Up All Night
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By Martha Gies
April 2004. 6 x 9 inches. 192 pages.
ISBN 0-87071-028-1. Paperback, $17.95.
Table of Contents
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Night, inhospitable and dangerous, tantalizes the imagination. Rarely are we awake to see it through. This fascinating collection of voices from the graveyard shift shows us who is out there in the dark while the rest of us sleep.
In
Up All Night a baker, a nude dancer, a flower market wholesaler, a longshoreman, a newspaper distributor, a shelter worker, a zookeeper, and sixteen other night workers candidly share personal histories. Their stories about night work-and about their lives during the daylight hours-are often funny, often poignant. Some work at night by choice-to earn higher wages or to avoid bosses. For others, such as recent immigrants or parents with day-working spouses, their only option may be the midnight shift.
Author and night owl Martha Gies guides readers on a nocturnal tour of unique workplaces-the waiting ambulances that encircle the darkened city, the maze of conveyor belts at the industrial bakery, the Internet service provider's help desk. She visits and vividly describes the cold, gritty, and isolated settings of night work-the truck cab, the silhouetted cubicle, the empty street.
Up All Nightgives us a rare insider's look at the unseen workers who keep the city humming after dark.
"[A] stirring collection of night shift stories . . . this medley of night
vignettes offers a rare, intriguing look into the idiosyncratic lives of
workers tucked away in the city's dark and often forgotten corners."
-Publishers Weekly
"Like Studs Terkel chronicling the lives of workers, Gies gets inside her
story and allows us to get a real feel for a style of life few of us will
experience. A fine example of living, breathing oral history."
-Booklist
"On the Skidmore fountain is inscribed: 'Good citizens are the riches of the city.' In Up All Night, Martha Gies brings many of Portland's riches to life in a very intimate way, giving an insight into the reality of the city not seen by us daytime 'normals.' A fascinating spectrum of people, a fascinating read. Once started, I couldn't put it down."
-Bud Clark, former Mayor of Portland, Oregon
Author photograph by Owen Carey
About the Author
Martha Gies lives in Portland, Oregon, the setting for Up All Night. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including
Orion, Zyzzyva, The Sun, and
The World Begins Here: An Anthology of Oregon Short Fiction, and she is a recipient of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. She teaches creative writing at Lewis & Clark College and the Traveler's Mind Workshop in Veracruz, Mexico.
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