You Can Call Me Dio
You can call me Dio. That was how LBCC writing instructor Dio Morales introduced herself on the first day of her Creative Writing-Nonfiction class. She had students move the tables into a semi-circle so they could all see each other as they got to know who else was signed up to take this class.
The students were slow to speak, but she kept prompting
them with questions. Soon one person started talking. Then another, then they were all talking. So, here they were in week eight and she had a hard time getting them to stop talking. That is the effect Professor Morales had on her class.
Tell a little bit about yourself and how you got started writing creatively?
I've been a full-time faculty here at LBCC for five years now. I'm a creative non-fiction writer in my spare time and I write personal essays. I had my first essay collection published in 2018 and it was very exciting to get that in print and it was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, which was also very exciting.
I am working on a new project right now that is taking me forever to complete. I came to write a little bit by accident. I was told as a kid by a well-meaning librarian that good readers become good writers. You can’t be a good writer without being a good reader. I was a remedial reader as a kid, so I thought writing was not ever going to be part of my life.
Where did you get your creative voice and at what age?
I lived in a household with really strong story tellers, so I learned a lot about how to tell a good story by listening to these orators in my family. I’m the youngest of three and there is a 10- to 13-year difference between me and my brothers. I was the littlest at the table, so all I could do was listen. I didn’t start writing creatively until I was in my forties.
My father had three creative children, two musicians and me. He was always hoping for a professional. He was always hoping for a doctor or a lawyer, and I was as close as he got, and a part of me always felt, well, writing is just something I could always do on the side, but I was really committed.
I had a whole different career before this. I worked with different educational research and development labs both on the West Coast and the East Coast and I had my own business for about 12 years doing freelance consulting in education reform.
What got you into teaching?
Teaching was always part of what I did because I would teach teachers and I had classroom experience as well, so I was always in education in different formats. When my father passed away, for my brothers and myself, it was sort of an awakening and we thought it kind of gave us permission to do something different with our lives. I thought, “Hey, you know what, I think I’m going to try this writing thing.”
Talk about your Dad; where was he from?
That’s a really good question. It’s a really complicated question. So I was raised believing that my father had immigrated to the United States at around the age of 9 or 10 years old from Brazil with half of his family, but it turns out that that was not the truth. He reinvented himself in his twenties. He was actually born in Virginia and was part of the great diaspora of Black people that left the South and went north. So in his twenties he decided he wanted a better story and changed his name legally. I was raised believing his new origin story. Slowly over the years, we discovered that wasn’t true.
Did being the only girl make you a tomboy?
I was a total tomboy. When I was in kindergarden the teacher sat us in a circle and asked us, "What do we want to be when we grow up?” and I said, “Beo” and my teacher said, “What’s a Beo?” I said, "No, Beo, my brother.” I just idolized him, I thought if I could just grow up and be him, that’s what I wanted to be. I was really close to my brothers. They were really very protective even though there was a big age difference; they were really my caregivers.
What was it like growing up in the big city of New York?
It was great, in some ways, and I miss it in a lot of ways. My parents made a conscious decision that they wanted to raise their children in Manhattan. So we were real New Yorkers. I grew up in Chelsea, which was sort of in the mid-twenties, between 8th and 9th Avenue. It's more downtown on the Westside. We could see the Hudson River from the apartment. It was a great neighborhood that was really protected from change because there was no subway that went to 9th Avenue.
Back then, it was not a really desirable area for development, but now, I don’t know if you have heard about it, there is something called The High Line, where they have converted an elevated former railroad track into a walking park that goes all up and down the Westside. There is this new development of highrises that end at The High Line.
So now the subway goes all the way west to 9th Avenue. It has created a lot of traffic in Chelsea so the feeling of our neighborhood has changed. I like going back because there is an energy in the city and there is diversity. I see more people who look like me, and I feel more connected in a way, but I couldn’t live there anymore. Those days are gone.
What brought you out to Oregon?
I was in grad school finishing up my master’s in education. I went to Harvard. I was finishing up my degree and was overwhelmed, and feeling like I didn’t want to finish, and I had a fantastic professor who said, “Come on, you’re going to finish your degree.” My master’s was in education policy and planning. He continued, "It will be easier if you have something to look forward to.” I said, “That’s true.”
