A visual rendering of one of two planned outdoor terraces. Renderings courtesy of Hennebery Eddy Architects

A press release from MCL described the lengthy closure as an approach intended to "decrease longer disruptions of service." By closing the library to the public, crews will be able to complete multiple projects at once, more quickly, and with a lower overall cost, the release said.

Construction on Central begins this month. Most immediately, Portlanders can anticipate decreased parking around the library and less access to the building's eastern sidewalk. Then in August, the entire three-story building will close to begin the larger projects.

Partially possible due to funding from a 2020 Library Building Bond, the construction aims to improve Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) access and create two new outdoor public terraces at the building's entrance. Additionally, crews will update the first floor restrooms, expanding the existing family restroom and adding a new one.

Numbers provided by MCL described the building's recent traffic at around 6,000 people per week. With the release, the library recommended nearby branches as alternatives:

• Northwest Library: 2300 NW Thurman
• Albina Library: 216 NE Knott
• Belmont Library: 1038 SE César E. Chávez

A visual rendering of the planned outdoor terraces. Renderings courtesy of Hennebery Eddy Architects

MCL spokesperson Shawn Cunningham told the Mercury there are plans to use a motor home-sized vehicle to "provide wifi, technology loans, books, 1:1 assistance, and other resources" to library users during the closure. There are no exact dates on when it will be available, but the vehicle is already being outfitted.

Additionally, Central's wi-fi will remain on throughout construction—its possible to use it outside the building. Cunningham said that the completed terraces will present a new amenity to visitors who want to use to library's wi-fi without entering.

While Central users—some of us with truly staggering holds piles—will hopefully be able to return starting in November, this project is one of many the Library Building Bond is helping to fund. "Central Library and other locations will experience periodic closures in the future to complete bond-funded work," MCL wrote. Updates on Central's construction and other details can be found on its Central construction page.

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Courtesy of University of Oklahoma Press

In his first term as governor, Hatfield got in an ugly fight about Oregon’s eugenics laws. Later on, he was chairman of the US Senate appropriations committee, which made him one of the most powerful people in Congress. In 1989, he was the first politician to be publicly outed by the LGBTQI rights group Act Up. In the early nineties, he was one of only two Republican senators to vote against the Gulf War. He was also the deciding Republican vote that killed off the balanced budget amendment, a then-popular conservative idea that would have likely have made public spending all but impossible.

All interesting stuff. You’d think that a biography of Mark Hatfield would probably spend a good amount on notable episodes like fights about forced sterilization, getting outed by gay rights advocates, or major conflicts in the halls of power about American military might. But, the latest biography of Hatfield—Mark O. Hatfield: Oregon Statesman (University of Oklahoma Press, 232 pages)—doesn’t do that.

Instead we find an incomplete portrait of the politician. University of New Mexico professor emeritus Richard W. Etulain spends the bulk of his book on Hatfield’s two terms as governor, and relegates his much more significant time in the senate to what’s essentially an epilogue. This isn’t to say that Hatfield’s time as governor isn’t worth examination and critique, but the book reads like the first 200 pages of a much longer work that didn’t materialize.

That, and Etulain’s treatment of Hatfield has too light a touch. The professor clearly admires his subject matter, and that’s a problem. Any history writer needs to be interested in what they’re writing or talking about, but liking your subject too much can edge biography into hagiography. Etulain crosses that boundary. He’s clearly a big fan of Hatfield, and his treatment of the subject matter suffers because of it.

Also, Etulain’s books is probably a bit early. Later this year Willamette University, Hatfield’s alma mater and former employer, is set to release papers of his that have been sealed for years. Those documents will be of immense value to future historians who wants to get into the details of one of Oregon’s longest-lived politicians.

A good Hatfield biography should contain multitudes. His career spanned decades of political evolution and infighting, and his personal and political life could make for a fascinating read. This isn’t it.

Richard W. Etulain speaks at Powell’s City of Books on Wed, June 1, at 7 pm.

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Anis Mojgani courtesy of Oregon Cultural Trust

On Wednesday, Gov. Brown extended Mojgani's term as Oregon Poet Laureate through 2024. Brown lauded Mojgani's efforts to raise poetry's profile during the pandemic—encouraging poetic literacy is part of the gig—but also noted that, due to shut down, Mojgani hadn't been able to take part in many of the benefits of the position.

“He now has the opportunity to travel and make the personal connections that can be so powerful," she said in a press release from the Oregon Cultural Trust.

Though he originally hails from New Orleans, Mojgani has been making marks on Oregon's poetry scene for nearly two decades. In 2008, a Wordstock-adjacent poetry slam organized by Mojgani, who is also a National Poetry Slam winner, saw all six competitors split the victory pot equally, regardless of who won.

In 2016, Mercury writer Rachel Sandstrom described Mojgani's visual aesthetic as "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (you'll still catch him in a signature bright-colored beanie), but went on to rave about his particular delivery of his works, especially his iconic piece "Shake the Dust." "He's so good that even the comments sections on his videos are pleasant," Sandstrom wrote, "full of (correctly spelled!) emotional reactions to his writing: 'this brings me to tears every time,' "brilliant,' 'amazing amazing amazing.'"

Last month, Portland Monthly penned a terrific profile, about Mojgani's struggle to take full advantage of his term during shut down. Inspired by a port-a-potty from a nearby construction project, Mojgani's mind skipped over to a "phone booth where somebody could call and hear a poem."

