Nancy Penrose, Writer

I write to explore the territories where cultures converge

• Essays and Creative Nonfiction
• Books
• Stories
• Video Production
• Scientific and Technical
• Awards and Fellowships
• Talks and Slideshows
• Readings

Contact:

• plumerose@gmail.com

Essays and Creative Nonfiction

• "Curious Blue: Captured by Woad" Hand/Eye Magazine (September 19, 2012)

"You seek alchemy. You crave the mysteries of an ancient blue. So you sign up for initiation, unaware that your seduction by woad has already begun."






• "Dumpling Impulse: Discovering Mandut Guk in Seoul" BootsnAll (August 2012)

"Looking into the front window from the alley, I had seen a large tray of dumplings. They were like a fleet of perfectly spaced fat boats sailing across the silver surface of a pond.."





• "Shine Boy" Drash (June 2012)


• "Paris Chiasma" Flashquake Spring 2012 issue. (Flashquake has, unfortunately, ceased publication. The pages with my essay are provided below.)

  
  
  
  
  

• Video of reading excerpt from "The Golden Onsen: Bathing in Japan" Second Place Winner Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, Tara L. Masih Intercultural Essay Prize (2011) March 25, 2012, San Francisco Main Library.
  
  
• Al Jadid (December 2011) and Rosebud - Giornalismo Online

"An Hour in Hama" "Hama is the city where I stopped on a journey from Palmyra to Aleppo, where I photographed the ancient wooden water wheels that jigsaw the curving riverbed of the Orontes..."





• "Tales From Chinese Calligraphy" Marco Polo Arts Magazine (September 2011)

"I was illiterate. To my eyes the lines and dots of Chinese writing were little more than mystic squiggles. Yet I was living in Singapore where the characters flock upon signs, windows, shops, and scrolls, even grocery receipts. Then I met an artist, a Chinese calligrapher, whose lessons led me through the mysteries of this ancient art."




• "The Smell of Silk" Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture (July 2011; Volume 9, Number 2, pp. 194-199)

"I am a writer, not a weaver, but I am drawn to the language of color, culture, and texture of handwoven textiles conveyed through the alchemy of technique."





• "The Color of Cloth" Anthologized in Burning Bright: Passager Celebrates 21 Years










• "Of Body, Of Land" Drash (June 2011)

"Today, we racers own the express lanes, closed to cars, open only to us. Cycles of pedals, pedals of circles, spin of spokes across the water."






• "My Father's Résumé"Carpe Articulum Literary Review (Summer 2010-posted in Free Sample Issue on website homepage)

"STOL: Short Take Off and Landing, small, light planes vital to reach the landing strips on the tops of mountains and plateaus and edges of hillsides that called to the Americans in Laos in their quest to defeat the Communists."





• "Feeling Welcome in Japan"Transitions Abroad (Posted May 2010)

"I always feel a bit embarrassed at having the unearned good fortune of being a native speaker of the language that has become the lingua franca of world travelers. In Japan I was grateful for the many kind strangers who were willing to use their English to help me."





• "Saffron and Nukes" Transitions Abroad
  Runner-up in the 2009 Transitions Abroad Narrative Travel Writing Contest

"It was the smells and tastes of food that struck the gongs of memory: the fragrant steam off a platter of rice; the chewy smokiness of flatbread fresh from the oven; the salty-sour bite of a pickled green plum that had been forbidden to me as a child but that I had eaten anyway."





• "The Color of Cloth" Passager (Winter 2009).

"Orange is yellow with a touch of red. When we lived in Laos my mother sewed me a dress the color of monks' robes. What is it about this dress, a Hawaiian-style mu'uu'mu in vogue at the time, that moves me to transfer image to page just as my mother transferred pattern to cloth?"




• "Lines and Angles" The Best Women's Travel Writing 2009: True Stories from Around the World (2009)

"Dubey hit horn, gas, brake, and we made a right turn from three lanes in, shot up the entrance ramp to a highway. He twisted the rearview mirror to find my eyes. 'Madame, I must tell you something.'"





• "A Familiar Sensation in a Grown-up Iran" Travel Essay, The Seattle Times (August 10, 2008)

"From a hand-drawn map and faded photographs, I tried to find the two-story house in Tehran where we had lived. But our street is now built over, and the neighborhood is filled with high-rises. The city has grown up."





• "The Warp of Memory" Memoir (and) (Summer 2008)
  (Excerpt posted on web)
  Grand Prize Winner in the Spring 2008 Memoir (and) Contest

"Smells are Proustian pockets of memory: frangipani, mango, dried fish, dried frog legs. There is the smell of rain (the first after the dry season), the smell of my pony's neck, the smell of burnt coffee beans in the streets of Paksé, the town where we lived."