He was one of the East Coast recruiters for Outward Bound. I didn’t have any money. He said, “There's a fantastic program that you could apply for a grant and they’re always looking for non-traditional Outward Bound folks so you’re getting your master’s degree, you’re not 18 years old, you’re 28 or whatever. You’re from New York City, you want to be in the wilderness, you're so going to get this money.”
So he helped me apply and I did a 30-day wilderness trip to the Colorado Rockies and loved it, but I had no idea what I was doing. I had never been hiking or camping before. I showed up with brand new boots and I was in a little squad and our initial leader said, “Out of the ten of you, who has done serious backpacking?” Four hands went up. “Who’s a weekend warrior who likes to get out and hike?” Three hands went up. “Who just likes to walk in nature?” Two hands went up. Then he looked at me and said “Who has absolutely no idea what she has just gotten herself into?” and I said, ”ME!”
So when I went back to Boston for my job. I didn’t know if it was a joke, but someone had changed my screensaver to make topographical maps of the 100 highest peaks in the world. So for the first few days I was just staring at the computer screen watching it draw all of these mountains, and I thought that's as close as I'm going to get to mountains again. I decided right then and there that I wanted to change my life.
I quit my job. I gave them three months notice and said I’m moving west. I came out to kind of scout things. I was determined to move to Seattle. I spent five days in the Seattle area doing informational interviews and I spent 24 hours in Portland.
A colleague of mine, this is totally random, I will tell you the whole story. A colleague of mine said, “The only way to tell if you can make it in Portland is to do the following: go in winter and don’t bring an umbrella, set out in the morning and don’t have a coffee, walk around in the rain and get soaked, go to Niketown and walk around Niketown for 90 minutes, and if you still want to be there – hungry, wet and uncaffeinated and in a place called Niketown – then you’ll know you’ll make it.
So, I had one informational interview downtown and I said, “I'm going to do it.” I skipped breakfast, no coffee, did this ridiculous thing and went to my interview and I thought, “Yeah, I like this place.” I went back to Boston, and I said “Three months notice, I’m moving to Portland.” I was ready to move without a job.
Just by luck, about a week and a half before I left, someone from the Department of Education was in our offices. We were just starting up this bi-coastal project. She heard that I wanted to move to Oregon. I interviewed with her in a cab in a snowstorm. She said, “Here’s my card" and wrote a number on the back of it and she said, “Call this guy and tell them you're hired and tell him when you're going to show up.” That’s how I got to Oregon.
So, you went to Portland first?
I was in Portland for a few years, and then I started my own business. It was an educational consulting business. So it was basically continuing the work that I had been doing. I worked initially for the Oregon Department of Education for about a year and discovered I wasn’t really cut out to be in government. Then worked at what was formerly the Northwest Regional Educational Lab. They have a new name now. I was there for a couple of years and then when I left that job I started my own consulting business and teaching..
You then got married. Did you meet him here?
I met him here, he’s German. I met him at Smith Rock. I quickly got into climbing when I moved to Oregon. I headed towards the park for a day trip with a friend of mine; we stopped to have breakfast at a climbing supply store just outside the park. Stefan had hitchhiked from Corvallis and didn’t have a climbing partner. He knew my friend, but he didn’t know me. He walked past me into the store and said, “Hey Ben, I’m looking for some climbing partners for the day” and we, three of us, ended up climbing that day, and that’s how I met him. We have two kids, a boy and a girl, both are in their twenties.
So, you have written a book. What was that like for you?
It’s challenging. Creative nonfiction and essay collections are one of the hardest types of books to get published. There’s not a huge demand. So I did my MFA at Oregon State and I had the pieces that were in my thesis, and I worked on getting individual essays really polished and started publishing them.
Then I thought OK, let's see if I can find a through line with some of these and write some additional ones. I just wanted to get my foot into the market. I needed a book so I could go on and write other things and kind of get attention from agents. I am working on a memoir right now about my dad and this whole crazy story of his life.
At a Glance:
Who Dio Morales
What: LBCC writing instructor. This term, she’s teaching Creative Writing-Non Fiction, Technical Writing, and Composition I.
Family: Husband Stefan, son and daughter in their twenties.
Education: Master’s of education at Harvard and master’s of fine art at Oregon State.
Email:moraled@linnbenton.edu
Office: North Santiam Hall, room 202
Other: Morales is also the advisor for the Creative Writing Club. To learn more about the Creative Writing Club, check out Emily Jimerson’s story about the club at https://behindtheportrait23.blogspot.com/
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