If you consider his artistic inventory — two books, a play, several documentary films and, oh yeah, an Academy Award — nothing should irk Garth Stein, who is also married with two young sons and one peppy labradoodle. Stein is only 40.
But the way Stein sees things, a book jacket shouldn't just tout what's been accomplished.
"It should also be about what you're doing now," he says.
So there, on the back flap that features his mug (disheveled hip; Johnny Depp-esque), Stein lists that he is a writing instructor with Powerful Schools. The Rainier Valley-based program places professional writers and trained volunteers in three South Seattle elementary schools. The goal: nurture talent in youngsters.
"The Academy Award is something I can't seem to shake," says Stein, who was just 26 when "The Lunch Date" (1990) nabbed the Oscar for best live-action short. Stein co-produced the film, which was directed by Adam Davidson, so the Oscar reference, while true, isn't a fount of pride for Stein. "It's a nice badge to have," Stein says. "But at the same time, I've done a lot of things since then."
Things accomplished on a recent morning included praising one Hawthorne Elementary girl for her prose, and applauding the spelling skills of a boy.
"It's a burst of fruit flavor," is how Stein describes his weekly interaction with the young scribes.
All writers know the editing process can be brutal — words get circled; paragraphs get read only to be followed by a horrible "huh?" But Stein, who would have made a perfect pediatrician, is patient and ebullient with the children.
This is Susan Giles' second-grade class, and one by one, students meet with Stein at a small corner table for critiques, narratives and with their "My Try-It-Out Page" for misspelled words in hand.
"Right now you've created a great story," Stein says to a boy in braids and baggy Ecko shirt, who has crafted a tale about a water slide. "Now give me a conclusion. Tell me if you've learned anything, or how you feel about the ride."
"When I teach, I tell them you have to know where you're going. I tell them 'I'm going to teach you some simple steps of drama. I'm going to give you the skeleton and you get to put the flesh and bones on it,' " Stein explains later, in a coffeehouse/restaurant in his Mount Baker neighborhood. His teaching goal is to make the students better thinkers. "Any insight into anything is good. The more you know about anything, the better it is. I have no doubt that if I were a firefighter, I'd be in class talking about that."
At which point Stein grabs a bottle of ketchup off the table. "Now, what if you could go to the Heinz factory and watch the process of making ketchup. That would be neat."
Working with adults, too
Certainly the most recognized novelist in Hawthorne circles, Stein has been gaining more adult name recognition with the April publication of his second novel, by Soho Press.
The book, "How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets," tells the story of a Seattle rock musician who has become an instant father to his teenage son, whom he hasn't seen in 13 years. Protagonist Evan also suffers from epilepsy, which he's kept secret from almost everyone in his life.
There's a tenderness and poignancy throughout "Evan" that speaks to an intimacy Stein knows about the affliction. Throughout her childhood and most of her 20s, Stein's older sister, Corey, suffered from epileptic seizures. Her decision to undergo brain surgery to control her epilepsy was the subject of another of his documentaries, "When Your Head's Not a Head, It's a Nut" (1993).
The surgery was a success. But there was a bit of a bitter aftertaste for Stein, in the form of fallout between sister and brother, resentment over the attention the film and the filmmaker received. (Corey Stein could not be reached for comment.)
Garth Stein initially wrote the novel through the perspective of Evan's brother Charlie, the more responsible and successful of the two brothers in the eyes of their parents and, well, Evan, too.
"Then I realized it was too close to me. It was too autobiographical. And it wasn't the story. I knew I wanted to do something about epilepsy and about siblings and the family dynamic behind all of it."
So he crafted the story from Evan's perspective. He read a book called, "Brainstorms — Epilepsy in Our Own Words," edited by Steven Schachter, and learned that all seizures are different. That gave him some creative license in detailing his protagonist's experience.
The result is a novel that is as much about a father's budding relationship with a teenage son as it is about breaking loose of a family's perceptions and expectations.
Stein sent the novel to his sister, who now lives in California, but he hasn't heard from her.
"She has to do what she has to do. I decided that a long time ago. If one day, she wants to call up and say, 'Hey, can I come over?' I'd be happy. I know somehow that I stand for something in her mind. But I'm not going to judge anybody for that."
After graduating from Shorewood High in Shoreline, Stein moved to New York City, studying English at Columbia University, followed by screenwriting at the university's film school. His master's thesis project — directing a film about a controversial proposed addition to the Whitney Museum of American Art — earned him accolades at film festivals and then aired on a New York PBS station. Stein worked on documentaries for seven years before he ran into his biggest nuisance — fund raising — so he quit to write full time.
His first novel, "Raven Stole the Moon," was published by Pocket Books in 1998. The story, a mythical thriller set in Wrangell, Alaska, is a nod to Stein's Tlingit roots. Reviewers called it "absorbing" and "unconventional" and dubbed the author "a fresh voice."
Stein next wrote "Brother Jones," a play about the homecoming of a prodigal son from the East Coast to Aberdeen. Like the plot in "Raven," which twists with a child's drowning, the "Jones" story line is equally weighty (Jones Riddell suffocates his ailing mother; dad is an alcoholic). The play was produced in Los Angeles in February.
Stein is now writing a sequel to "Raven" but already, his mind is fiddling with a children's story about a kid who discovers a world underneath some linoleum, a second play about a girl who performs miracles and a novel about a dog's twilight years.
"It's nice to have painted lines on the road," says Stein, resolute that in life, as in writing, it's good to know where you're going.