The Authors of the OE
Katy Muldoon has worked as an editor and award-winning staff writer at the Oregonian since 1984.
Michael Munk retired after teaching political science for more than twenty-five years, most recently at Rutgers University. He is author of The Portland Red Guide: Sites & Stories of Our Radical Past (Ooligan Press, 2007).
Sarah Munro has a B.A. from Pitzer College and an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. She worked at the Oregon Historical Society and as a paralegal, specializing in research. In 2004, through the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission and with the Labor Arts Forum, she helped organize a symposium on New Deal art in Oregon. She is the author of Timberline Lodge: The History, Art and Craft of an American Icon, to be published in 2009, and is the curator of exhibits celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the New Deal at the Oregon Historical Society and Timberline Lodge.
William Murlin is editor of Woody Guthrie, Roll on Columbia, The Columbia River Collection, the only collection of all twenty-six songs Guthrie wrote while working in the Pacific Northwest in May 1941. While employed at the Bonneville Power Administration, he also collected seventeen of the Columbia River songs that Guthrie recorded in Portland and elsewhere (Rounder Records, 1987). Prior to his BPA years, Murlin was a Portland radio and television news broadcaster. He gained his interest in Woody Guthrie as part of a college folk music group, The Wanderers, who celebrate fifty years of continuous performing in September 2009.
Peggy Nagae, a Sansei, was raised in Boring, where her parents—incarcerated during World War II—owned a farm. She represented Minoru Yasui in re-opening his World War II case, worked on the National Japanese American Citizens League Redress Committee (1978), and was appointed to the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund Board (1996). Nagae was assistant dean, University of Oregon School of Law; board member, Asian American Justice Center; co-chair, Leadership Advisory Council, National Asian Pacific American Bar Association; and program director, National Center for Asian Pacific American Women. She is a consultant in organizational and management change, diversity/inclusion, and strategic planning.
Lee Nash is professor emeritus of history at George Fox University, where he served as vice president for Academic Affairs. He taught at Northern Arizona University from 1967 to 1975 and earlier served as professor and dean of the College at Cascade College. His University of Washington M.A. was in American literature and writing, and he wrote his University of Oregon Ph.D. dissertation on “Refining a Frontier: The Cultural Interests and Activities of Harvey W. Scott."
Tom Nash is professor emeritus at Southern Oregon University, where he has taught linguistics and folklore for nearly 30 years. A graduate of the University of Oregon, Nash also received grants for study at Yale, Princeton, and Berkeley. For the past 15 years, he has traveled the state's two-lane roads while lecturing for the Oregon Council for the Humanities. Nash's programs on Oregon history, Oregon place names, and the WPA have been popular in places like Spray, Baker City, Newberg, and Prineville. Nash is the author of three books, including The Well-Traveled Casket (with Twilo Scofield).
Shirley Nelson was an elementary school teacher until 1995, when she retired and moved with her husband to Port Orford. She has become a noted local writer and amateur historian. Among her published works, in addition to magazine and newspaper articles, are What Happened Here? a book of stories and legends based on history of Curry and Coos counties, and Home at Last, a history of Port Orford Library which opened a new, debt-free building in 2008. She enjoys exploring the beautiful south coast, as well as traveling, hiking, bowling, and volunteering.
Sharon Nesbit is a former historian and founder of the Troutdale Historical Society. She is a columnist and reporter for the Gresham Outlook and a member of the committee that worked to save the former Multnomah County Poor Farm, now McMenamins Edgefield. She is author of Vintage Edgefield, A History of the Multnomah County Poor Farm, first published in 1995, and a centennial history of Troutdale published in 2007, It Could Have Been Carpdale. She is vice president of the Oregon Geographic Names Board.
David Nicandri is director of the Washington State Historical Society since 1987, executive editor of Columbia Magazine, and author of Northwest Chiefs: Gustav Sohon's View of the 1855 Stevens Treaty Councils (WSHS, 1986).