By April 1, Mojgani had launched a Tele-Poem Hotline for those who want to dial in and listen to a rotating slate of poems read by a Poet Laureate. Although the line was created for National Poetry Month, in April, it's still running at this time of publishing.

Mojgani’s poems at sunset out a window series represents another one of his inventive, community-focused approaches to art at a distance. For most of the pandemic, he has semi-regularly hosted readings from his Southeast Industrial writing studio. Over time, a small crowd of poem-fancying regulars formed, wrapped in scarves and sitting in camper chairs around the open window.

"I jacketed up [and] set up a stool on the sidewalk," Mojgani wrote on his Instagram, about a recent reading. "[And] Jenn had my looooong... stick sticking out the window with a lightbulb attached to it like we were fishing with light, casting the line into the river of night."

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A post shared by Anis Mojgani (@thepianofarm)

Recently, Mojgani has been keeping poem pamphlets in an old newspaper box in front of his studio. Yes! It's an old Mercury box! Old stone to new building, as T.S. Eliot would say.

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Tavia Morra, courtesy of ak press

After the Revolution (AK Press) is journalist and podcaster Robert Evans’ attempt at carving up the American map. Like Callenbach, Garreau, and Woodard, Evans argues that some parts of the US are, simply, fundamentally different from each other. This supposedly unified nation contains irreconcilable contradictions, and there’s a whole lot more e pluribus than there is unum. Unlike those other authors, though, Evans makes his point with cyborgs, drugs, and over-the-top military hardware.

Evans is best known for the popular Behind the Bastards podcast, where he holds forth on why various historical and political figures were or are awful people. Given his podcast work and persona, I went into After the Revolution fearing that it would be didactic, the kind of science fiction where the author wants to make arguments first and tell a story second. Science fiction books like that (looking at you, Heinlein) are a tough read—even when you agree with the author’s point.

Fortunately, After the Revolution isn’t preachy, political sci-fi. Mostly. There is some speechifying and inelegant prose about war, religion, and government, but for the most part it’s a pulpy, fun, action ride where lots of rad shit explodes.

Tavia Morra, courtesy of ak press

Texas, where the novel takes place, is a bloody battleground that hosts various factions. There’s a Burning Man-esque mobile party city (home to anarchist cyborgs), the free city of Austin, and a Christian fundamentalist theocracy that resembles a more well-armed version of The Handmaid’s Tale. Even though the war that destroyed the US is over, the fighting hasn’t ended. America’s remnants are hell-bent on destroying each other even further, and zealous theocrats are eager to cleanse the continent.

After the Revolution's three main characters are very much stock types, and at first glance they are a liability for the novel. Manny is an everyman who dreams of escaping his war-torn home. Roland is a badass loner with a mysterious past. Sasha is a naive idealist destined to have the scales fall from her eyes. These are all characters you’ve seen before in all kinds of media.

However, Evans uses these basic types well, like a talented chef making a nicely-executed grilled cheese sandwich. It’s basic, but it’s basic done right. Evans also clearly has a political and philosophical point of view, and he mostly expresses it via empathy for his characters and their experiences. He does not simply info dump about the state of his fictional world, he makes it real and felt for the people the reader follows, and that makes the politics of the world feel more alive than any kind of sermonizing would. The political situation of After the Revolution is meaningful not in the abstract, but for the immediate, personal experience the novel situates us with.

And the book moves. This is the type of novel where nudist cyborg super-soldiers ride robot horses into battle against bloodthirsty theocrats. Stuff blows up. More stuff blows up. Dudes kill other dudes and then even more chaos ensues. The action all works. Other authors have spilled a lot of ink over America’s internal contradictions, but After the Revolution is unique in its gusto.

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Drawing by Christina Tran, COPYRIGHT PSU 2021

Printed as an 80-page full color comic, Changing the Narrative's print run of 4,000 copies—sold and distributed via Street Roots vendors—sold out in two weeks.

There's good news: PSU instructor Kacy McKinney says the second printing of the collection will be available, starting Wednesday, March 16. "Like the first run, it will again be sold by Street Roots vendors until they sell out," McKinney told the Mercury.

Changing the Narrative is a collaborative project headed by McKinney and made in partnership with Street Roots, the Independent Publishing Research Center, and the Downstairs Gallery. McKinney and her team produced ten comic narratives about PSU students who had, at some point, dealt with what it meant to experience homelessness. Read the full profile here.

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Rajneeshees line up outside of a building in the 1980s. The movement created upheaval in the sleepy town of Antelope, which they renamed Rajneesh. Courtesy of Oregon Historical Society

Wild Wild Country was intensely centrist in its framing, interviewing Rajneesh followers, residents of Wasco and Jefferson counties, and government players who investigated Bhagwan’s commune.

However, with his first book, investigator and lawyer Russell King decided to eschew a both-sides-y approach. King’s narrative doesn’t focus very much on rural Oregonians’ conflict with the Rajneeshees. It's certainly in there, but it’s not the most important conflict in his telling. Rather, King portrays Rajneeshpuram as a doomed utopia because of its own internal contradictions.

Rajneeshpuram: Inside the Cult of Bhagwan and its Failed American Utopia (Chicago Review Press) is a deep dive into that one time, in the early 1980s, when a cult set up shop near the tiny town of Antelope, Oregon. It did not go well.

