She came back to her first love, labor-intensive in itself but different from the near 100-hour work weeks and crazy-constant travel of working as a lawyer at a multinational law firm. “I was a writer first,” says Alice Austen, and a decade ago, she left full-time legal practice at Dentons to pursue her dream. She has made award-winning fictional narrative films and has had a slew of plays published, and now Austen — a Pleasant Hill High School and University of Oregon grad — returns to the southern Willamette Valley to tout her debut novel, 33 Place Brugmann, at Tsunami Books April 1. Be it as a writer or a lawyer, Austen has led a remarkable professional life — “All of it ridiculously improbable,” she notes. At Dentons she was based in Europe and worked with, among others, Václav Havel, the playwright who engineered the bloodless “Velvet Revolution” and became the first president of the Czech Republic in 1989. Before that, there was Harvard Law School, and on the side at Harvard Austen studied creative writing under Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet-playwright who was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Heaney tried to persuade Austen to abandon law for writing, but Austen had loans to repay. When the time came to change career paths, Austen took up residence at 33 Place Brugmann, a very real residential apartment-like building in Brussels, Belgium, where her oldest son was born and her first play was published. The novel looks at the residents of 33 Place Brugmann on the eve of World War II, and Austen did a book signing near the residence in late March, signing copies for residents, many of whom she knows. In Lane County, after her Tsunami talk, Austen says she will stick around and help her mother celebrate her 89th birthday.

Alice Austen will read from and talk about her debut novel 33 Place Brugmann 7 pm to 8:30 pm Tuesday, April 1, at Tsunami Books, 2585 Willamette Street. FREE.