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PNCA Low-Residency MFA Program Summer 2020 Residency Classes & Readings Open to the Public

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

As part of the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing program, PNCA offers talks, discussions, and readings by acclaimed writers and artists, July 24th to August 3rd. Everything is free and open to the public. All events this summer are hosted via Zoom. The passwords for all faculty classes are 515000. CLASSES Saturday, July 25 10am: Unsafe is Not a Feeling: How Writing Contends with the Illusion of Safety Sara Jaffe https://pnca.zoom.us/j/98345715004?pwd=OVVOLysrZUh5S0hxS0d5QlBHUDZMUT09 2pm: Winter Poop, Spring Revivals, Summer Fires, and Fall Marigolds Alison C Rollins https://pnca.zoom.us/j/98224439656?pwd=TnNGWkJmQUZaTWlOOXFhZjlhUnJudz09 Sunday, July 26 10am: THE ART OF WEALTH (in life & in literature) Vi Khi Nao https://pnca.zoom.us/j/95075415254?pwd=YVd4ZVJON3YrZHIrdWF1MXN4WmkwZz09 Monday, July 27 10am: Outsider Ecopoetics Tyrone Williams https://pnca.zoom.us/j/95516376236?pwd=T1EycmFvM05STEJlN1JPZ3k3WVY3dz09 11am: Feminism / Queer Theory Shawna Liption and Sloane McNulty https://pnca.zoom.us/j/97573944766?pwd=Y0NZeEtETmxZdDFRczRrYU0wdEJLdz09 Tuesday, July 28…

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Free

Shayla Lawson & Emma Dabiri

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Shayla Lawson is major. You don’t know who she is. Yet. But that’s okay. She is on a mission to move black girls like herself from best supporting actress to a starring role in the major narrative. Whether she’s taking on workplace microaggressions or upending racist stereotypes about her home state of Kentucky, she looks for the side of the story that isn’t always told, the places where the voices of black girls haven’t been heard. The essays in Lawson’s This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope (Harper Perennial) ask questions like: Why are black women invisible to AI? What is “black girl magic”? Or: Am I one viral tweet away from becoming Twitter famous? And: How much magic does…

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Free

Grief Rites Virtual Reading

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Storytellers: Rebecca Smolen Robin Oakman Dion Lissner O’Reilly Jenny Stults Judith van Praag ........ Coffee And Grief is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: Grief Rites Time: Jul 26, 2020 04:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83410440326?pwd=eWYrWWp1T3BPdGZkSC9GRytyMkhXUT09 Meeting ID: 834 1044 0326 Password: 117529 One tap mobile +13462487799,,83410440326#,,,,0#,,117529# US (Houston) +16699006833,,83410440326#,,,,0#,,117529# US (San Jose) Dial by your location +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 929 205 6099 US (New York) +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown) Meeting ID: 834 1044 0326 Password: 117529 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kefc0loMoE

Free

Paul Tremblay in Conversation With Jeremy Robert Johnson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In a matter of weeks, Massachusetts has been overrun by an insidious rabies-like virus that is spread by saliva. But unlike rabies, the disease has a terrifyingly short incubation period of an hour or less. Those infected quickly lose their minds and are driven to bite and infect as many others as they can before they inevitably succumb. Hospitals are inundated with the sick and dying, and hysteria has taken hold. To try to limit its spread, the commonwealth is under quarantine and curfew. But society is breaking down and the government's emergency protocols are faltering. With Survivor Song (William Morrow), Bram Stoker Award-winning author Paul Tremblay once again demonstrates his mastery in a chilling and all-too-plausible novel that will leave readers racing through the…

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Free

Miriam Feldman in Conversation With Lidia Yuknavitch

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations of families enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O'Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens permanently off the conventional course. Like the 10 biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another; violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning — even cancer and a brain tumor — play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal of artmaking and drugs. With no time for hand-wringing, Miriam advances, convinced she can fix everything, while a devastated Craig retreats to their property in rural Washington State…

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Free

John Perkins in Conversation With David Korten

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

What can you do to make the world a better place and create a more satisfying life for yourself? In his new book, Touching the Jaguar: Transforming Fear Into Action to Change Your Life (Berrett-Koehler Publishers), John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, invites us to answer that question. Perkins details how shamanism converted him from an economic hit man to a crusader for transforming a failing Death Economy (exploiting resources that are declining at accelerating rates) into a Life Economy (cleaning up pollution, recycling, and developing resource-regenerative technologies). He describes the power our perceptions have for molding reality, both individually and globally. And he provides a strategy for each of us to change our lives and defend our territory — the…

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Free

Kate Greene in Conversation With Sian Proctor

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Kate Greene’s Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars: Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth (St. Martin’s) is an essay collection inspired by the author's four-month stay inside a simulated Martian habitat. When it comes to Mars, the focus is often on how to get there: the rockets, the engines, the fuel. But upon arrival, what will it actually be like? In 2013, Greene moved to Mars. That is, along with five fellow crew members, she embarked on NASA’s first HI-SEAS mission, a simulated Martian environment located on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. For four months she lived, worked, and slept in an isolated geodesic dome, conducting a sleep study on her crew mates and gaining incredible insight into human behavior in…

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Free

Justin Taylor in Conversation With Tracy O’Neill

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

When Justin Taylor was 30, his father, Larry, drove to the top of the Nashville airport parking garage to take his own life. Thanks to the intervention of family members, he was not successful, but the incident would forever transform how Taylor thinks of his father, and how he thinks of himself as a son. Moving back and forth in time from that day, Riding With the Ghost (Random House) captures the past's power to shape, strengthen, and distort our visions of ourselves and one another. We see Larry as the middle child in a chilly Long Island family; as a beloved Little League coach who listens to kids with patience and curiosity; as an unemployed father struggling to keep his marriage together while battling…

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Free

Stephanie Scott in Conversation With Margaret Malone

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime — for readers of Everything I Never Told You and The Perfect Nanny — Stephanie Scott’s What’s Left of Me Is Yours (Doubleday) charts a young woman’s search for the truth about her mother’s life — and her murder. In Japan, a covert industry has grown up around the wakaresaseya (literally “breaker-upper”), a person hired by one spouse to seduce the other in order to gain the advantage in divorce proceedings. When Satō hires Kaitarō, a wakaresaseya agent, to have an affair with his wife, Rina, he assumes it will be an easy case. But Satō has never truly understood Rina or her desires and Kaitarō’s job is to do exactly that…

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Free

The August Open Mic feat. Ashley Finley

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for our August Open Mic! You can sign up for the open mic the day of the show when we post a call about 30 minutes before the show. All poets have 3 minutes to read 1-2 poems! We will have a feature from Ashley Finley! More about Ashley: Ashley Finley is a performance poet, writer, and activist who grew up in the diverse neighborhoods of Southern California. At a young age, she began to use poetry as a way to process her experiences as an adopted, African-American girl, growing up in the melting pot of Los Angeles. As an adult, Ashley strives to empower those in under-served and underrepresented communities. Ashley uses her platform to remind these communities that their stories and…

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Free – $5
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