Teri Pastore

About Me

I’m a fiction writer, and was among the first cadre of Antioch MFA graduates whose alumni often contribute to Fictionaut. After receiving my MFA, I was a recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship for a novel-in-progress, which sits in my desk drawer collecting dust, reinforcing my mother’s expectations that I missed my calling as a hairdresser.

Prior to grad school, I studied with Tom Spanbauer for three years as a Dangerous Writer. Jim Crusoe and Michelle Huneven are also among my favorite mentors. Since then, I became a homeowner, discovered sex, (late bloomer), and got a dog. For the last ten years I’ve toiled teaching comp courses as adjunct faculty at Mt. Hood Community College.

Now, I find, I can no longer escape writing. It seeks to be realized more than I want Cameron Diaz’s legs, or Oprah’s money or Anderson Cooper’s love. I hope you’ll have me, and if not perhaps I can interest you in a cut & curl?

Why do you write?

Flannery O'Connor said it best, "I write to find out what I already know."

Any favorite authors? Books?

James Agee
Tom Spanbauer
Isabel Allende
Harper Lee
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Issac Assimov
Alice Sebold
Raymond Chandler
T. C. Boyle
Nabokov
Dorothy Allison
Theodore Dreiser
Federico García Lorca
Mark Twain
Anton Chekhov
Robert Heinlein
E.M. Forester
Alice Munro