King makes it pretty clear from the beginning that he hates the Rajneeshees. He introduces them to the reader by showing followers of Bhagwan doing the unthinkable: Painting polished wooden fixtures in an old house, and putting carpet over hardwood floors. King gives us plenty of other reasons to dislike the cult: Sexual assault, milking followers of their financial resources, abusing children, using homeless people as political pawns, and bioterrorism. But, he hooks us in with the kind of aesthetic horrors that will probably repulse a good deal of his target audience.

King takes his time focusing on Bhagwan before he was even Bhagwan. In his early days as a guru in India, Rajneesh (born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh before coming to the U.S., and Osho after leaving it) was already controversial. He called Mohandas Ghandi a poverty worshiper, disdained much of conventional Hinduism, and when he started calling himself “Bhagwan,” that alienated a lot of his early Indian followers. According to King, that’s essentially like a Hindu holy man calling himself a messiah or divine chosen one. After that, Bhagwan fled India to escape an investigation into his shady finances.

Once the Rajneeshees got to Oregon, they were prepared to use whatever kind of tactics they could to get a foothold. Bhagwan and his followers, according to King, used bad-faith arguments and manipulated people and systems. Their community (which, for legal reasons, was a farm, but never functioned as one) was run more like an authoritarian cult of personality than an actual commune built by a community.

The cult was built on a man who, Russel says, took sexual advantage of his female followers, gleefully pocketed the wealth of his disciples, and who also threatened to kill himself if his followers didn’t buy him a new Rolls-Royce or fancy watch.

The town of Rajneeshpuram descended into paranoid violence, with attempted poisonings of restaurant-goers in the Dalles and planned assassinations of Oregon officials. That violence eventually (and seemingly inevitably) turned inward. Near the end of the book, Bhagwan’s outwardly cheerful followers are plotting how to kill each other, with one high-up cult member narrowly surviving an assassination attempt by a rival faction.

Courtesy of Chicago Review Press

King’s intense focus on the inside of the cult is fascinating, and paints a tense, claustrophobic picture of a society collapsing in on itself. But, this narrative intensity comes at a cost: Reactions to the Rajneeshis from without are regarded almost like forces of nature in King’s telling, rather than real people who had opinions and agency. He downplays what’s going on outside of the commune.

We don’t get a sense of what the public in Oregon or the wider world thought of the cult, or any examination of whether the cult’s opponents were also engaged in bad-faith tactics fueled by xenophobia or racism. Just because government officials and Oregonians disliked the Rajneeshees, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they disliked them or investigated them for the right reasons. It is indeed possible for an organization to be terrible, and also the subject of unfair scrutiny by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) or a local elections board.

This isn’t to say King should have done a cliched “both sides” look at the Rajneeshees and their opponents (as Wild Wild Country sometimes did) but, the Rajneesh cult was a worldwide organization that was in the local, national, and international spotlight for years. The wider world paid attention to them in the press, popular media, and political discussions. That’s mostly missing from King’s otherwise excellent book. He brings us deep into rural Oregon, surrounded by a decaying would-be utopia, with no real way out, other than disenchantment and collapse. That’s a compelling view, but a limited one.

Russell King will discuss Rajneeshpuram in conversation with Portland-based reporter and photographer Walden Kirsch at an online Powell’s event tonight, Fri March 11, at 5 pm. Register here.

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Qvasimodo

It's nice to see Portland's Fonograf Editions retake ground ceded to big name publishers. As I said in 2019, seeing national publishing houses on the list of nominees could simply mean bigger, better book deal for Oregon writers. However, Oregon—especially Portland—was once known for its strong self-publishing and book arts scene.

Also of note: This is one of the years where the awards ceremony recognizes graphic novel authors—Portland has more than a few. Typically the Graphic Literature Award and Drama Award switch back and forth bi-annually, so this year's graphic novel category covers books published in the past two years.

The graphic novel finalists include none other than two fairly famous comics-world Portlanders, Matt Fraction and Steve Lieber. Sarah Mirk—who was a Mercury reporter ten years ago—is also nominated for the collection that took her almost ten years to make, Guantanamo Voices. It's always odd that comics for all ages end up in the same category because in this house we also stan Breena Bard, Cat Farris, and Aron Nels Steinke. Anyone who wins will be more than worthy.

Check out the list of finalists after the jump. We'll have an update on winners after Monday, April 25, or you can check the festivities out for yourself at the awards show. This year's will be hosted by Kesha Ajose-Fisher—who won the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction in 2020 for her first novel No God Like the Mother.

