It felt odd to be back in Forest Grove, Oregon. I went to college here, at Pacific University, but after graduating in 1999, I moved back to California; I’ve returned here only one other time, shortly after my first book was published, in 2009. Forest Grove isn’t that far from Portland (the drive takes me only 40 minutes), a city I’ve been back to frequently over the years, but this place also feels, in its way, worlds away. And now here I was, in April of 2025, back once again,…
