Eske Hicken

Eske has spent the past year living in Portland and volunteering her services to unhoused people through Sisters of the Road, an organization I know pretty well. Her year in Portland is coming to an end, and she leaves at the end of October to return to Frankfurt and her job as a journalist. While here, she has been writing a novel (in German) that features characters and situations she has encountered in Portland. We first met a couple of months ago to talk about writing, and she strongly encouraged me to begin writing a memoir-in-progress. 

She had a farewell party on Sunday, and today she and I met at Powell’s to say goodbye for now, hoping we will some day meet again--perhaps when her book is published in an English translation and she comes to give a reading from the book at Powell’s. She likes to visualize that possibility, and she wants me to visualize my book being published, too, so we went up to the room where authors give readings at Powell’s. There we took turns posing behind the lectern authors use for their readings, making photos of each other. May it be so!

When her novel becomes an international sensation, remember that you first heard of her right here!