Here are the finalists:

Award for Graphic Literature

Finalists:
Breena Bard, Trespassers: A Graphic Novel (Graphix, Scholastic)
Cat Farris, The Ghoul Next Door (HarperAlley, HarperCollins)
Matt Fraction and Steve Lieber, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen: Who Killed Jimmy Olsen? (DC Comics)
Sarah Mirk, Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the World's Most Infamous Prison (Abrams ComicArts)
Aron Nels Steinke, Field Trip: A Graphic Novel (Mr. Wolf’s Class #4) (Graphix, Scholastic)

Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry

Finalists:
Irene Cooper, spare change (Finishing Line Press)
Emily Kendal Frey, LOVABILITY (Fonograf Editions)
Jessica (Tyner) Mehta, When We Talk of Stolen Sisters: New and Revised Poems (Not a Pipe Publishing)
Zachary Schomburg, Fjords vol. 2 (Black Ocean)
Dao Strom, Instrument (Fonograf Editions)

Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction

Finalists:
Bryna Goodman, The Suicide of Miss Xi: Democracy and Disenchantment in the Chinese Republic (Harvard University Press)
Jacob Darwin Hamblin, The Wretched Atom: America’s Global Gamble with Peaceful Nuclear Technology (Oxford University Press)
Annelise Heinz, Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture (Oxford University Press)
Kenneth I. Helphand, Hops: Historic Photographs of the Oregon Hopscape (Oregon State University Press)
Kathleen Dean Moore, Earth’s Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World (Counterpoint Press)

Ken Kesey Award for Fiction

Finalists:
Callum Angus, A Natural History of Transition (Metonymy Press)
Omar El Akkad, What Strange Paradise: A Novel (Alfred A. Knopf)
Tracey Lange, We Are the Brennans: A Novel (Celadon Books)
A. E. Osworth, We Are Watching Eliza Bright: A Novel (Grand Central Publishing)
Chris Stuck, Give My Love to the Savages: Stories (Amistad, HarperCollins)

Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction

Finalists:
David Biespiel, A Place of Exodus: Home, Memory, and Texas (Kelson Books)
Allison Cobb, Plastic: An Autobiography (Nightboat Books)
Mary Emerick, The Last Layer of the Ocean: Kayaking through Love and Loss on Alaska's Wild Coast (Oregon State University Press)
Aaron Gilbreath, The Heart of California: Exploring the San Joaquin Valley (Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press)
Tina Ontiveros, rough house: a memoir (Oregon State University Press)

Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature

Finalists:
J. C. Geiger, The Great Big One (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Courtney Gould of Salem, The Dead and the Dark (Wednesday Books)
April Henry, Eyes of the Forest (Henry Holt and Company, Macmillan)
April Henry, Playing with Fire (Henry Holt and Company, Macmillan)
Deborah Hopkinson, We Must Not Forget: Holocaust Stories of Survival and Resistance (Scholastic Focus)

Eloise Jarvis McGraw Award for Children’s Literature

Finalists:
Waka T. Brown, While I Was Away (Quill Tree Books, HarperCollins)
Cathy Camper, Ten Ways to Hear Snow (Kokila, Penguin Random House)
Jennie Englund, Taylor Before and After (Square Fish, Macmillan)
Gabi Snyder, Listen (Paula Wiseman Books, Simon & Schuster)
Tracy Subisak, Jenny Mei Is Sad (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)

Special Award: The Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award

In addition to announcing the finalists, Literary Arts revealed it will award Cynthia Whitcomb—a playwright, screenwriter and writing coach of Wilsonville, Oregon—the Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award. The award recognizes "the finest achievements of Oregon authors in several genres."

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Changing the Narrative visually tells the stories of those who have been homeless and/or experienced food and housing insecurities. ARTIST ARANTZA PEÑA POPO, COPYRIGHT PSU 2021

Changing the Narrative is a collaborative project headed by McKinney and made in partnership with Street Roots, the Independent Publishing Research Center, and the Downstairs Gallery. McKinney and her team produced ten comic narratives about PSU students who had, at some point, dealt with what it meant to experience homelessness.

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The Actual Star by Monica Byrne

A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett

The Nice House on the Lake by James Tynion IV, Álvaro Martínez Bueno, and Jordie Bellaire

This cabin-in-the-woods-style horror comic by writer James Tynion IV and artists Álvaro Martínez Bueno and Jordie Bellaire has been at the top of my pull-list since it debuted this summer. There's no way to talk about the best parts of The Nice House on the Lake without spoiling some of its best narrative turns. Like all great horror, it speaks to our modern anxieties, and it's fucking funny too. It's the kind of comic you can shove under the eyes of your non-superhero-loving friends as proof that comics, in general, are worth their time. At the time of this writing, it's still in the middle of its run, so you’ll have to find the back issues until the collected editions come out. — CAMPY DRAPER

Philomath by Devon Walker-Figueroa

From the Mercury’s previous piece on Philomath:

“I burned through Philomath: Poems, the debut poetry collection from Devon Walker-Figueroa, in one sitting. A narrative coming-of-age poetry collection laced with searing imagery and gut-punch single-line revelations, Philomath is about Walker-Figueroa’s childhood in Benton County’s rural community, Kings Valley, and in nearby town Philomath. (You can read the collection’s titular poem, one of its best, here.)... This collection also felt very Biblical to me. There are overt references to church and Christianity, but also Biblical themes: male violence, blood and fire, a rotating cast of mysterious characters that appear and disappear just as quickly.” — BLAIR STENVICK

Cosmoknights by Hannah Templer

Deliriously frothy escapism and thoughtful queer representation don't always make the best bedfellows, but Hannah Templer's comic Cosmoknights ships it, and hard. This is what you'd get if Robot Jox was a Saturday morning cartoon and everyone was LGBTQ+, and the techno-feudalist backdrop is the perfect playground for derring-do and longing looks and the occasional swipe at the patriarchy. With a cast of winning space cowboy thirst traps and a color palette that oscillates between an equatorial sunset and Lisa Frank on a two-week mescaline bender, this is the big gay space opera you need in your life right now, right this very second. — BEN COLEMAN

