In this virtual program, Iris Jamal Dunkle and Jonah Raskin will talk about two strong Sonoma County women, one of them real, the other fictional. Dunkle will discuss the life of Charmian Kittredge London, Jack London’s second wife, and an author and adventurer in her own right. Dunkle’s biography, “Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer,” the first full-length biography about Charmian was just released from the University of Oklahoma Press. Raskin brings with him his fictional character, Tioga Vignetta, an intrepid private investigator who appears in three murder mysteries, including most recently “Dark Past, Dark Future.” Dunkle and Raskin will discuss their approaches to writing biography and writing fiction. They’ll also explore the eleven-year marriage between Jack and Charmian, and their collaboration on some of Jack London’s most famous books.
Iris Jamahl Dunkle writes and lives in Northern California. She has received many honors and awards for her writing. She was the 2017-2018 Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, CA, and has received fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, the Lannon Foundation and Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Her newest collection of poems, West: Fire: Archive is forthcoming from The Center for Literary Publishing in 2021. Her previous poetry collections include Interrupted Geographies (Trio House Press, 2017) Gold Passage (Trio House Press, 2013) and There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air (Word Tech, 2015). Her poem “Listening to the Caryatids on the Palace of Fine Arts” poem will be featured on 100 buses as part of the San Francisco Beautiful and Poetry Society of America Muni Art 2020 campaign. Her works have been published in Tin House, San Francisco Examiner, Fence, Los Angeles Review of Books, Split Rock Review, Taos Poetry Journal, Pleiades, Calyx, Catamaran, Poet’s Market, Women’s Studies, and Chicago Quarterly Review. She wrote the first full-length biography on Charmian London, Jack London’s wife, Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer which was published by the University of Oklahoma Press in Fall 2020. Dunkle teaches at Napa Valley College and is the Poetry Director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.
Jonah Raskin is a professor of emeritus at Sonoma State University, where he taught literature and law for 30 years, Raskin has published 16 books, including three murder mysteries set in northern California. He is the editor of “The Radical Jack London: Writings on War and Revolution” and the author of the booklet about London, “Burning Down the House.”
For assistance or to submit questions for the panelists in advance, please contact Jon Del Buono, jdelbuono@museumsc.org.
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