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September 15, 2018
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
The Manzanita Writers’ Series presents author Nancy Rommelmann reading from her new book To The Bridge.
Nancy Rommelmann reading from To the Bridge:
A True Story of Motherhood and Murder
Open Mic Theme: Motherhood or Murder
Saturday, September 15 | 7:00 p.m.
Admission: $7
Doors open at 6:30pm
Nancy Rommelmann will read from her book To the Bridge: A True Story of Motherhood and Murder at 7:00pm at the Hoffman Center for the Arts in Manzanita on Saturday September 15, 2018
Nancy Rommelmann will read from her book To the Bridge: A True Story of Motherhood and Murder at 7pm at the Hoffman Center for the Arts in Manzanita on Saturday September 15, 2018.
The case was closed, but for journalist Nancy Rommelmann, the mystery remained: What made a mother want to murder her own children?
On May 23, 2009, Amanda Stott-Smith drove to the Sellwood Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and dropped her two children into the Willamette River. One child died, one lived. Amanda was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.
Embarking on a seven-year quest for the truth, Rommelmann traced the roots of Amanda’s fury and desperation via thousands of pages of records, meetings with lawyers and convicts, and interviews with friends and family who felt shocked, confused, and emotionally swindled by a woman whose life was now defined by an unspeakable crime.
“To the Bridge is a tour-de-force of both journalism and compassion, in the lineage of such masterpieces In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song. Word by word, sentence by sentence, Rommelmann’s writing is that good. And so is her heart.” – Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
You won’t be able to look away—nor should any of us.” – Robert Kolker, author of Lost Girls
A remarkable work: not a whodunit but an inquiry into why. Rommelmann doesn’t find an easy solution, but neither does she settle for platitudes about the unknowability of the human heart. – Willamette Week
Rommelmann is also the author of the novel The Bad Mother, and the story collection Transportation and Destination Gacy, about a cross-country journey to interview serial killer John Wayne Gacy shortly before his execution. The Queens of Montague Street, a memoir of growing up in 1970s Brooklyn Heights, was excerpted as a NYT Magazine Lives column.
She has written articles for the LA Weekly, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and other publications.
Following Rommelmann’s reading and Q&A in the evening, we’ll have our popular Open Mic where up to nine local or visiting writers will read 5 minutes of their original work. The suggested (not required) theme for the evening’s Open Mic is “I Don’t Understand You.“
NOTE: Admission for the evening reading is $7. Doors open at 630.
The Manzanita Writers’ Series is a program of the Hoffman Center for the Arts and will be held at the Hoffman Center (across from Manzanita Library at 594 Laneda Avenue.) For more Vera Wildauer, [email protected].
The Manzanita Writers’ Series presents author Nancy Rommelmann reading from her new book To The Bridge.