• "Flamenco Form" The Best Travel Writing 2008 (March 2008)
  Grand Prize Silver and Women's Travel Gold winner in the Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing 2007

"With a stomp of heels she announces her beginning and flies into a swirl of skirt and snapping fingers. She lights a staccato of zapateado that sounds like a woodpecker gone mad in the forest."





• "Putting a Price on our Natural World" Nature Watch, Official Magazine of The Nature Society (Singapore) (October-December 1993).


• "Newcomb Pottery" co-authored with Gail Lynch, Louisiana Life (March/April 1987)


• "Winding River Holds City's Fate" AAPG Explorer (March 1985).
  This piece received the 1986 Organizational Writing Award from the New Orleans Press Club.

Books

• Behind the Brushstrokes: Tales from Chinese Calligraphy, co-authored with Khoo Seow Hwa, Hong Kong: ASIA 2000, 1999.

Stories

• "The Only Piano in Paksé" Bakka Magazine (September 2006)

Video Production

• "Octopus Ballet" (Nov. 2008). Three-minute video screened in the Smithsonian Sant Ocean Hall, Ocean Today Kiosks, Summer 2009.

• "What is the Journey..." (Oct. 2009). Promotional piece for Global Partnerships Business of Hope Luncheon.

Scientific and Technical

• "A Fiber-Optic Telescope to the Deep Sea." The Earth Scientist (Spring 2010 issue) (downloadable PDF available National Earth Science Teachers Association.
• "The NEPTUNE Project." co-authored with Mark Stoermer, Current: The Journal of Marine Education, vol. 18, no. 4 (2003).
• "Science Planning for the NEPTUNE Regional Cabled Observatory in the Northeast Pacific Ocean." 13 co-authors, Report of the NEPTUNE Pacific Northwest Workshop (April 2003).

Awards and Fellowships

• Selected as Alternate by Shawn Wong, Curator 2012 Jack Straw Writers Program (December 2011)
• Second Place Winner, Soul-Making Literary Competition, Tara L. Masih Intercultural Essay Prize (2011)
• Third Place Winner, Jane Stories Press Foundation, Jane Stories Nonfiction Contest (2011)
• Honorable Mention, January 2011 New Millennium Writings Nonfiction Competition (2011)
• Honorable Mention, January 2009 New Millennium Writings Nonfiction Competition (2009)
• Runner Up Transitions Abroad Narrative Travel Writing Contest (2009)
• Grand Prize Winner in the Spring 2008 Memoir (and) Contest (2008)
• Grand Prize Silver and Women's Travel Gold winner in the Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing (2007)
• Whiteley Center Scholar, two-week residency at the Helen Riaboff Whiteley Center, Friday Harbor, Washington (March 2007)
• Organizational Writing Award from the New Orleans Press Club (1986)

Talks and Slideshows

• Persian Language Class, University of Washington (July 2, 2009)
• "Living (1958) and Visiting (2008) Iran," Saltwater Unitarian Universalist Church, co-presented with Jean Sundborg (October 26, 2008)
• "Iran Rediscovered," Wide World Books and Maps, Seattle (September 30, 2008)
• Iranian Festival, Seattle Center (June 28, 2008)
• Persian Culture Class, University of Washington (June 26, 2008)
• "Staffer returns to a beloved country from her past: Iran." University Week (May 29, 2008) Photo gallery from link at end of story.

Readings

• "Shine Boy,"Drash 2012 author readings in Seattle (Ravenna Third Place Books, June 3; Temple Beth Am, July 28; Queen Anne Books, August 22)
• "The Color of Cloth" reader and curator of Voices Over 50, University Bookstore, Seattle (April 25, 2012)
• Excerpts from "Hama" and "Of Body, Of Land," Uptown Stroll, Counterbalance Park, Seattle (August 27, 2011)
• "Of Body, Of Land," excerpt, Drash 2011 author readings in Seattle (Temple Beth Am, July 30; Queen Anne Books, August 17; Ravenna Third Place Books, June 5)
• "The Color of Cloth," anthologized in Burning Bright: Passager Celebrates 21 Years. Reading and book launch, University of Baltimore (June 18, 2011)
• "Of Body, Of Land," essay, Drash author reading, Ravenna Third Place Books, Seattle (June 5, 2011)
• "Craving Paris," essay, Seattle's Uptown Stroll (2010)
• "Eating the Moon," story, University of Washington Women's Center (2003)
• "Pilgrim-Feet," prose poem, University of Washington Women's Center (2000)
• "Feeling at Home," "The New Birder," "Nightwalk," "Dolphins at Night," SBC Radio 1, Singapore (1993)