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhaor

Marketed as “Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid’s Tale in a polyamorous reimagining of China’s only female emperor,” Iron Widow blew up on bookish TikTok as one of this year’s most anticipated YA debuts—and it did not disappoint. Xiran Jay Zhao tackles structural misogyny through the lens of a dystopian sci-fi world while also blowing up the love-triangle trope and giving readers the epic poly romance we deserve. This book is a brutal rollercoaster and ends with a devastating cliffhanger that I couldn’t stop thinking about. The YA genre has evolved a lot over the years, and Iron Widow embraces that future. — ALIYA HALL

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

From the Mercury’s previous piece on Crying in H Mart:

The heart of the book, of course, is about grief: The grief Zauner feels watching her mother’s health decline, and the grief after her death, made more acute by the fact that Zauner and her mom had recently finally reconciled after an adolescent rough patch in their relationship. But rather than wallowing in pure sentiment, Zauner writes the particulars of her grief: A strange visit to an apple orchard right after she dies, because it’s one of the few places in Eugene they’d never gone to together; eschewing weekly counseling sessions and teaching herself to make kimchi instead, its own form of therapy. After a year in which we’ve all felt grief of some kind—if not for a person, then for a way of life—it’s those idiosyncrasies, the weird ways our minds find to process the onslaught, that ring the most true. — BLAIR STENVICK

The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy

What I love about The Atmospherians is that it’s funny and sad and infuriating and thrilling and very, very smart. In the satirical novel set in the near-distant future, Sasha Marcus is an Instagram influencer scorned by trolls on the internet. Sasha joins forces with her childhood friend Dyson to start the Atmosphere, a cult designed to reform men and rid them of toxic masculinity. McElroy has written a fantastic novel about online culture, wellness culture, cults, celebrity, and its center, the desire to be seen. I found it impossible to put down. — EMME LUND

Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton

“What if Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys was a trans woman?” is not something I had ever asked myself before reading Summer Fun. But I’m so glad author Jeanne Thornton took up that conceit (fictionalizing the band as the Get Happies) and spun a truly weird, expansive, multi-generational tome about family, identity, self-harm, and self-love, spanning from 1950s Los Angeles to early 2010s Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Equally important to this narrative as surf-rock star Diane is Gala, a young trans woman working at a hostel in the middle of the desert, who uses rituals and compelling letters to connect her own destiny with Diane’s. This book enveloped my brain for a few days, demanding me to keep turning the page, as the very best novels can. — BLAIR STENVICK

Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption and Hollywood by Danny Trejo

Danny Trejo is an icon in the Chicano community for his roles in so many tough-guy films, but in this book he allows us to see him in a much different light: as a loving father, a mentor, and as a person who cares a lot about his community. This book is relatable—especially with his growth and struggle with machismo. (Seconded by librarian Melanie F.: “Machismo? More like Machis-don’t. If Danny Trejo can pull himself out of the trenches of toxic masculinity, then maybe the rest of society can too.”) Find Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption and Hollywood at the library. — ENRIQUE R., MULTNOMAH COUNTY LIBRARY, WORKPLACE TEAM

This is Not for You: An Activist’s Journey of Resistance and Resilience by Richard J. Brown

This Is Not for You: An Activist's Journey of Resistance and Resilience by Richard J. Brown recounts his life's work to build connections between police and the Black community. Those unfamiliar with Portland’s history will find an intriguing portrait of the city in the 80s and 90s. Through his long career as a community activist, photographer, and storyteller, this local author draws on his efforts to empower Black people. Now in his mid-80s, Brown ponders who will take on the work he has been doing as an activist and community builder, if anyone. — BARBARA H., MULTNOMAH COUNTY HILLSDALE LIBRARY

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aok

Bodies are Cool! by Tyler Feder

Jukebox by Nidhi Chanani

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Stacy Brewster’s debut collection, What We Pick Up, is out now. Buckman Publishing

The Mercury recently spoke with Brewster, who lives in Portland, about how the book came together, writing queer aging and queer joy, and how brotherhood is depicted in fiction.

Mercury: How did this book come together? Tell me your book’s story.

BREWSTER: My book’s story is feeling completely bereft of creativity in the first six months of the pandemic, but feeling like I had a body of work going back eleven years. I printed out a manuscript of this [collection] maybe three years ago, and it sat on the shelf as I was working on screenwriting. I was like, “Yeah, it's not quite baked yet. It's going to sit there.”

Finally, something clicked last summer [2020]. That was when I started looking at all these stories and seeing that they had something to say to each other. Some were very new. Some were eleven years old, but they were still in conversation with each other in ways that I hadn’t picked up on, not fully yet. I sent it to an editor friend of mine, saying, “you can make sense of this in ways that I can't.” She said, “Actually, let me pitch this to my boss because they’re going to want to publish this.” Then the focus was on putting the bit of juice that I had creatively last year to finish up those stories and really, really think how I wanted to lay it out.

I didn't realize that some stories you had written were that new. I thought everything had been written a decade ago, but they are definitely in conversation with each other. There are reoccurring characters and the themes of queerness, masculinity, brotherhood, and family all run through the book. When you were working on these stories, did you have the collection in mind?

