Northbridge author Jolene Dawe, now living in Oregon, poses with her dog Corbie.

Photo Credit: Contributed photo

Northbridge author Jolene Dawe, now living in Oregon, with copies of her newest book.

Photo Credit: Contributed photo

Book cover for The Fairy Queen of Spencer's Butte and Other Tales.

Photo Credit: Contributed photo

NORTHBRIDGE, Mass. - She studied graphic arts at Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School, but Northbridge native Jolene Dawe knew, from an early age, that her life’s passion would be to write.

“I can’t remember not having stories in my head,’’ she said. “I remember getting in trouble in grade school for writing with my best friend in class instead of doing our work.”

She was also the student who, when assigned a creative writing project, was given a maximum, instead of a minimum, word count.

“The stories just keep coming, and if I don’t write them out, it gets awful crowded in my head. I say that in half jest because I know that makes me sound a bit crazy,  but it’s the best way I have to explain it,’’ she said.

Crazy or not, writing has lead to Dawe’s newest published work  – The Fairy Queen of Spencer’s Butte and Other Tales – set in her adopted state of Oregon where she has been living for three years.

Her mother, Mary Beth Dawe, still lives in Northbridge. Her father, Joseph Dawe, died in 1997.

Dawe and her partner visited Oregon in 2008 and immediately knew it’s where they wanted to settle. “Eugene is amazing,’’ she said. The public transportation is great, the Pacific Ocean is only a few hours away, and oh, all the forests.’’

“It’s a hippy sort of place, and we like to joke that part  of what we love about the city is that even at our weirdest, we’re never the strangest person out and about.’’

New England is in her blood, however. “I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to a city that shuts down at the first sight of the first snowflake, or whose people think that anything below 40 degrees is cold,’’ she continued.

“The Fairy Queen of Spencer’s Butte and Other Tales isn’t my first book, but it is my first book in what looks to be a long line of books set primarily in my immediate surroundings,’’ she said.

“The collection itself is more of a thank you to the spirits of this place than anything else,’’ she said.

A polytheistic pagan, Dawe believes “gods and spirits - including those who have gone before – can and do interact with humans on an individual basis and that those spirits eased their move to Oregon.

“There was a great sense of homecoming once we arrived,’’ she said. “It was as if I could breathe for the first time. There’s a sense of vibrancy that I just don’t get back east,’’ she said.

The Fairy Queen of Spencer’s Butte and Other Stories is Dawe’s attempt “to pay homage to the land, to the humans that were here before, to the other beings that were and are here,’’ she said.

Spencer’s Butte is a local landmark in Eugene, Oregon, the highest point in the Willamette Valley topped with a story outcrop. “That outcrop had me wondering, what if it was a fairy mound? The Nixie of Amazon Creek is centered round an actual creek that runs down from Spencer’s Butte though the city. The Troll and the Tree Nymph is set in our lovely Owen Rose Garden,’’ she said.

Other stories in the book are less specific, Dawe said, “but all of them were born, in part, out of the landscape that so fills me with awe and delight.’’

One of the stories in her book is available to read at http://thesaturatedpage.wordpress.com through which she is also promoting a book giveaway. Her work has also been published at http://www.mosaicminds.net/ and http://eternalhauntedsummer.com. She’s also written a volume dedicated to the Hellenic god Poseidon which is available at  http://www.lulu.com with a Kindle version soon to be released.

Dawe is working on one novel and has about seven in her head waiting to be written. “Short stories are good dangling carrots when I’m working on a novel for months on end,'' she said, "a reminder that, why yes, I can actually finish something still.’’

She said her essays typically go to one of her blogs – http://thesaturatedpage.wordpress.com or http://naiadis.wordpress.com – and she has no plans to stop.

“Part of how I understand the world and my place in it is through novel-gazing out loud, in words. I share, because, why not? I can, and from time to time, it’s helped others, and that’s good.’’

The book is available for Kindle via Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Fairy-Queen-Spencers-Butte-ebook/dp/B006Y04740/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328068017&sr=8-1. The print version is available at Lulu.com.