Adventures in Creativity
Sue Parman is an anthropologist and award-winning author and artist who writes in a number of genres, from poetry, literary fiction, and anthropological travel memoirs to horror, science fiction, and fairy tales. Born in Connecticut, raised in Iowa and New Mexico, marooned for years in California, she now lives happily in Oregon where she hikes forested trails, stalks Powell's labyrinthine bookstore, and enjoys a sane public transportation system. Before Covid she traveled frequently, in hopes of getting lost.
BOOKS
2014 The Carnivorous Gaze, Turnstone Press. (Poetry)
Reviews:
"Thorny, witty, braided and woven and webbed, startling; dark and sweet and sad and funny; lines and passages that will haunt you for days; and behind it all a wry sharp intelligence and large open bruised heart. A terrific read." (Brian Doyle, author of Mink River)
"Sue Parman's poems are a fabulous mix of the formal and the miraculous. She uncovers what is beneath ground and is dazzled by what exists in the light. She tenders reality — relationships, work, time, love — with a direct style that is scaffolded by complex forms and complex ideas. The Carnivorous Gaze comes to see everything in human experience with a rapacious affection for life. (David Biespiel)
2012 The Thin Monster House. Kentucky: Finishing Line Press. (Poetry)
SHORT STORIES
2024 "Gannets and Ghouls," Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine September/October, pp. 83-94.
2024 "You Can't Get There from Here," Travelers Tales, Eighteenth Annual Solas Awards Grand Prize Gold Winner, You Can't Get There From Here - Travelers' Tales (travelerstales.com)
2016 "The Holy Ghost Bird," in Letting Go: An Anthology of Attempts, edited by Martha Hughes. Washington, D.C.:Bacon Press.
2015 "A Song for J.R.R. Tolkien," The Antioch Review 73 (1): 34-44.
2014 "Bugs," Temporary Skeletons (Horror Anthology). Fort Smith, Arkansas: Chupa Cabra House.
2012 "The Spirit Bird," The Grove Review 3 (2): 29-32.
2011 "Hebridean Love Song with Lobster," Lumina X:112-122.
2009 "Kotdamens aterkomst" (Return of the Bone Lady), Short Stories of Crime, Detection, and Mystery 66: 29-56, translated by Bertil Falk, edited by Per Olaisen. Published electronically in English in 2009, Bewildering Stories, Issue 353, September 14. (http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue353/bonelady1.html)
2008 "Eggs a la Goldenrod," Hunger and Thirst: Food Literature. Edited by Nancy Cary. San Diego: City Works Press. Pp. 43-48.
2006 "Kotdammens hamnd (The Bone Lady's Revenge)," Short Stories of Crime, Detection, and Mystery 62: 37-52, translated by Bertil Falk, edited by Per Olaisen. Published electronically in English in 2009, Bewildering Stories, Issue 346, July 27. Editor's Choice for Short Stories in the Third Quarterly Review. (http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue346/boneladys_revenge1.html)
2004 "Katten och kotdamen (Tom Cat and the Bone Lady)," Short Stories of Crime, Detection, and Mystery 1: 13-26, translated by Bertil Falk, edited by Per Olaisen. Published electronically in English in 2008, Bewildering Stories, Issue 313, November 24. Editor's Choice for Short Stories in the Fourth Quarterly Review. (http://www.bewilderingstories.com/anthologies/308-318.antho1.html)
2004 "Listen to the Trees," Songs of Innocence (and Experience) V: 79-91.
2002 "A Harrowing True Mysterious Pilgrimage Travel Adventure on the Road Less Traveled (by Bike/Camel/Motorcycle/Ultralight) into the Heart of a Dark Lost Island as Told by the Sole Survivor of a Zen Odyssey among Jaguars, Serpents, and Savages: Travel as Western Cultural Practice Revealed by the Titles of Travel Books," Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing 3 (2):50-59.
2001 "The Bogey's Walking Stick," Spectacle 4(1):33-44.
ESSAYS/blogs
2024 "The Anthropologist and the Mystery Writer: The Theory of Limited Good" (blog, EQMM), https://somethingisgoingtohappen.net/2024/09/26/the-anthropologist-and-the-mystery-writer-the-theory-of-limited-good-by-sue-parman/
2024 "The Anthropologist and the Mystery Writer: The Structure of Secrets" (blog, EQMM), https://somethingisgoingtohappen.net/2024/08/22/the-anthropologist-and-the-mystery-writer-the-structure-of-secrets-by-sue-parman/
2013 "An Evolutionary Theory of Poetry," VoiceCatcher, http://www.voicecatcher.org/archives/2418 (posted July 29, 2013)
2012 "The Luck of Santa Fe," http://voicecatcher.org/category/features/.
PLAYS
HOUSE OF RAVENS (full-length play): In the Gaelic-speaking Scottish Hebrides, two brothers and their retarded sister (who communicates primarily with raven calls) celebrate the New Year by inviting into their home their new neighbors, an Englishman and his daughter, an act that threatens the harmony of their household as well as their lives. The language we speak is the house we live in. Subjugation of one language by another, even defining it as inhuman (as the English neighbors do with Gaelic, and as almost everyone does with the retarded raven-girl) justifies every kind of abuse, from ridicule and rape to murder.
Development History: The play "House of Ravens" was developed in California in South Coast Repertory's Professional Conservatory under Cecilia Fannon (2006); was given a reading by professional actors at SCR (October 2006 and July 2007); by professional actors with the Orange County Playwrights Alliance (December 2007); and performed in the Laguna Beach New Play Festival sponsored by the Gallimaufry Performing Arts (2008).
NORTH OF SIXTY-THREE DEGREES (full-length play): When a mysterious stranger called Speaker appears in a small Scottish village with the power to force people to speak the truth, long-held secrets unravel. Speaker arrives looking for "Morag of the North," a woman who left her home thirty years ago to marry Iain MacLeod, and is still considered an outsider, a silkie, and a witch. Now estranged from her husband, who has fallen under the spell of the evangelical Rev. MacFarland, Morag struggles to protect herself and her children (Kenny, who wants to leave the village to attend University, and Mairi who is afraid to leave the house) from village gossip. She finds ambiguous allies in the minister's drunken son-in-law Calum Murray and his cowed wife Jean. So strong is Morag's courageous will that Speaker himself is forced to change his view of the universe and his mission.
Developmental History: The play was developed in California in South Coast Repertory's Professional Conservatory under Cecilia Fannon (2008); performed in Discoveries at Newport Theatre Arts Center, July 13, 2008; and in South Coast Repertory Professional Conservatory, Advanced Playwrighting and Acting, Cold Reading of First Acts, Nicholas Theatre, November 24, 2008.
Review:
"I love the garishness of this play, I love the massive big mix of all these bright and mad things (incest, strict religion, a longing to escape, the supernatural, drunks, shagging, gossipy suspicion, poetic/profane dialogue, Sci-Fi, time travel, standing stones shenanigans and an occasional biblical flourish to the dialogue). It's held together with a lovely handling of dialogue and strong scenes." (Playwrights Studio of Scotland)
THE RED TIDE (One-Act Play): Seventy-year-old Desiree, a retired medical doctor, divorced and estranged from her only daughter, arrives at the family's lonely beach house to face death with articulate fury. Against the backdrop of a luminescent and deadly red tide, she finds unexpected solace and love with a con man half her age who shows up with peanut butter and hope.
Performed at Stages Theatre, Fullerton, California. June 1, 2, 8, 9, 2009.
THE GORILLA IN BEOWULF (Ten-Minute Play): A gorilla who reads Beowulf while confined to a zoo must confront evil if he is to save a selfish teenager.
Performed in For Better or Verse, Portland Theatre Works, Hipbone Studio, Portland, OR, March 24, 2012; and in Theatre in the Hood, Readers' Theatre Staged Readings, The Griffith Building, 4755 SW Griffith Drive, Beaverton, OR 97005, November 16th. 2019.
QUEEN VICTORIA'S SECRET (Ten-Minute Play): Explores the connection between the invention of the vibrator and Queen Victoria's return to public life after ten years of mourning. Note: "Queen Victoria's Secret" was published in VoiceCatcher 6 (2011): 98-103.
Performed in Powell's Bookstore on Hawthorne, Portland October 27, 2011; in Fertile Ground Festival, directed by Jane Fellows, Someday Lounge, Portland, OR, 2011; in Portland Central Library, March 31, 2012; and in Theatre in the Hood, Readers' Theatre Staged Readings, The Griffith Building, 4755 SW Griffith Drive, Beaverton, OR 97005, November 16th, 2019.
ACADEMIC BOOKS
2021 The Dream in Western Culture (2nd edition of Dream and Culture). Authors Guild Back in Print Program, IPG (release date January 19, 2021). Ebook and print editions.