I wish I could credit myself with being conscious of these themes when I was writing these stories. I feel like it's very conscious now. It's very conscious when they started butting up against each other. But in isolation, each of these stories were written apart from each other, but obviously subconsciously I was still working through a lot of the same themes, the same issues. And once I could see that, there was a deflated feeling of I haven't matured at all, or like I'm still working on these same problems, but then I was like, “Oh well, actually, I'm working on these important problems in different ways.” It’s attacking the same trauma, wounding, whatever word you want to bring into it from different angles, from different perspectives. This wasn't an index of the things I had published. It was stories in conversation with each other, even work that was written a very long time ago.

Do you mind if we talk about your TV pilot too?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because I’ve read your television script, and maybe I haven't read enough of the series, but that's so much about Old Hollywood and queer culture in LA post-World War II. From what I've seen on the project, I don't see a lot about families or brothers and fathers. Is there the notion these themes are what your fiction tends to tackle, where when you write scripts, you want to work on different themes, or is that just the two projects being their own?

They are all part of the same universe for me. The script actually started as a concept for a novel that spanned generations. I've written parts of screenplays that are in Weimar-era Berlin. It’s this threading of queer generations through time.

Did you grow up with brothers?

No. I am a brother. I have older sisters. I have a lot of brothers that I know or straight friends that I'm in relationship with, and I've seen that dynamic a lot. It's a dynamic I'm familiar with. But it's not about brothers. It's about where straightness and queerness intersect in a family.

So, especially with two men in our culture, that dynamic is always something I wanted to write into, whether it's about friendship or fathers and sons, or in these stories, there's a lot of brothers. The concept of brotherhood, outside of the context of a sports team or a military context, how does that show up? We're given a lot of messages from our culture about what these relationships are supposed to look like, and what's good or bad, and that’s the subversive engine behind all of it.

Forever the stories we were allowed to tell as queer/trans people were our coming out stories or our moments of pain and destruction. We don't have a lot of aging queer stories, because we had a giant pandemic that wreaked havoc on a generation of queer people. It seems like you set out to not write stories full of pain or a coming out story, but instead write stories with older characters and some joy.

You mentioned the AIDS epidemic. My entire seminal years, the time I was going to college was during the height of the AIDS crisis in the 80s and early 90s, when it was still an absolute death sentence. The drugs weren’t where they would be by the mid 90s, so I feel that really stunted me. I didn't come out until after college.

I was living in New York City, and I wasn't out. I didn't have these queer elders to show me the path and my chosen family was very small. So, there’s the biological family wounding, but the absence of that other chosen family was just as big of a wound. I wrote into that, from my own experience, from friends’ experience. A bulk of this is fiction, but still the work is to not to just be trauma porn, but to really see people after the trauma is in the past and they’re processing, how they begin to embody and move through and grow from that. Not always successfully. Not all these characters do that successfully.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a feature screenplay right now that I wrote the first draft of during lockdown. I'm going to be working on adapting some of these stories into a screenplay format. I want to explore the connected stories and “The Census Taker” in particular as a short film and see where that goes.

What We Pick Up by Stacy Brewster is available at bookstores now.

Emme Lund lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of the forthcoming novel The Boy with a Bird in His Chest.

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arsenal pulp press/photo by Joanna Eldredge Morrissey

Plett’s work has long centered trans women in their capaciousness and vulnerability—most notably in the award-winning 2018 novel Little Fish. Dream is no exception, delving deep into stories of love and family, sex and addiction, legacies, and how we reconcile trauma. But from the start Dream declares different intentions. It leads with “Hazel and Christopher,” a story of childhood best friends who meet again as adults after one of them transitions. Outside audiences often expect trans stories to focus narrowly on familiar tropes and scripts, and this story feints toward that, beginning like a fable of love and transition, and even tempting happily-ever-afters. But these characters have too much depth and complication for that, and when reversals come they’re as necessary as they are devastating. These stories look forward, not for clean resolutions or triumphs, but for the hope that we can hold that complication and carry it into lives we can actually live.

The backbone of Dream is “Obsolution,” a novella threaded through the broader collection. We follow a trans girl named Vera from her Oregon upbringing and out into the greater world, jumping through eras of her life. There is an artful conversation here, between other fully adult stories centering women in their 30s, and Vera’s path to meet them at that point of life and experience. Similar themes are viewed with both fresh and weary eyes.

“Obsolution” begins in an early-Obama-era Southeast Portland that will be achingly familiar to those who knew it, like an old late-night neighborhood crawl under vaulting trees and languid streetlights. It’s Hamms tallboys on punk house porches, stressed-out Reedies and drunken wanders through Lone Fir Cemetery. It’s the Ship Ahoy tavern where the bartender refuses to make OLCC fries (“Can I just order what’s on your menu?” “I’d rather you didn’t!”). It’s Portland as an adolescent city, a character in its own right beside Vera’s inchoate self-discovery, and it might still be the place where young people go to retire. But that torpor itself constricts Vera, who finds herself doubting whether the person she needs to be is possible here.

Originally from Manitoba and now based in Windsor, Ontario, Plett is of course a Canadian writer too. But her Oregon ties run deep, as she attended high school in Eugene before moving to Portland for college. Plett’s writing about place is recursive, with several communities and locales cycling through her work, always turned over with new eyes, new perspectives on the stories we seek in place and those we actually find, and what it means to come back. From her debut collection A Safe Girl to Love to Little Fish, Plett’s writing is rooted in Mennonite communities in rural Manitoba, and cities like Winnipeg, Toronto and New York. But Oregon remains an anchor.

