pushcart Prize (1983), the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency (1994), the Andres Berger Award for Creative Nonfiction (1994), and the John Burroughs Natural History Essay Award (1995).

Squaw Valley Institute is a nonprofit organization of residents, businesses and visitors that presents speakers who share their artistic, cultural and educational knowledge to locals and guests of the surrounding areas of Lake Tahoe. For further information about this event and Squaw Valley Institute, visit www.squawvalleyinstitute.org.