Long before her novels reached bestseller lists and national audiences, Eileen Garvin, `88, was finding her voice in Gonzaga Prep’s choir room and English classrooms. Those early spaces—where she learned to listen, to write, and to pay attention—continue to shape the stories she tells today, from small-town Oregon to the quiet, intricate world of bees.
 
The writing of national bestselling author Eileen Garvin, `88, returns again and again to questions of connection, loss, and what it means to begin again. Long before her books reached a wide audience, she was a Bullpup, who thrived in English classrooms and the choir room—two places that gave her a way to pay attention and a place to belong.

She sang in Jazz Choir and Symphonic Choir and was involved in Natural Helpers, but choir was the heart of it. Beloved music teacher John Walk expected a lot. Rehearsals were demanding, but his high expectations fostered a love for singing and performing.

“Being in choir shaped me for sure. Performing with other people and creating community through music was life-changing,” she says.

In theater, another iconic teacher, Jack Delahanty, created a similar environment. “He made everyone feel like part of the show—from the main actors and orchestra musicians to the makeup folks and stagehands,” she recalls.

English classes made a lasting impact as well, “[They] nurtured my love of reading and writing, which have remained important elements in my life as a writer and editor,” she says.

Eileen Garvin's latest novel, "Bumblebee Season," was released on Tuesday, April 21. She will be in Spokane as this month's featured author for Northwest Passages on Wednesday, April 29, at the Bing. Learn more and get tickets.

Garvin’s experience at Prep wasn’t simple. “I felt ‘fine,’” she says, “but being a young woman in the eighties was fraught with difficulty in terms of how we were supposed to dress, act, and express ourselves.” The powerhouse Bullpup football teams earned a great deal of attention, but she wasn’t drawn to it as much, and calls herself more of an “observer.” For her, choir and English became a kind of counterbalance—places where she could think, make something, and not worry as much about fitting a certain mold.

Her first novel, The Music of Bees, grew out of those instincts—attention to place, to people, to the ways lives intersect. It reached a national audience and found its way onto major reading lists. Crow Talk followed, turning more directly toward grief and healing. Her next novel, Bumblebee Season, returns to the same landscape in Oregon, to small communities and the complicated ways people find their place within them.

She also wrote a memoir, How to Be a Sister: A Love Story with a Twist of Autism, a close look at her relationship with her sister. It’s a different kind of writing—more direct, less filtered. Her essays have appeared in The Oregonian, Psychology Today, and Creative Nonfiction.

Today, she lives in Hood River, Oregon, where she shares her backyard with wild birds, chickens, and thousands of honeybees—the creatures that continue to inspire her storytelling.

When she looks back at Prep, it isn’t one moment that stands out. It’s the accumulation of smaller things: being asked to read carefully, to write something true, to show up to rehearsal and stay with it. Those habits carried forward.

If she were speaking to students now, she says keep it simple. “It's good to try different things! There are many artistic, athletic, social, and service opportunities to explore in life.”