Rivers Solomon writes about life in the margins, where they are much at home. Nominated two-years running for the John C. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and a winner of the Firecracker Award, they produce fiction that embraces alterity via queerness, disability, and Blackness. In addition to appearing on the Stonewall Honour List and in numerous best-of-the-year lists, Solomon’s debut novel AN UNKINDNESS OF GHOSTS was a finalist for a Lambda, a Hurston/Wright, a Tiptree, and a Locus Award. Their short work appears in or is forthcoming from Black Warrior Review, the New York Times, Guernica, Best American Short Stories, Tor.com, Gay Mag, and elsewhere. Their second book, THE DEEP, a project based on a song of the same title by Daveed Diggs-fronted experimental…
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Celebrate the power of books to create a stronger community by attending the 2020 Everybody Reads author event with Tommy Orange. Literary Arts is proud to host an evening with award-winning author Tommy Orange as the culminating event of Multnomah County Library’s Everybody Reads program. This year’s programming will center on Orange’s debut novel, There There. Tickets start at $15, available at Portland5.com With the selection of There There, Everybody Reads 2020 centers around the experience of urban Native Americans in Oakland, California. Through a shared reading experience, we will explore a multitude of themes in the book, from identity and ownership to the urban-rural divide. About There There: Orange’s shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow,…
Comments closedJanice Lee is a Korean-American writer, artist, and editor. She writes about the filmic long take, slowness, interspecies communication, plants & personhood, the apocalypse, architectural spaces, inherited trauma, and the concept of han in Korean culture, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? She is the author of KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), a multidisciplinary exploration of cyborgs, brains, and the stakes of consciousness, Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), an experimental novel, Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), a book-length meditation and ekphrasis on the films of Hungarian director Béla Tarr, Reconsolidation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2015), a lyrical essay reflecting on the death of Lee’s mother, and most recently, The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), a collection of travel essays inspired…
Comments closedMin Jin Lee’s novel Pachinko was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and a New York Times 10 Best Books of 2017. The San Francisco Chronicle lauds it as “beautiful. . . Lee’s sweeping four-generation saga of a Korean family is an extraordinary epic.” It was on over 75 best books of the year lists, and will be translated into 27 languages. Her debut novel, 2007’s Free Food for Millionaires, was also a national best seller as well as a Top 10 Books of the Year for The Times of London, NPR’s Fresh Air, and USA Today. Lee is a recipient of fellowships in fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard. The 35th season of Portland Arts & Lectures features some of the most engaging…
Comments closedOur second annual celebration of Jolabokaflod, the Icelandic Yule Book Flood, is on December 28th! While Icelanders celebrate on Christmas Eve, Portland will be celebrating between Christmas and New Year’s, to add an event the whole family can enjoy during the holidays. More than 25 local indie authors will be at Nordic NW with their books. There will be folk music acts, a book donation drive, and fantastic Nordic-themed folk art in the pop-up shop. Please come out to support your local authors and learn a little about the Jolabokaflod spirit! And come visit us on Instagram @jolabokaflodpdx for more information on tabling and the authors that will be joining us.
Comments closedSearching for a space to create new work with fellow writers of color? This two-hour workshop meets once a month on Sundays. Writers can register for one or more sessions. A variety of prompts will be presented as avenues for generating and sharing new work in an informal setting. Open to writers of color at all levels writing in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction. You can also bring your own prompts and questions about the writing process, and explore them with the group. Emilly Prado is an award-winning multimedia journalist. A Chicana native of the San Francisco Bay Area, she has been writing and photographing since she was a child though studied education, social work, and library sciences after high school. Using an intersectional feminist framework,…
Comments closedTRXST NO1 (pronounced “trust no one”) a folio of Black + Trans/GNC Writing on the super-natural & para-normal. edited by jayy dodd & Casey Rocheteau call for submissions: The Black “normal” forms its own spectrum from fantastic to fearsome. Since the Black person & objectively the Black body has been read through OTHER normals, “supernatural” or parallel myths get (mis)read — consider then when calibrating a frequency to the Black paranormal? As we navigate the humanities we make & refuse every day what unexplainables keep us going. This issue addresses nature, the outside, the atmosphere as a site of Black paranormal activity. Are the ghosts trans? Are the demons cis? Are you certain the trees don’t all know each other & have intricate handshakes? Send…
Comments closedWilliam Aime (’15) David Kroman (’11) return to campus reading from the work they’ve done since graduation. Both Aime and Kroman have had some success – in different ways – in the writing world. They will talk about paying the bills, being newly graduated, and keeping the writing flame going, long after the spark of undergraduate classes has dimmed away. Location: Miller Hall, Room 102
Comments closedScience Fiction and Fantasy Readings by Authors in Portland, Oregon The Pacific Northwest is home to a Tardis-Full of Science Fiction and Fantasy writers, a fact celebrated every quarter with the Pacific Northwest Reading Series. These free quarterly events provide the Northwest Science Fiction and Fantasy community a chance to gather, network and enjoy readings from local and visiting authors in Portland and Seattle. Each event features three authors who read from their latest work, interpreting and explaining their concepts and vision. In addition, space is provided for networking and conversation. Booksellers will be on hand with fresh copies of the authors’ books for you to buy and get autographed. Shanna Germain The co-owner and managing editor of Monte Cook Games, Shanna’s work can be…
Comments closedPLEASE HOLD: Silence and Tension in Flash Fiction w/ Alissa Hattman At first glance, it may sound like a paradox—how does language express its absence? In this workshop, we will consider that question and examine the art of silence through sample readings, discussion, generative writing, listening and sharing. We will think about the types of silences in short-form writing, who or what is silenced, and how silence builds tension; finally, we will write into the secret silences, what Ada Limón describes as a “silence that comes back, a million times bigger than me, sneaking into my bones and wails and wails and wails until I can’t be quiet anymore.” In a supportive, collaborative space, this workshop will focus on short-form fiction, but is open to…
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