Iranian-American writer Elizabeth Eslami received her MFA from Warren Wilson College in 2003. Her debut novel, Bone Worship, was published this year by Pegasus Books, and she’ll read at Broadway Books on Tuesday, March 16 at 7 pm. 
We caught up with Elizabeth to talk to her in more detail about Bone Worship…and to give you a chance to win a free copy of the book. Enter to win by leaving a comment on this post, or by linking back here from your own blog or site. We’ll choose a winner at random later this week. (You must be in the U.S. to win.)
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Please join us Tuesday, March 16 at The Writers’ Dojo for Read to Rebuild: A Haiti Reading Benefit, featuring six outstanding Portland writers. This is the fourth in a special series of interviews with each of these readers. Look for more Read to Rebuild interviews in the next few days.
Tom Spanbauer is a critically acclaimed author and the founder of the Dangerous Writing technique and workshops. As a writer he has explored issues of race, of sexual identity, and of how we make a family for ourselves in order to surmount the limitations of the families into which we are born.
His four published novels, including Faraway Places (Hawthorne Books), The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon (Harper Perennial), In The City Of Shy Hunters (Grove Press), and Now is the Hour (HMH), are notable for their combination of a fresh and lyrical prose style with solid storytelling.
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Elva Maxine Beach was born in Missouri to a family of preachers, teachers, and storytellers. She studied writing with Andrei Codrescu and others at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, then lived in Austin for more than a decade. In 2008, New Belleville Press published Neurotica, a fictionalized account of her varied and risk-taking sex life.
Beach took time out of her sexy schedule to answer a few questions for Reading Local. See her in person on Monday, March 15, at Three Friends Coffeehouse.
Q: A couple of years ago you returned to St. Louis , where you had lived when you were younger. How has this return home affected your writing life?
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Please join us Tuesday, March 16 at The Writers’ Dojo for Read to Rebuild: A Haiti Benefit Reading, featuring six outstanding Portland writers. This is the third in a special series of interviews with each of these readers. In this case, because we interviewed Margaret so recently, we’re republishing the interview here. Look for more Read to Rebuild interviews in the next few days.
Margaret Malone’s writing has appeared in The Missouri Review, Swink, The Wordstock Ten Anthology, as well as on latimes.com, Rhapsoidia, Tablet, Too Much Coffee Man and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Humboldt State University with a B.A. in Philosophy and now lives with her husband, film-maker Brian Padian, in Portland, Oregon. A volunteer facilitator with Write Around Portland and a co-host of the impossible-to-describe SHARE, Margaret can be found most Thursday nights at the northeast corner of the Dangerous Writers table in Tom Spanbauer’s basement.
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Please join us Tuesday, March 16 at The Writers’ Dojo for Read to Rebuild: A Haiti Reading Benefit, featuring six outstanding Portland writers. This is the second in a special series of interviews with each of these readers. Look for more Read to Rebuild interviews in the next few days.
Ben Parzybok is a novelist and web developer living with his family in Portland, OR. His first book, Couch, was released by Small Beer Press in late 2008. He also runs the startup Walker Tracker. A few of Ben’s other projects can be seen on the ideacog front page.
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Please join us Tuesday, March 16 at The Writers’ Dojo for Read to Rebuild: A Haiti Reading Benefit, featuring six outstanding Portland writers. This is the first in a special series of interviews with each of these readers. Look for more Read to Rebuild interviews in the next few days.
Laura Moulton earned an MFA from Eastern Washington University. She has taught writing workshops in 
prisons, universities and a shelter for homeless teens. Her zines and art projects have featured postal workers, immigrants and artists. Her public art project, Object Permanence, was commissioned by Portland State University in 2009, and is installed permanently in the Smith Student Union Building.
Laura currently teaches writing residencies at the Portland Art Museum for Writers in the Schools. Her work has been featured in Hip Mama, Nervy Girl, Portland Tribune, and Brain, Child. She is at work on a novel set in Provo, Utah in the early 90s.
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Over at The Portland Mercury, Alison Hallett interviews Mary Gaitskill about writing, reading, and the perils of publishers’ book jackets.
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Jennifer Richter is a poet and author of a prize-winning poetry collection appearing shortly from Southern Illinois University Press. Keith Scribner is a novelist and director of Oregon State University’s MFA program. Dao Strom is a novelist and singer-songwriter with both books and albums to her name. Together, they’ll respond to the prompt, “Patient,” at tonight’s Loggernaut reading at Urban Grind East. Catch them there, starting at 7:30. But catch them here first, with us…
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Arthur Bradford is the author of the story collection Dogwalkers, and creator and director of 
How’s Your News?, a documentary and traveling news show. Nathaniel Boggess is a storyteller and performer currently refining a one-man show about his terrifying dating experiences.
This Thursday, 2/25, they’ll both be part of the star-studded cast of Entertainment for People, the live performance event brought to you by the fine folks of Back Fence PDX. You can grab tickets here, and you’ll get not only fine storytelling, but also a free saintly cupcake and some awesome libations. What’s not to love?
We caught up with Nathaniel and Arthur on their way to the show…
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Heidi Durrow’s Bellwether-prize-winning debut novel, The Girl Who Fell From The Sky, is the story of Rachel, a girl who loses her Danish mother and African-American father in a tragic accident. Durrow, a native Portlander, will be in town for two readings in the next few days. You can catch her this Friday 2/19 at Powell’s on Burnside (7:30 pm), and next Tuesday 2/23 at the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center (7 pm).
We caught up with Durrow to learn more about the book before she hits a microphone near you.
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Jedediah Berry is the author of The Manual of Detection, just released in paperback by The Penguin Press. Part Calvino-ish fantasy, part Doyle-esque mystery, Berry’s debut novel has been lavished with praise and awards. (The New Yorker said that it “weaves the kind of mannered fantasy that might result if Wes Anderson were to adapt Kafka.”)
Berry is an assistant editor at Small Beer Press and an admirer of umbrellas. You can read the first chapter of The Manual of Detection here, and you can hear Berry read from the book at Powell’s on Hawthorne tomorrow, Thursday 2/11, at 7:30 pm.
We caught up with him in the middle of his reading tour to talk about glögg, Gore-Tex, and the mysteries of genre.
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Allison Cobb is the author of two volumes of poetry, including the recently-published Green-Wood. (You can read an excerpt here.) She’s a native of Los Alamos, NM, and came to Portland by way of Brooklyn, NY. She’ll read for the Spare Room reading series with Jesse Morse this Sunday, Feb 7 at Concordia Coffee House on Alberta Street. We caught up with her to talk about poetry and places, among other things.
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