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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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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Grab an eraser and find your calendar. Flip to this Friday, February 19. Erase whatever’s written down for your evening. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Now write this in: Brad Rosen Benefit Reading, at the Blue Monk, 7 – 11 pm.
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Too bad I’m not an actual journalist, or I would have caught wind of this in time to plug their inaugural reading this past Thursday at Valentines, but in case you missed it too I wanted to pass along some info on Portland’s newest reading series.
Literary Mixtape hopes to chart a new course when it comes to your standard reading, as instead of participants getting up and reading from their own work they will be asked to read “other people’s literature of whatever stripe (poem, fiction, essay) that they’re genuinely, personally excited about, and that they think other people would be excited about.” I like this concept as it immediately opens up the field of potential readers to people that aren’t necessarily writers, and that in turn should allow for a broader audience. The series is organized by Matthew Korfhage and Erik Bader, who were interviewed last week by The Mercury’s Alison Hallett (an actual journalist, and a darn good one at that…):
Why does Portland want/need another reading series? What do you hope to add to the local literary culture with this?
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Once a month, Portlanders from many countries meet up to share poetry, songs, and art. Colored Pencils Art Collective welcomes new immigrants and established Oregonians to share work in all languages.
Join Colored Pencils at Center Stage this Thursday, February 4, for a Bollywood-themed art reception and open mic show. The reception kicks off at 5:30, and the open mic starts at 6:00. You can see videos of past Colored Pencils events here, or check out some of their terrific photos here.
This Sunday, Jan 31, is your last day to catch “Incorporamento” at The Armory. David Biespiel, founder of The Attic, and Oregon Ballet Theatre have joined forces to present a marriage of poetry and dance. Principal dancer Gavin Larsen performs to a reading of four of Biespiel’s poems.
The show’s at 10:15 pm, tickets are $15, and you can buy them at the door. (Online and phone sales have closed.)
Today’s Reading Local Portland interview is with writer Margaret Malone. Margaret’s work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Swink, The Wordstock Ten Anthology, Rhapsoidia, Tablet, Too Much Coffee Man, on latimes.com, and elsewhere. She is a volunteer facilitator with Write Around Portland and a co-host of SHARE. Recently, Literary Arts awarded her one of eight writers’ grants in recognition of literary excellence. You can catch Margaret reading tonight at Mississippi Studios as part of the True Stories show.
Click through to read the interview with Margaret Malone.
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Wieden + Kennedy Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Portland based advertising agency, is “an arts and culture digital content delivery platform” whose goal “is to renegotiate the relationship between art, media, advertising and the consumer.” As part of this new project they have launched Story Time, which is a show featuring “recorded readings of short stories by published young authors set to soundscapes.” The show is remarkably well produced and draws you in through the subtle use of instrumental tones and voice effects.
The shows first episode featured Trinie Dalton reading her delightful story Froghole ‘08, and the most recent episode has Kevin Sampsell reading from his short story Gloves. Listening time is about six minutes per episode, and after you ‘re finished with these I highly recommend you check out everything else WKE has going on as well.
I just came across a new blog in Portland dubbed the 100 Books Project, which will chronicle Candy Smith’s attempt to read and review 100 books in 365 days. Here are the rules she has set for herself:
1. All books must be read between January 1st 2010 and December 31st 2010.
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As the Multnomah County Library system continues it’s switch over to an RFID tracking system, the Title Wave Used Bookstore continues to receive truckloads of books the library has decided to move out of its system. To help clear out some of this new inventory Title Wave has been running a different sale each day in January.
For instance today (1-7) is “50% off all items in the Dewey categories 000-299,” which consist of Computer Science, information, general works, philosophy, psychology, religion and spirituality. Tomorrow’s (1-8) sale is “buy any two used items, get one of equal or lesser value for free.” Each day brings something new, except for Sunday’s when the bookstore is closed and January 18th when they are closed in remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr.s birthday.
I was just in the store yesterday and it is packed to the hilt, with several employees in the back going through the crates of books that continue to come in. So if you are in the market for great books at a cheap price, and really who isn’t, than now would be a good time to head on over to Title Wave.
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This post is authored by contributor, Teresa Bergen. Ms. Bergen is the author of the novel Killing The President, and in addition to writing, transcribes and edits oral histories, paints animal portraits, makes costume devil horns, teaches yoga, and plays bass in an indie rock band.
Many Portlanders want to read classic books, but prefer not to tackle them alone. At least, that’s what I gathered from my first time participating in a library-sponsored read the classics group. Two of my friends have been going for a while, and invited me along. It turned out to be a lively and mentally stimulating way to spend a winter afternoon.
Here’s how it works: readers sign up online at the library’s website. Then they go to whichever library is sponsoring the group. Participants pick up a copy of the classic, which they keep until the group meets. They return their books at the meeting. They can sign up for the whole series, or drop in for book or two. Reed College professors lead each group. The discussion lasts two hours. All groups meet on Sunday afternoons.
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After finishing 10th place last year, Portland has jumped up to 6th in the annual “Most Literate City” study conducted by Dr. John Miller out of Central Connecticut University. A strong ranking in the “Booksellers” (we love our indie bookstores) and “Education” (yay we are smart) categories, was offset by a poor showing in the “Publications” (what we lack in quantity we make up for with quality) and “Newspapers” (damn bloggers…) categories. An average showing in the “Internet” (we get dinged for actually buying books from bookstores) and “Libraries” (our library system is anything but average) categories rounded out the selection process.
Seattle came in first, with Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta rounding out the top five. It’s nice to see that Reading Local has set up shop in three of the top six most literate cities, and a bit surprising that Chicago (the remaining Reading Local city) came in at 30 on this list. You can see Dr. Miller’s methodology for determining these rankings here.
Maybe over time Reading Local will need to leverage our knowledge of the cities we cover to develop our own most literate city study…
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