Annual writers gathering returns

During the height of the Vietnam War, Jeff Golden was attending Harvard University, majoring in social studies. After two years, he dropped out.

“I thought the sky was falling,” he said in a recent interview.

He moved to the San Francisco Bay area to become a union apprentice carpenter, and then to rural Oregon where he lived for the next few years, part of the back-to-the-land survivalist movement.

“I swapped the Ivy Halls for 20 acres in the backwoods and a used chainsaw,” he said.

Golden will be the keynote speaker at the 9th annual North Coast Redwoods Writers’ Con­ference, which be­gins with registration at 5:30 p.m. on Friday and runs through 4:30 p.m. on Saturday at the College of the Redwoods, Del Norte.

He is one of seven presenters, along with poet Susan Browne, playwright and documentarian Stephen Most, fiction and nonfiction writer Lierre Keith, editor Anita McClellan, publisher Malcolm Margolin and agent Barbara Deal.

Out of his experiences from that time grew a novel, a fictionalized account of Butte Falls, Ore. “Forest Blood” (1999, Wellstone Press) recounts the experiences and challenges of a small company town in the Cascade Mountains in which the town’s primary livelihood — logging — is on the decline.

“You can see both sides of the issue,” said Golden.

In the early 1980s he returned to school, attending Stanford University, from which he earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism.

He spent the last 25 years in broadcasting and editorial journalism, politics and organizational consulting. Among other notable accomplishments is “The Jeff­erson Exchange,” a popular NPR talk show on a network of northwest radio stations, which ran from 1998-2007, a weekly newspaper column in the Ashland Daily Tiding, and two books.

“As If We Were Grown Ups,” published in 2004, explores “the kind of leadership we need, using a fictional story of what if,” explained Golden. “It’s a set of speeches written for a hypothetical candidate for president who believes telling people the truth is the best policy.”

“Unafraid,” released as an audio book by Hellgate Press in 2008, is a “novel of the possible,” noted Golden, “based on the premise that JFK survives Dallas and serves two full terms as president.”

Golden will have copies of his books available at the writers’ conference.

Golden’s keynote speech, in which he will “talk about the roles and place of writers in respect to the current crazy world,” begins at 8:45 a.m. on Saturday in the college library after the conclusion of the continental breakfast, and will be followed by three sessions of concurrent workshops throughout the day, a hot catered lunch, and an open mic session at 3:40 p.m. There will also be time for book sales and signing.

Friday evening brings a panel by all the presenters titled “What Gets Me Going,” at 6:30 p.m., as well as two readings — by playwright/documentarist Most and poet Browne. Friday’s events, beginning with a welcome at 6:15 p.m., are free and open to the public.

Cost of the conference is $95, which includes the meals. For more information, visit www.ncrwc.org online or call (707) 465-2300.