Plett understands Oregon rain and Oregon mud, how good intentions become stifling in a place where homogeneity and limited possibilities are as oppressive as the winter clouds. Her deft use of environment as character comes clear once Vera leaves Oregon behind. Rain is key to Oregon’s self-mythology, and naturallyVera never used an umbrella growing up in those “daylong dribble rains,” in that liquid space and “long waves of clouds and water that block out color.” But in New York, it rains. Hard, scouring rain, the kind that you can’t melt into, the kind you have to fight. Some of the most remarkable moments in the collection involve character motion and change through elements, written in the dialect of Oregon itself.

Though Plett’s Portland in Dream is auric at times, these are not nostalgia stories. Stories like “Rose City, City of Roses” bypass the shine, and over time we see Vera unspooling what lay beneath those personal mythologies, learning what to hold and what to let go. In this, Dream is like C. R. Foster’s recent collection Shine of the Ever, another queer, lyric love letter to a turn-of-the-century Portland that has already faded. Both collections hold that city with deep affection but clear eyes, in its wonder and its ugliness, asking how we reconcile the truth of those experiences in ways that’s only legible with distance.

“It’s like they decided to put in a canyon,” Vera says years later on a visit back to Division Street, seeing how her old neighborhood has also transformed. Portland seems to be at a reckoning these days, between inequality and unrest and relentless gentrification. Portland has spent so long triangulating itself against outside narratives, from Portlandia to Trump Goons and lies about our city burning down. Above all, the present moment is about all those who are so often left out. It’s a time that demands a broader canon of place, and Casey Plett’s writing brings us closer.

Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett is in bookstores now.

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Beloved Portland author Ursula K. Le Guin's legacy will be celebrated and discussed at this year's Portland Book Festival. EUAN MONAGHAN/STRUCTO

If you, too, have hit your limit for virtual literary events, you’re in luck: The Portland Book Festival (fka Wordstock) returns this week, and though virtual programming is available, so are honest-to-god, live in-person literary events. Yay! Saturday, November 13 features a full day of author appearances and conversations that won’t result in condescending phone notifications about your burgeoning screentime.

So if you’re vaxxed and masked, get ready to bask in the glory of smart people talking about everything from a local giant of science fiction to how to raise men who don’t hate women. Here are the Mercury’s picks for the Portland Book Festival’s in-person programming.

Dispatches from Annares: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin

When I first moved to Portland, someone told me that she once saw Ursula K. Le Guin BUYING CHIPS AT A CO-OP. I was overcome with jealousy and delight. If you, too, are a fan of the low-key Portland legend and trailblazer of science and speculative fiction (and you SHOULD be, it’s only right!), this event, featuring contributors to the anthology Dispatches from Annares, belongs on your agenda. Named after the “anarcho-syndicate” utopia in Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and edited by Portland writer Susan DeFreitas (author of 2016’s underrated Hot Season), Dispatches from Annares features stories inspired by the sociopolitical dynamics and imaginative worldbuilding in Le Guin’s work. Four of the collection’s contributors will be on hand at this event honoring Le Guin’s powerful legacy and continuing influence on writers of all genres.
10 am, Brunish Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 4th Floor

Loaners: The Making of a Street Library

Street Books, Portland’s traveling library service for unhoused folks, is a local institution. A new book from Perfect Day Publishing, Loaners: The Making of a Street Library, tells the story of two people closely connected with its work of getting books to people living outdoors: Street Books founder Laura Moulton, an adjunct professor at Lewis & Clark College; and Ben Hodgson, who, according to a news release from Perfect Day Publishing, set “the still-unbroken single-season record for borrowing” from the library. Hodgson is now a Street Books board member and street librarian, but after his initial prolific borrowing bout, he and Moulton fell out of touch, and wouldn’t find each other again for nearly two years. Loaners is a co-written memoir, a document of their reconnection, and a look into the work of Street Books. The story’s delivered in alternating chapters from Moulton and Hodgson’s individual points of view. In a conversation moderated by the weird and clever Karen Russell, the two authors will discuss Loaners in what promises to be essential viewing for anyone who cares about Portland, the rights of unhoused people to dignity and autonomy, and the magic of having access to a library.
10:30 am, Park Stage at the Portland Parks Foundation Tent, Shemanski Park, 1010 SW Park

How to Raise a Feminist Son: Sonora Jha and Sarah Rothenfluch

Telling people to avoid getting sexually assaulted is victim-blaming hogwash, but what if, instead of encouraging fear-based behaviors that don’t actually prevent attacks, we took the time to address the root cause? Could we do it by raising boys and young men to understand other people’s autonomy? This question embodies the driving force behind Sonora Jha’s memoir How to Raise a Feminist Son: Motherhood, Masculinity, and the Making of My Family, which considers how parents and guardians can raise the next generation of boys and men to live in healthy alignment with feminist values and in right relationship with their communities. This is challenging work, based on a hefty question, but if it means a future with fewer Capitol insurrections, mass shootings, and assaults, it’s one worth asking. Jha will be joined in conversation by Sarah Rothenfluch.
11 am, Miller Gallery at the Portland Art Museum, 1119 SW Park, Mark Building, 1st Floor

