We’re constantly perusing our Portland literary directory looking for interesting folks to feature in our weekly “Five Questions” (sometimes six) interview series. Today’s featured guest is M. Allen Cunningham, who was just featured in The Ecstatic from Tin House. Cunningham is also the author of The Green Age of Asher Witherow and Lost Son.

What Portland bookstore do you frequent the most? Why?

I’m a Powell’s sycophant, an Annie Bloom’s infatuate, and an official Friend of the Friends of the Multnomah County Library store, but due to equal parts budgetary constraint and an obsession with serendipitous surprise, my readerly hunts most often lead me to the impressive book sections in the various Goodwills around the Portland Metro area, whose inventories change with radical, thrilling regularity. Bless you, Goodwill book-donors!

What is the last book you bought at a Portland bookstore? What made you pick it up?

From that Holy of Holies, the blue room at Powells, I picked up a New York Review Classics edition of Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White. White’s work is awe-inspiring, towering, and in its originality and force almost debilitating to aspirants like me. Read Voss or The Vivisector and be healthily debilitated yourself.

What Portland literary non-profit inspires you? Why?

It’s not expressly literary, but the Milepost Five community inspires me greatly. A low-cost work and housing enclave for artists? What a beautifully civilized idea! It’s as if the Renaissance never ended.

What makes Portland a great literary city?

The existence of the Sterling Writers Room at the Central Library could stand alone as an answer to this one. Then, too, there’s the library that houses it, of which the Portland demos entire should be proud. In a more general sense, Portland is a place filled with creatively-minded folks who like to say yes to unconventional voices, enterprises, and ideas (look at the McMenamins, look at our second-run cinemas and food carts, look at Hawthorne Books and LiveWire and Literary Arts and Oregon Humanities, the TBA Festival and Wordstock). That inclination toward Yes makes for quite a ferment of inspiration. And for writers in particular, whose lot consists overwhelmingly of isolation and rejection, it makes for a climate of invaluable encouragement and inclusivity. Finally, as Joe Sacco has said somewhere, it’s easy to get lost in your own head walking down the sidewalk in Portland (unlike, say, New York, where there are just too many people).

What author would you drop everything to go see if they were reading in Portland?

Can I name a few, all deserving of many more readers? Jayne Anne Phillips, Bruce Olds, Karen Fisher, Brian Hall, Cynthia Ozick.

What is your favorite coffee shop in Portland? Why?

I love coffee, but I’ll offer a tea shop instead: Tea Chai Té (on NW 23rd). You can’t beat their Tra Que Chai (#36 on the menu). And for that inimitable, sought-after, but extremely scarce combo of 1) friendliness, 2) mindful atmosphere, and 3) the best in-store music in town, they’ve got few rivals.

If you are, or represent, a Portland author, book club, bookstore, comic artist, editor, library, literary journal, literary organization, open mic, poet, publisher, reading series, or writing program, and would like to be featured in an upcoming “Five Questions” post, please take a couple minutes and add your listing to our directory.