My Story

In 1977, shortly after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I suffered a near-fatal broken larynx while playing basketball. For a time, I lost my voice completely. Taking this as a sign—or at least as a practical suggestion—I persuaded myself that writing might be the perfect vocation for someone who could no longer speak.

Two months later, my voice returned.

By then, however, I had already committed myself to storytelling.

While recovering, I audited creative writing courses with novelist and short story writer Doris Betts, whose early feedback was bracing enough to require, in her words, a few beers before reading the rest. It was not exactly gentle encouragement, but it was memorable, and it helped set me on the path.

Around that same time, I met, and immediately fell in love with, a whip-smart redhead named Kim at a performance of The Nutcracker after mutual friends arranged an introduction. She apparently fell in love with me out of pity when my entire right arm fell dead asleep while I was attempting to make my first pass at her.

Whatever she saw in me, it was enough.

Six months later, we packed ourselves into a 1970 Volkswagen Bus and headed west to Oregon. We settled in Corvallis, where we raised two children, built a life together, and managed to stay happily married for more than four decades. Along the way, Kim became my fiercest supporter and enduring muse.

Alongside writing, I spent much of my working life with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I worked as a direct caregiver, skills trainer, program coordinator, and medication specialist. That work shaped me deeply. It taught me about dignity, vulnerability, humor, patience, resilience, and the many ways people care for one another.

My first novel, The Great Equalizer, was published by Permanent Press in 1986. It was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its New American Writing program and was named a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. I later wrote Rainbow Rhapsody, as well as other fiction and poetry, and completed a manuscript titled Insane for the Light before turning my full attention to The Show Outside.

The Show Outside was more than a decade in the making. Like much of my work, it explores grief, forgiveness, family, disability, belonging, and the stubborn possibility of hope.

After all these years, I still write for the same reason I began: for the mystery of it. For the moment when a character becomes real, a sentence finds its music, or a story suddenly reveals what it has been trying to become.

There is still, as I once told a roomful of young writers, a rush when things fall together.

Born and raised in South Florida, Borsten received a BA in Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in l977 and began to write in earnest the summer after his senior year when he lost his voice (and very nearly his life) after breaking his larynx--almost always a fatal injury--while playing basketball. He used the injury to persuade himself (along with his parents and anyone else who needed persuading) that writing was the perfect vocation for one who could no longer speak. His voice returned unexpectedly two months later, but by then he’d already committed himself, for better or worse, to the writing life, and was auditing creative writing courses with the award winning short story writer and novelist Doris Betts, whose written feedback, after she’d read his first attempt at a short story, was a warning to go out and slug down a few beers so that he might adequately brace himself for the rest of her critical comments.

Borsten motored across the country in a 1970 Volkswagon Bus with his then girlfriend, Kim Crane, an elementary school classroom assistant and caterer, who, six months earlier, had fallen in love with him out of pity when his entire right arm fell dead asleep while he was attempting to make his first pass at her. They planted themselves in Corvallis, Oregon, where, 40 years later, they still live. They’ve now been married for 38 years and have two children, both now living in Portland (Sarah, a poet, who works as a Human Resources specialist and is a member of a Bollywood dance troupe, and Luke, a musician who has toured the US in a Toyota Corolla and the Baltic Sea in a cruise ship as the pub guitarist, and currently works as an artist manager and videographer.

Since arriving in Oregon 40 years ago, Borsten has sought and performed writer-friendly work as a dishwasher, a waiter, a newspaper deliverer, a direct caregiver in a group home for intellectually disabled adults, a privately contracted caregiver for a young woman experiencing anorexia, a skills trainer Linn County Developmental Disablities, and a Program and Services Coordinator for the Benton County Developmental Diversity Program. He is currently working as a medication specialist for Personalized Independence, a private agency that serves adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities.

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