2005 Scottish Crofters (2nd edition). California: Wadsworth Publishers.
2004 (with Jacob Pandian) The Making of Anthropology: the Semiotics of Self and Other in the Western Tradition. New Delhi, India: Vedams.
2001 Ruya ve Kultur: Bati entellecktuel geleneginin antropolojik inclemenesi (Dream and Culture). Trans. into Turkish by Kemal Basci for the Ministry of Culture. Ankara: Kultur Bakanligi.
1998 (Editor) Europe in the Anthropological Imagination. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
1991 Dream and Culture: An Anthropological Study of the Western Intellectual Tradition. New York: Praeger Publishers.
1990 Scottish Crofters: A Historical Ethnography of a Celtic Village. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
1971 (with M.E. Goodman et al.) The Mexican-American Population of Houston: Monograph in Cultural Anthropology. Rice University Studies Press Publication, 57, 3.
1970 (edited with Edward Norbeck) The Study of Japan in the Behavioral Sciences. Rice University Studies Press Publication, 56, 4.
ACADEMIC ARTICLES
2007 "Scottish Crofters: Narratives of Change Among Small Landholders in Scotland," in Janice Stockard and George Spindler (eds.). Globalization and Change in Fifteen Cultures: Born in One World, Living in Another. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Group, 2006. Pp. 304-333.
2004 "Ethnographer Agonistes," Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 24 (2):175-181. [Part of "Colloquium: Susan Parman's Scottish Crofters: a historical ethnography of a Celtic Village," Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 24 (2):159-181.]
2003 "The Paradoxical Museum at California State University, Fullerton," Museum Anthropology 26 (2):54-62.
2002 "Society for the Anthropology of Work: In Honor of Frederick C. Gamst," Anthropology News December 2002: 53.
2002 "Lot's Wife and the Old Salt: Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Attitudes toward Salt in Relation to Diet," Cross-Cultural Research 36 (2): 123-150.
2001 "Presidential Address: American Four-Field Anthropology and the Pueriles of Postmodernism," Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe 1(1):1-3.
2000 "Qualitative Quantities," Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal #23 (September):57.
2000 "Making the Familiar Strange: The Anthropological Dialogue of George and Louise Spindler," in George D. Spindler (ed.). Fifty Years of Anthropology and Education 1950-2000: A Spindler Anthology. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pp. 393-415.
1998 "Counting History," 10th Anniversary Issue, Bulletin for the Society for the Anthropology of Europe 12 (2): 1, 7-9.
1997 "Introduction: Europe in the Anthropological Imagination," in Susan Parman (ed.), Europe in the Anthropological Imagination. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Pp. 1-16.
1997 "The Meaning of 'Europe' in the American Anthropologist (Part I)," in Susan Parman (ed.), Europe in the Anthropological Imagination. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Pp.169-195.
1997 "Common Ground and Common Good: Four-Field Anthropology Along the Margins of Europe," in P. Nick Kardulias and Mark T. Shutes (eds.). Aegean Strategies: Studies of Culture and Environment on the European Fringe. Savage, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Pp. 293-298.
1995 "William Robertson Smith and American Anthropology: Science, Religion, and Interpretation," in William Robertson Smith: Essays in Reassessment, edited by William Johnstone. England: Sheffield Publishers. Pp. 264-271.
1993 "The Future of European Boundaries: A Case Study," in Cultural Change and the New Europe: Perspectives on the European Community, edited by Thomas M. Wilson and M. Estellie Smith. Westview Press. Pp. 189-202.
1992 "George and Louise Spindler and the Issue of Homogeneity and Heterogeneity in American Cultural Anthropology," in L. Bryce Boyer and Ruth Boyer (Eds.). The Psychoanalytic Study of Society Vol. 17: Essays in Honor of George D. and Louise A. Spindler. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press. Pp. 29-43.
1990 "Orduighean: A Dominant Ritual Symbol in the Free Church of the Scottish Highlands," American Anthropologist 92 (2): 295-305.
1979 "Curing Beliefs and Practices in the Outer Hebrides," Folkore I: 107-109.
1979 "An Evolutionary Theory of Dreaming and Play," in Edward Norbeck and Claire R. Farrer, eds. Forms of Play of Native North Americans. West Publishing Co., 1979: 17-34.
1976 "General Properties of Naming, and a Specific Case of Nicknaming in the Scottish Outer Hebrides," Ethnos 41, 1-4: 99-115.
1972 "Changing Land Use and Social Organisation in a Lewis Crofting Township," Scottish Agriculture 51, 2: 330-332.