Art and Ambition: Shruti Swamy and Claire Vaye Watkins

Novelist Claire Vaye Watkins is responsible for some of the best writing out there on what it’s like to be a writer who isn’t a cisgender white guy in a literary world very much dominated by them. Her latest, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness (honestly same), is a work of autofiction examining the collision between motherhood and art, and subverts the idea that these modes of being and making can’t coexist. In “Art and Ambition,” Watkins will discuss narratives like hers, which overlay stories of women artists with relationships and family obligations. Watkins will be joined by O. Henry award winner Shruti Swamy, whose lyrical debut novel was released in September. Set in 1960s Bombay, The Archer follows a girl named Vidya as she discovers classical dance and queer romance in the wake of a family tragedy. I would probably listen to these two discuss anything.
4 pm, Fields Ballroom at the Portland Art Museum, 1119 SW Park, Mark Building, 1st Floor

All events listed take place this Saturday, November 13. You can get festival passes, starting at $15, here.

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Brandon Taylor, author of Filthy Animals, will speak as part of the "Tenderness" panel at the Portland Book Festival. penguin random house

The virtual festival will take place from November 8 through November 12 at PDXBookFest.org, while the in-person day is November 13. Access to the virtual platform will be via a sliding scale ($0–$100) pass, and one pass includes access to all five days of virtual events.

One of the perks of having a virtual festival is that authors around the country can easily participate. The nightly events will feature variety-show style interviews with a panel of three authors whose work shares similar thematic connections under the umbrellas of: Tenderness, Freedom, Home, Love & Loss, and Hidden Worlds.

Additionally, The Archive Project will be featuring four podcast panels with authors covering a range of topics, from witches and change to reunion and collective wisdom.

These are my highlights for what the Portland Book Festival’s virtual portion has in store this year. (Tune in next week for our in-person picks for the 13th.)

Theme: Tenderness —The Book Festival’s opening event will feature poet Donika Kelly in conversation with poet and professor Christopher Rose about her new collection, The Renunciations; Kirsten Valdez Quade sharing her debut novel The Five Wounds with Portland Monthly’s Fiona McCann; and Brandon Taylor discussing his best-selling story collection Filthy Animals with author Genevieve Hudson.

The Renunciations focuses on the journey of shifting one’s sense of self in the face of trauma, and the home one builds inside oneself after reckoning with the most devastating confrontations of what a person can bear and how families harm themselves. The Five Wounds follows a New Mexican family’s year of love and sacrifice, as Amadeo Padilla’s 15-year-old daughter shows up pregnant on his doorstep during Holy Week, and spans the first year of the baby’s life as five generations of the Padilla family converge.

Filthy Animals expands upon the promise made in Taylor’s debut, as he focuses on the tensions among friends, family, lovers, and others as he portrays intimacy, pain and desire for love.
Monday, Nov. 8, 7 pm.

Theme: Freedom—Through art and words, “freedom” will be discussed through the lens of cartoonist Aminder Dhaliwal, author of the graphic novel Cyclopedia Exotica, and OPB’s Tiffany Camhi; Nathan Harris, debut author of The Sweetness of Water, with author Gabriel Urza; and award-winning essayist, poet and critic Maggie Nelson, author of On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint, with journalist and author Masha Gessen.

Cyclopedia Exotica captures the experiences and xenophobia in the interior lives of the cyclops community, a largely immigrant population, while commenting on race, beauty and belonging in a parallel world. The Sweetness of Water focuses on the unlikely bond between two freedmen who are brothers, and the Georgia farmer whose alliance will alter their lives, and his, forever. On Freedom analyzes these complexities in the realm of art, sex, drugs and climate while exploring how we might think, experience or talk about freedom based on the conditions of our day.
Tuesday, Nov. 9, 7 pm.

Theme: Love & Loss—Through the genre of romance to memoir and poetry, this theme will be discussed by best-selling author Jasmine Guillory, author of While We Were Dating, in conversation with managing director of Artists Repertory Theatre Kisha Jarrett; memoirist Danielle Henderson of The Ugly Cry, with Live Wire; and poet Devon Walker-Figueroa speaking about her collection Philomath with poet Jennifer Perrine.

While We Were Dating tells the story of advertiser Ben Stephens and movie star Anna Gardiner. As the two strike up an unexpected romance during Stephens’ ad campaign, their real-life fling has the opportunity to become something more in the Hollywood spotlight, and life’s complications start to set in. The Ugly Cry tells Henderson’s story of being abandoned at ten years old and being raised by her grandparents in a mostly white neighborhood in upstate New York. She shares how she grew up “Black, weird and overwhelmingly uncool,” and the lessons she’s carried throughout her life while upending our conventional understanding of family.
Friday, Nov. 12, 7 pm.

TAP@PBF: Witches—Available only as a podcast episode on The Archive Project in conjunction with Portland Book Fest, Authors A. K. Blakemore of The Manningtree Witches and Rivka Galchen of Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch discuss the topic of witches with OPB moderator Crystal Ligori.

The Manningtree Witches follows the residents of a small English town in the thrall of the seventeenth-century witch trials, and the young woman tasked with saving them all from themselves as a Witchfinder General arrives and begins asking questions about what the women on the margins of the community are up to. In Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch, Katharina, who is known for her herbal remedies and children’s successes, is accused of poisoning a community member. Katharina’s son, the imperial mathematician Johannes, defends his mother as she confides her side of the story to her friend and next-door neighbor, imperiled by his own secrets.

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