Psychopomp Magazine & The Fabulist Reading

Two publications pushing the boundaries of genre and form host a reading of contributors. Books by authors will be available for purchase and signing. Free journal swag for all. Readers include Jaclyn Watterson, Michael Shum, Molly Gutman, Madeline Sardina, Michelle Donahue, Kira Frank, and Hugh Behm-Steinberg.

Kick off your time in Portland with a reading from two fabulist and innovative publications. Swag-a-plenty. Books available.

(This event is free and accessible.)

Psychopomp Magazine: http://psychopompmag.com

The Fabulist: https://the-fabulist.org/

Michael Shum is the author of The Queen of Spades (Forest Avenue Press). Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Michael eventually found himself dealing poker in a dead-end casino in Lake Stevens, Washington. Two doctorates bookend this strange turn of events: the first in Psychology from Northwestern, and the second in English from the University of Tennessee. Along the way, Michael spent a dozen years in Chicago, touring the country as a rave DJ, and three years in Corvallis, Oregon, where he received his MFA in Fiction Writing. He currently resides in Astoria, Queens, with Jaclyn Watterson and two cats.

Jaclyn Watterson is left-handed, vegetarian, and of choleric temperament. She gardens in fair weather on a small balcony and makes her home with the novelist Michael Shou-Yung Shum and several feline companions. Her first book, Ventriloquisms, is the winner of the 2016 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction from Willow Springs Books. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Spectacle, New Delta Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, Birkensnake, The Collagist, and several other venues. Jaclyn holds a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Utah.

Madeleine Sardina grew up in Flower Mound, Texas, and graduated from Santa Fe University of Art and Design. She has been published in magazines such as Entropy, Psychopomp Magazine, 45th Parallel, and The Santa Fe Reporter, and she is the author of the self-published story collection, Lonely Creatures. She is a former editor of Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s literary magazine Glyph. She is currently an editorial assistant at Psychopomp Magazine.

Molly Gutman’s stories and poems have appeared in The Normal School, Black Warrior Review, Portland Review, Mid American Review, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA at the University of Nevada-Reno, where she taught composition and creative writing. She’s now a PhD student in Fiction at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she’s also an assistant editor for Cream City Review. Molly is currently at work on a novel for adults, a novel for children, and a collection of short fiction.

Kira Frank hails from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but her heart is in Chicago. She’s taught in Kansas, Alabama, and South Korea, performed standup comedy in Evanston, and led volunteer programs in Costa Rica. An assistant editor for the Black Warrior Review, she is currently working on her MFA at The University of Alabama. When she’s not writing, she’s probably singing in public, falling off a paddleboard, or talking to her cat, Yzma. Her story “The Entryway” was the runner-up in the 2018 Psychopomp Magazine Fiction Contest.

Michelle Donahue is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing & Literature at the University of Utah. She is fiction editor at Quarterly West and earned an MFA in Creative Writing & Environment from Iowa State. Her fiction has appeared in CutBank, Sycamore Review, Arts & Letters, and others.

Hugh Behm-Steinberg’s prose can be found or forthcoming in Gravel, Sand, Grimoire, Joyland, Western Humanities Review and Pank. His short story “Taylor Swift” won the 2015 Barthelme Prize from Gulf Coast, and his story “Goodwill” (Jellyfish Review) was selected for the 2018 Wigleaf Top 50 very short fictions. He is a shop steward for the adjunct faculty union at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where for ten years he edited the journal Eleven Eleven.

Meg Hayertz: Bio forthcoming

Manjula Menon: Bio forthcomin