The Beach House welcomes Charles Hood, 2013 Writer in Residence!

For the fourth Writer Residency at the Annenberg Community Beach House, the Beach House is proud to host author Charles Hood! 

Hood will be working on a series of fictional biographies currently titled Back Stories, based around the “orphaned portraits” of renowned Santa Monica painter Don Bachardy. Among the portraits Bachardy has made of the known and the beautiful (Tom Ford, Ginger Rogers, Henry Fonda), he also painted sitters whose identities are now lost — a friend of a friend of a friend, a surfer he met on the beach, an amateur model. Hood’s project weaves a fictional history for these unnamed sitters, welcoming them back to the common narrative. 

A Los Angeles native, Charles Hood has been a dishwasher, a factory worker, a ski instructor, and a nature guide in Africa. He attended Glendale College, Cal State Northridge, U.C. Irvine and the University of Utah, and also did Fulbright work in New Guinea, translating tribal poetry. For birdwatching, photography, or writing research, he has been to the South Pole (on a National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Grant), to each of the continents, and most of the way to the North Pole. His ninth book won the Hollis Summers poetry prize and will be released this spring by Ohio University Press; his eighth book, 25 Tigers, came out last month. His current projects include a survey of the Solar System titled 200 Moons, and a meditation on faith and history titled Melville in the Holy Land. Hood teaches writing, photography, and journalism at Antelope Valley College. He lives in Palmdale with a wife, a cat, a dog, two kayaks, and five mountain bikes.

Hood’s tenure begins November 26^th 2012 and he will be working in the Marion Davies Guest House through February 4, 2013. All are welcome to stop by to ask questions and discuss his (or their) work during public drop-in office hours weekly from 11am-2pm: currently Sat 12/1, Sat 12/8, Thu 12/20, Sat 12/22, Sat 12/29, Sat 1/5, Sat 1/12, Sat 1/19, Sat 1/26, and Sat 2/2. Please check the blog for updates, including schedule changes.

His first public event is a conversation with Don Bachardy at 6:30pm on Monday, December 3rd. Make reservations at http://annenbergbeachhouse.com/beachculture.

He will also be conducting writing workshops on January 14 and February 4 - more info at the link above.