Marking the Magic Circle Format: Hardcover

Short Biography of George Venn from Marking the Magic Circle (1987)

                                                              

Born west of Paradise in Washington state in 1943, George Venn was raised by extended family in Alder, Washington, a rural farming and logging community, and by his parents in various theological manses in Washington's coastal  towns and in Spirit Lake, Idaho. He holds a B.A. in English from The College of Idaho, and an M.F.A. from the University of Montana, during which time he also studied in Ecuador, Spain, and England. He has worked as a beekeeper, logger, truckdriver, poet, and folk singer, and has been active in the food cooperative movement,  in wilderness and energy conservation, and in regional literary and folk arts programs. He is married to the Australian R.N. and wanderer, Elizabeth Cheney, and they are the parents of two children.

In 1970, he began teaching writing and literature at Eastern Oregon University, La Grande. In 1981-82, he taught at Changsha Railway Institute in Hunan, China. He has translated the most recent poetry of Ai Qing, one of China's internationally-recognized poets, and has published the most useful critical essay on Ai Qing to appear in English. One of the northwest's leading regionalists, Venn has published three books: Sunday Afternoon:Grande Ronde (1975), Off The Main Road(1978), and Marking The Magic Circle(1987). In 1988, he received an Oregon Book Award and a silver medal from Oregon Institute of Literary Arts for contributions to Oregon literature. He lives and writes on a small farm in the Grande Ronde Valley--west of Hells Canyon.