Writer, Scott Tienken
As a page in the St. Johns Library, Scott Tienken meets a broad range of people and strives to address their needs. He finds this activity helps nurture his writer’s mindset. He aims to be a “moral” writer, to help people understand their environment, their fellow man and themselves.
His first novel, Greatness, tells the story of Edward French, a simple, if flawed, man who yearns to be great and struggles with self-help programs, the mob and women. Tienken’s work in a homeless shelter in Portland’s Old Town helps inform the novel. He asks his readers not to judge, but to understand Edward and, in so doing, to learn about themselves.
In Broken City, the hero spends his days riding the #75 bus between Milwaukee and St. Johns. Through the bus window, he sees a city in decline and plans to save it. Tienken injects fable and fantasy into a realistic framework hoping that his readers can better “see” what makes a city and act on that vision.
Greatness and Broken City are the first two novels in his Portland Trilogy. These books, and his non-fiction work Libretto for Cities, reflect Tienken’s desire to explore the intersection between the individual and the collective and the impact of public space on private lives and vice versa.
Through The Cartophile Imprint, an online publishing business, Tienken looks for writing and music, like his own, that search out the unusual and that observe rather than judge. Though his work is non-traditional, Tienken follows in the steps of other visionary writers who seek to help us make the world a better place.
