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Playwright brings home Bowmer award Dori Appel's `Freud's Girls' wins for drama By BILL VARBLE Ashland playwright Dori Appel is the winner of an Oregon Book Award for her play, "Freud's Girls." Appel won the Angus Bowmer Award for Drama, it was announced Tuesday night in Portland. "It feels very good," said Appel, back at her home in Ashland Thursday. "It's fantastic to have your work recognized." The Oregon Book Awards are considered the state's foremost writing awards. They were presented this year before a standing-room-only crowd of literary figures hosted by Portland writer Sallie Tisdale. They were presented Academy-Award style, Appel said, with envelopes and plenty of suspense. "It's kind of harrowing," she said. "Sallie Tisdale gave a talk about books. Then there were moments of tension. "My award was the first, so at least I didn't have to agonize all evening." When the award was announced, Appel burst into tears. "Freud's Girls" is about two of the great psychoanalysis pioneer's patients and the legacy of their experience for women throughout the 20th century. It's a lively thriller/drama with comic grace notes. "Freud's Girls," directed by Robynn Rodriguez, was read at the Ashland New Plays festival in the spring of 1997. It has been presented at an emerging artists festival in New York. Awards judge James Bierman praised "Freud's Girls" as lively and compelling: "It is not the polemic one expects, and the author persuasively leads her audience to draw their own conclusions." The work was a finalist in two other prestigious competitions: the Shenandoah International Playwrights Retreat Festival in Staunton, Va., and the Coe College Playwriting Competition in Cedar Rapids, Ia. Appel said "some theaters" are considering it for production but didn't provide details. "I won't mention their names because I'm superstitious," she says. Other Oregon Book Award winners are: Lars Nordstrom, of Beavercreek, in the literary nonfiction category, for "Making It Home." Sandra Stone, of Portland, in poetry, for "Cocktails With Brueghel at the Museum Cafe." Graham Salisbury of Portland, young readers, for "Shark Bait." Appel is known for poems and plays such as "Girl Talk" (with Carolyn Myers), which has been performed nationally, and "Bending the Rules," which has been presented locally. Her poetry has appeared in "At Our Core" (Papier Mache, 1998) and other anthologies. She was nominated last year for a Grammy Award in the Spoken Word or Nonmusical Album category for a poem included on the album "Grow Old With Me -- the Best is Yet to Be," (Papier-Mache). She didn't bring home the Grammy, but it was a tough field. The other nominees were Garrison Keilor, Charles Kuralt, Martin Landau, Jack Lemmon, Gregory Peck and Hillary Clinton. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA