In-Store Reading: The Great Uncluttering: Carolyn Moore Tribute

Annie Bloom’s welcomes Penelope Scambly Schott, Laura Weeks, and Melody Wilson for readings from the new posthumously published collection of Carolyn Moore‘s poetry, The Great Uncluttering, as well as their own work.

Per our current policy, masks are strongly encouraged at this event. Thank you!

Carolyn Moore (1944–2019) was the author of four chapbooks—Against a Second Fall, winner of the New Eden Chapbook Prize; The Great Uncluttering, winner of the Bread and Lightning Chapbook Competition; The Flavors of Quarks and Blame, winner of the Refined Savage Press National Poetry Competition; and The Seven Deadlies, winner of Interrobang’s Chapbook Competition—and one full-length collection, What Euclid’s Third Axiom Neglects to Mention about Circles (White Pine Press, 2013). In total, Moore won over 60 awards and honors for her writing, including the New Millennium Writing Award, the Foley Poetry Award, and the C. Hamilton Bailey Fellowship from Literary Arts. She taught literature and creative writing at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, before returning to Oregon to work as a freelance writer on the last vestige of the family farm in Tigard. Legacy was very important to Moore, and in 2019, her desire to see her estate become a center of learning and poetry was realized in Portland Community College’s Carolyn Moore Writing Residency.

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Recent books include On Dufur Hill about the small town of Dufur (pop.: 635), Sophia and Mister Walter Whitman co-written with her dog, and Waving Fly Swatters at Angels about everything else. Penelope leads an annual poetry workshop at the Balch Hotel in Dufur and she and her husband have hosted The White Dog Salon, a reading series in Portland. As Covid calms down they hope to resume the Salon in Spring 2023.

Laura D. Weeks is a recovering academic who moved West and moved on. Originally a Slavist with a PhD from Stanford University, she has turned her hand to a variety of more diverse and more rewarding pursuits: translating, editing, consecutive interpreting and running a piano studio, Weeks’ Wunderkinder. Her literary translations have appeared in Russian Literature Triquarterly, The Literary Review, South Central Review and the new renaissance. She coedited and translated for the anthology Crossing Centuries: The New Generation in Russian Poetry (Talisman House Press, 2000). Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals including the Atlanta Review, Claudius Speaks, The Comstock Review, Journal of Kentucky Studies, Passager, Pegasus, Mudfish, Nimrod, and TheWorcester Review. It has also been anthologized in All We Can Hold, published by Sage Hill Press (2016).  Her poem “What Bones Want” was a finalist for the Rash Award. “A Hand by Any Other Name”* won honorable mention in the Zero Bone poetry competition. She is the author of two chapbooks, Deaf Man Talking and The Mad Woman.

Melody Wilson‘s recent work appears in Quartet, Re Dactions, Sky Island Review and on VerseDaily. New work will appear in Sugar House Review, Minnow, and Nimrod. She received the 2021 Kay Snow Award and recognition for the Oberon, Dobler, and Pablo Neruda Awards. Her first chapbook, Spineless: Memoir in Invertebrates, was a finalist for the New Women’s Voices competition. It will be published by Finishing Line Press in 2023. Find her work at melodywilson.com.