HELPING KIDS 2 Go tell it in Portland BY SAM PFEIFLE

Recently, Jonathan Lethem, recipient of the ultra-prestigious MacArthur Genius Grant, came to SPACE for a reading. Beforehand, he met with a group of Portland-area students to discuss what he does all day. Lucky them, right? Well, it wasn’t just luck. It was the work of the Telling Room, a grassroots organization of local writers intent on getting kids geeked-up about their craft. Over the past year, principal organizers Mike Paterniti (he writes for GQ, and wrote that cool Einstein’s Brain book), his wife New York Times Magazine writer Sara Corbett, and poet Susan Conley have been in the schools doing workshops, offering teacher-based off-site seminars, and generally fermenting interesting things for kids to do that involve storytelling, something Paterniti, in person, is clearly passionate about. Plus, he’s a good listener — by the end of our interview, I’d managed to tell him so much about myself that we learned his wife, Corbett, was the sister of my high-school JV baseball catcher, Steve.

"We felt ourselves not connecting with the community," says Paterniti of the Telling Room’s creation, "and we were looking for a way to get involved." Then, on a trip to Bali for an assignment, Paterniti and Corbett stopped in San Francisco and checked out Dave Eggers’s 826 Valencia Street project, a place where kids can write in a safe environment, housed in a pirate-supply store. Yes, really. Paterniti and Eggers had been at Esquire together, and Paterniti bought the mojo that Eggers was selling with the whole writing-workshop thing.

"It was very indigenous to that neighborhood and city," says Paterniti. It was just about what he wanted for Portland. So, last winter, he and the others (the Telling Room advisory committee includes novelists Lily King, Debra Spark; poet Emily Wilson; SPACE executive director and book editor Nat May; and many more) started approaching Deering, King Middle, Long Creek Correctional Center — anyplace that would have them — about doing workshops. "The immediate response was very positive," he says. Which makes sense — these people can write and, more importantly, tell a good story.

"We’re big believers in the power of storytelling," says Paterniti. "If you tell me your story, and I tell you mine, we’ve already reached a higher level of intimacy in 10 minutes than we have with most people we meet on a daily basis."

As for the Telling Room as a physical place, it’s moved around. There was the SPACE event, and SALT allows them to use a room in their 110 Exchange Street building anytime they like, but Paterniti says "the big goal is to have an independent space in downtown Portland."

Until then, kids aged 8 to 18 can check out their workshops at SALT, Monday nights, on a drop-in basis, from 5:30 to 7 pm, through December 12.