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Reading: Katharine Coldiron, Jackie Shannon Hollis, and Claire Rudy Foster
March 12, 2020 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
FreeLos Angeles author Katharine Coldiron presents Ceremonials, a twelve-part lyric novella inspired by Florence + the Machine’s 2011 album of the same name. It’s the story of two girls, Amelia and Corisande, who fall in love at a boarding school. Corisande dies suddenly on the eve of graduation, but Amelia cannot shake her ghost. A narrative about obsession, the Minotaur, and the veil between life and death, Ceremonials is a poem in prose, a keening in words, and a song etched in ink. “Between poetry and prose, between word and music, Katharine Coldiron’s hybrid tour de force, Ceremonials, is a loveletter between art and the body. This book makes my whole body ring like a tuning fork inside its lyric narratives. A specular devotional between artists, words, music and bodies.” -Lidia Yuknavitch
Annie Bloom’s welcomes back Portland author Jackie Shannon Hollis to read from her memoir, This Particular Happiness. Knowing where your scars come from doesn’t make them go away. When Jackie Shannon Hollis marries Bill, a man who does not want children, she joyfully commits to a childless life. But soon after the wedding, she returns to the family ranch in rural Oregon and holds her newborn niece. Jackie falls deep into baby love and longing and begins to question her decision. As she navigates the overlapping roles of wife, daughter, aunt, sister, survivor, counselor, and friend, she explores what it really means to choose a different path. This Particular Happiness delves into the messy and beautiful territory of what we keep and what we abandon to make the space for love.
Annie Bloom’s also welcomes back Portland author Claire Rudy Foster, whose new book, Shine of the Ever, is a literary mix tape of queer voices out of 1990s Portland. By turns tender and punk-tough, fierce and loving, this collection of short stories explores what binds a community of queer and trans people as they negotiate love, screwing up and learning to forgive themselves for being young and sometimes foolish.