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Gabriela Torres Olivares, Jennifer Donovan, and Justin Hocking

PSU - Smith Memorial Student Union 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

From PSU Creative Writing's website: Gabriela Torres Olivares was born in Monterrey, México. She is the author of three collections of short stories: Enfermario (2010), which Reforma named as one of the Best Books of 2010; Incompletario (2007); and Están Muertos (2004). Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals, including Vice, Pic-Nic, Playboy, and Luvina. She received a 2015-16 grant from the National Fund for Culture and Arts to complete a novel. Les Figues Press published Enfermario in English (translated by Jennifer Donovan) in 2017. Jennifer Donovan is an interdisciplinary artist based in the Tijuana-San Diego border. Her work addresses the ontology of boundaries and liminal spaces through presence/absence phenomena. She works between literary (writing and translation) and visual practices to grapple with power relationships embedded in…

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Free

Suzanne Matson + Andrea Hollander

Portland State University, Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 333 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, Oregon, United States

PSU's Creative Writing Program presents a reading by Suzanne Matson and Andrea Hollander. This reading takes place at Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 333. Suzanne Matson’s new novel, Ultraviolet, received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was included in Real Simple's roundup of “The Best Books of 2018.” Her first novel, The Hunger Moon, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. Her third, The Tree-Sitter, was short-listed for the PEN New England/ L. L. Winship Award. She has published two poetry collections with Alice James Books, and received writing fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Originally from Portland, Oregon, Matson studied at Portland State University and the University of Washington. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts, and teaches at Boston College.…

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Free

Joshua Beckman

Portland State University, Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 238 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

The PSU Creative Writing Program hosts poet and publisher Joshua Beckman. This will take place at PSU Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 238. Joshua Beckman was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the author of many books, including The Lives of the Poems and Three Talks (2018), The Inside of an Apple, Take It, Shake, Your Time Has Come, and two collaborations with Matthew Rohrer: Nice Hat. Thanks. and Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. He is editor-in-chief at Wave Books and has translated numerous works of poetry and prose, including Micrograms by Jorge Carrera Andrade, 5 Meters of Poems (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) by Carlos Oquendo de Amat, and Poker (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2008) by Tomaž Šalamun, which was a finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Award. He also co-edited Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners (Wave Books, 2015).

Free

Amy Orazio and Omar Pimienta Reading

Portland State University, Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 238 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

The PSU Creative Writing Program presents a reading by Amy Orazio and Omar Pimienta. Amy Orazio's work has appeared in Gap Tooth, Pidgeonholes, Chaparral, Timber Journal, Ruminate Magazine, The Curator and elsewhere. Her first collection of poems, called Quench, (CW Books), is available now. Amy lives in the uncool part of Portland with her husband and two tiny sons.           Omar Pimienta is an interdisciplinary artist and writer who lives and works in the San Diego / Tijuana border region. His artistic practice examines questions of identity, trans-nationality, emergency poetics, landscape, and memory. He received his MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California, San Diego in 2010 and he is currently part of the Ph.D program in Literature of…

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Free

Michael Dickman + Paulann Petersen

Portland State University, Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 238 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Michael Dickman was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1975. He received his MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin. His first poetry collection, The End of the West, was published in 2009 by Copper Canyon Press. He is also the author of Green Migraine and the coauthor, with his brother Matthew Dickman, of 50 American Plays. His second collection, Flies, received the 2010 James Laughlin Award. Dickman was awarded the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University for 2009-2010. He is on the faculty at Princeton University, and lives in New Jersey. Paulann Petersen served from 2010–2014 as Oregon’s sixth Poet Laureate. She is the author of seven poetry collections: The Wild Awake, Blood-Silk, A Bride of Narrow Escape, Kindle, The Voluptuary, Understory, and most recently One Small Sun (2019)…

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Free

Dao Strom Reading

PSU - Smith Memorial Student Union 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Dao Strom is an artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. She is the author of the poetry collection, Instrument (Fonograf Editions), and its musical companion, Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records); a bilingual poetry-art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else (Hanoi: AJAR Press); a memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, and song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys (Counterpoint Press) and Grass Roof, Tin Roof (Mariner Books). Her work has received support from the Creative Capital Foundation, Oregon Arts Commission, NEA, and others. She was a 2020 Oregon Literary Arts Career Fellowship recipient. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California and lives in Portland, Oregon. She is co-founder and director…

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Free

Sueyeun Juliette Lee

PSU - Smith Memorial Student Union 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Sueyeun Juliette Lee lives in Denver, Colorado. Her books include Underground National (Factory School Press, 2010), Solar Maximum (Futurepoem, 2015), No Comet, That Serpent in the Sky Means Noise (Kore, 2017), and Aerial Concave Without Cloud (Nightboat, 2022). A former Pew Fellow in the Arts for Literature, she's held international residencies in video art and poetry, and presented work at the Denver Art Museum, Artworks Center for Contemporary Art, Chicago’s city-wide performance arts festival IN>TIME, and the Asian Arts Initiative. Her essays on race, contemporary poetics, trauma, and the avant-garde have appeared with Cambridge University Press, Iowa University Press, The Poetry Foundation, Entropy Magazine, and elsewhere. Find her at silentbroadcast.com. Location: SMSU 327 NOTE: This is an in-person event. We ask that all attendees be vaccinated and wear a mask.

Free

Omar El Akkad on Writing the Codacene: Literature in an Age of Endings | 57th Annual Nina Mae Kellogg Lecture

PSU - Smith Memorial Student Union 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Vanport Room (SMSU 338) The English Department presents the 57th Annual Nina Mae Kellogg Lecture, "Writing the Codacene: Literature in an Age of Endings," with Omar El Akkad. What does it mean to tell stories in a moment where it seems so much of what the world once was, it is unlikely to ever be again? Every generation must grapple with its own conception of apocalypse, and literature is no stranger to the end of the world. In this talk, journalist and author Omar El Akkad discusses some of the reporting assignments, novels and works of non-fiction that have influenced his writing, and the uncertain space many contemporary authors must inhabit when writing about a world mid-calamity. Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born…

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Free

Ed Roberson Reading

PSU - Smith Memorial Student Union 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Monday, Mar 6 6pm Smith 338 The PSU Program in Creative Writing is pleased to host the poet Ed Roberson. This event is cosponsored by the Black Studies Department. The in-person reading is free and open to the public; it will be livestreamed via the program's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/PSUCreativeWriting Ed Roberson is the author of thirteen books of poetry, including MPH and Other Road Poems (Verge Books, 2021) and Asked What Has Changed (Wesleyan University Press, 2021). His most recent collection, Aquarium Works (Nion Editions, 2022), details his experiences as a diver and tankman at the Pittsburgh AquaZoo in the 1960s. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Roberson also worked in the area’s steel mills, in an advertising graphics agency, and as a research assistant in…

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Free

Chabelita’s Heart Book Talk with Dr. Isabel Millán

PSU - Smith Memorial Student Union 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Please join La Casa Latina and the Chicano/Latino Studies for an afternoon talk with Dr. Isabel Millán Author and illustrator of the queer bilingual children’s picture book Chabelita’s Heart/El corazón de Chabelita Wednesday, April 26 1:00 - 2:30 pm La Casa Latina SMSU 228 More about Dr. Millán Find the book here.

Free
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