Tangent Reading Series at Clinton Corner Cafe

Todays Featured Book Event:

Tangent Reading Series (Clinton Corner Cafe, @7:00pm): Alli Warren and Brandon Brown, who organize the innovative reading series at 21 Grand in Oakland, CA, give their premiere readings in Portland for Tangent. They’ll be joined by Portland’s own Tom Fisher, a critical and much-beloved participant in Portland’s poetry scene, and professor of English at PSU.

ALLI WARREN was born in the 1980s and remains extant. Recent publications include No Can Do (Duration Press), and a collaboration with Michael Nicoloff entitled Bruised Dick. Alli co-curates The (New) Reading Series at 21 Grand, and lives in San Francisco’s Mission District. Visit her blog, Organ Pleasure, at theingredient.blogspot.com.

BRANDON BROWN is from Kansas City, Missouri. His friends have published his poetry in chapbook form including Memoirs Of My Nervous Illness (Cy Press), 908 1078 (Transmission Press), Kidnapped (Duration Press), Camels! (TAXT), and the forthcoming Wondrous Things I Have Seen (Mitzvah Chaps). He co-curates The (New) Reading Series at 21 Grand in Oakland and lives in San Francisco. Visit Brandon at HI: brandonbrown.blogspot.com.

TOM FISHER is working on two manuscripts: one on not writing and modernism; one on songs, selves and sorceries. He lives in Portland, OR and teaches at Portland State University.

Other Book Event’s Today:

The 30th Anniversary of the Iranian Revolution: Learning from the Past/Looking to the Future (PSU Smith Memorial Student Union, room 327 (1825 SW Broadway), @2:00pm, $5): A Symposium featuring:

Henry Precht, former US diplomat, Chief of Iran Desk at State Department during the Revolution

Dr. Trita Parsi, Author, Treacherous Alliance – Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States; President, the National Iranian American Council

February 2009 marks the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. One of the most significant events in the Middle East during the last half century, it dramatically changed the political balance of power in the region and created one of the US’s greatest foreign policy challenges. The revolution caught all Western intelligence agencies off-guard. The Shah’s monarchy, characterized by President Carter a year earlier as ‘the Island of Tranquility,’ had disappeared and a revolutionary government unlike anything seen before took over from what used to be the most valuable US ally in the Persian Gulf.

US-Iran relations have regrettably gone from bad to worse over the past 3 decades. During this same period, Iran has gained great influence in the region and is a major player in all Middle East arenas – Iraq and Palestine in particular. Many analysts of foreign affairs today agree that having a normal relationship with Iran is critical if the US goal for stability of the Middle East is to be realized.

Thirty years later, there are still fascinating stories to hear about the Iranian Revolution and how the US dealt with it. Henry Precht, Chief of the Iran Desk in US State Department from 1978-1980, was one of the Americans most deeply engaged in the process during the years of the Revolution and the hostage crisis.

Dr. Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance – The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States, is the recipient of the Council on Foreign Relation’s 2008 Arthur Ross Silver Medallion. Dr. Parsi was born in Iran and received a PhD in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) where he has also served as an adjunct professor. He is a co-founder and current President of the National Iranian American Council, a non-partisan, non-profit organization promoting Iranian-American relations.

Samantha Berg, Pornstitution: Sexual Capitalism in the 21st Century (In Other Words Books, @7:00pm): Our society doesn’t have a more tightly wound bundle of misogyny’s intersections with race, class and nationality than occurs in prostitution. Join writer-activist Samantha Berg as she presents a radical response to prostitution rarely heard in progressive media which often mistakes the opposite of religious prudishness to be capitalistic dudeishness.

Please check your community Libraries schedule using these links: Washington County, Multnomah County, Clackamas County.