Marty McConnell w/Beth Marquez and Jenna Marie Fletcher

Marty McConnell reads from her latest poetry collection, “when they say you can’t go home again, what they mean is you were never there,” joined by special guests Beth Marquez and Jenna Marie Fletcher!

Praise for the book:
If future generations want to know what it meant to live in the belly of the beast at this moment in history, they would do well to read the poems of Marty McConnell. These are poems that bear witness and much more: they explore a remarkable range of human experiences and emotional registers. There is fiery condemnation of injustice and jubilant praise of everyday pleasures; there are voices from the margins and voices of privilege that burn with searing honesty; there is fragmented language that mirrors the fragmentation of our times, and there is language that speaks with the clarity of prophecy. Above all, there is love, of both a personal and political nature, that resonates with hope. I, for one, am grateful for the blaze of electricity in these poems, for the thunderstorms and lamplight which illuminate our darkness. — Martín Espada

More about Marty: www.martyoutloud.com

BETH MARQUEZ has been published in Moontide Press, Valley of the Contemporary Poets, and Ugly Mug anthologies. Her poems were selected for Damfino literary journal’s debut issue and the Like a Girl anthology from Lucid Moose Press, which nominated her poem Shedding for a Pushcart Prize. She is a 2017 Pink Door Fellow. She holds three mathematics degrees, has been writing and performing poetry for over her half her life, and was once stranded on a deserted island.

JENNA MARIE FLETCHER is a writer, talker, and adult human woman. Her essays, poems, and weird art all aim to circle around the messy intersections of race, queerness, chronic illness and bad jokes–everything, always with the same intent: to try to take up space and to take up space by trying.

Rose City Book Pub
Portland, Oregon

Monday, April 1 at 7:30 p.m.