Story last updated at
8:46 PM on
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Lesley Thomas, Writer
Background: Lesley Thomas, 49, lives in Seattle with her husband, Eric. Her daughter, Shannon, is graduating from college this year. For the last three years Thomas has worked in landscaping and building maintenance. She is also a massage therapist and alternative health practitioner.
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Lesley Thomas
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Thomas was born in Seattle, but says she "grew up on a salmon trawler" in Southeast Alaska. The "black sheep" of the family, Thomas left Alaska to attend Fairhaven College in Bellingham, Wash., but wound up traveling around the world, working various jobs. She also spent a year in Japan studying the Japanese language.
"I was going to explore Paleolithic Asian cultural diffusion into Alaska, but I got sidetracked with something called 'pregnancy,'" she said. "My daughter's father was from Taiwan, so I learned how to be a daughter-in-law in a traditional Chinese family."
Thomas wound up in Seattle with her daughter, teaching English as a second language to groups of international students.
How she became a writer: "It's genetic. There are a lot of writers on both sides of my family. And I had a lot of encouragement from the time I could hold a pencil."
When Thomas was young, her family would stay on their fishing boat past the start of school. Thomas' mother had the children make up their missed lessons by keeping journals.
"I wrote ethnographies, poetry, myths and stories I heard people tell, phrases and language points I learned," she said.
Major themes in her writing: Thomas credits the cultural diversity in her background with creating lasting themes in her work. Her mother married an Inupiat elder, leader and educator, who tried to instill Inupiat values, such as respect for elders and awareness of the natural world.
"I think I'm bicultural in that way. When I look at myself in contrast to others in Seattle and even in Anchorage, I'm different. It comes from being from the land."
Other influences on Thomas include her grandmother and great-grandmother, who she describes as "old Pacific Northwest intellectuals and farmers." "They instilled a lot of stuff in me that I think is very powerful, like an idea of social justice and the value of the written word and literacy in democracy. They also taught me about respect for the natural world from the European tradition. It does exist. They weren't all rapacious plunderers," she said.
Advice to new writers: "To write well, follow the ancient Greek motto, 'know thyself.' That is, plumb your deepest self or consciousness, trust it, don't flinch from it or censor it or dumb it down out of social conditioning or for the profit motive, and do a lot of research to expand your knowledge of the world, then write what you know."
Publications: Thomas wrote her first novel when she was 7. Her most recent book is "Flight of the Goose: A Story of the Far North."
Compiled by Carolyn Norton, staff writer
