Third Thursday Poetry & Jazz Reading Series Features West Marin County Poet Rick McKinney
On Thursday, October 19, at 7:30pm The Third Thursday Poetry & Jazz Reading Series at 215 Main in Point Arena will feature West Marin County poet Rick McKinney. The reading will begin with live improv jazz and an open mic with jazz improv; the reading will conclude with more live improv jazz.
Rick’s formal writing career got off to a rough start when the corrupt vanity press Northwest Publishing went bankrupt in 1996, taking his novel and $10 million in “author investments” from a thousand other writers down with them. Rick kept writing but turned to making art cars for the more immediately gratifying audience response. He later launched one of the first regularly updated blog sites in 1999, years before the term blog was coined.
In 2006 Rick published Dead Men Hike No Trails from 200,000 words of a web journal written and posted daily while thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Gun shy from his previous publishing experience, Rick self-published and although the book received significant praise it’s readership remained small for lack of promotion.
After 20 years of penning what many regarded as beautiful, insightful prose and poetry yet making no mark upon the literary world, Rick has decided to change his name to Caractacus Nobody and commit himself to being the best little known author & artist he can be. (Caractacus for the eccentric inventor in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Nobody for the native American guide in the Jim Jarmusch film Dead Man.) Here’s some Rick Trivia:
• While living as a nanny for three kids in Germany, traveled through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin in 1997.
• Once dated Charlie Sheen’s sister Renee.
• Has been featured on television a dozen times with his art car “Duke.”
• Hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in 2004.
• Probably the only person ever to have typed 1000 words a day on his back in his sleeping bag on a foldout keyboard, and this is years before the advent of smart phones.
• Walked 500 miles of the Continental Divide to attend Hunter Thompson’s cannon blast ash-dispersion funeral in 2005, was denied entry after a drunken argument with Thompson’s widow but still witnessed the cannon blast from the fence.
• Hiked 1000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail including the summit of Mt. Whitney in 2010.
• Rafted the entire Grand Canyon with drunkards in a month-long journey in the winter of 2011 while himself in recovery from drugs and alcohol.
• Self-taught sailor on the San Francisco Bay.
Rick is now enjoying a contented period of love and service to three step-children in Marin, and is looking forward to reading in Point Arena.
