CALLING ALL WRITERS AND READERS! Come to a Northfield Public Library Program at the Northfield Senior Center - Monday, Nov 16, 6:30pm - 8:30pm, Rooms 104-106.

Everyone has a story.  Websites and bookstores are full of memoirs.  We are told truth is stranger than fiction and frequently it is.  But reality is messy and doesn't always lend itself to coherence.  By taking elements of developmental psychology and pathology, Doug links psychology and storytelling, where dysfunction and conflict seed a cogent narrative in fiction.

Doug has walked a varied path, born and raised a Roman Catholic before the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.  He lived in a religious community for four and half years in formation with the Christian Brothers of St. John Baptist DeLasalle.  He was a teacher/counselor and is a practicing Licensed Psychologist.  He has a monthly column in the Bemidji Pioneer's Prime Time section and in the early '90's was a commentator for KCRB, Minnesota Public Radio in Bemidji.

As a psychologist, he started and managed a sexual abuse treatment program at the Upper Mississippi Mental Health Center in the early '80's, assessing and treating perpetrators and young victims of sexual and physical abuse.  He is a long time Bemidji, Minnesota resident.

Doug is also the author of Woman River, a debut novella in the tradition of Staggerford and Winesburg Ohio.  It interweaves themes of belief, doubt, and commitment to values in traditional and unconventional ways.  A young farmer separates from his family as he and his lover come to terms with an out of wedlock pregnancy.  The owners of a tavern and a grocery store face life without each other.  A priest and his housekeeper are challenged by their mutual attraction.  A police chief and town drunk face down wartime traumas and a gentle, simple man dies suspiciously.

More of his writing can be seen at http://www.douglewandowski.com