Events
Reading and In-Conversation with JoDean Nicolette, Portland author Ellen Michaelson, and Scott Korb
Reading and In-Conversation with debut author JoDean Nicolette, Portland author Ellen Michaelson, and Pacific University MFA Director Scott Korb
About the Book
JoDean Nicolette’s memoir, Trail Magic: A Physician's Journey Through the Appalachian Mountains, recently released by Choeofpleirn Press, was named a top finalist in the Kenneth Johnston Contest. In Trail Magic, Nicolette, known as “Violet” on the Appalachian Trail, embarks on a transformative hike amid personal challenges, including the harsh realities of medical education, her father's cancer, and her mother's addiction. As she navigates treacherous terrain, Violet gains a deeper understanding of medicine through her husband Ben’s serious health issues. Her journey leads her to rediscover herself and embrace the healing power of nature, ultimately finding her place within her family and the medical field.
About the Author
JoDean Nicolette is a writer, physician, and teacher. A graduate of the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Pacific University MFA Program. Her work has appeared in The Sun, the Chicago Tribune's Print Row Journal, and many other publications.
About Ellen Michaelson
Ellen Michaelson’s debut novel, The Care of Strangers, winner of the 2019 Miami Book Fair/de Groot Prize, was published by Melville House Press in November 2020. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Portland Monthly, Literature and Medicine, and Women in Solitude. She has been an assistant professor of medicine at OHSU in Portland, Oregon, and is vice president of the board of the NW Narrative Medicine Collaborative. She holds an MFA from Pacific University.
About Scott Korb
Scott Korb is the director of the MFA program at Pacific University, where both authors attended, and will be introducing and moderating the conversation.
Judith Barrington reading & in conversation with Jules Ohman
Thrilled to welcome Judith Barrington, the award-winning memoirist and poet, who will be reading from her new collection of short memoirs, Virginia’s Apple, published this month by OSU Press. She will be in conversation with Jules Ohman, author of Body Grammar.
About Virginia’s Apple
"When we are able to move fluidly through the past, present, and future by looking back on a life, I believe we become new creatures in our own lives. Judith Barrington's brilliant collection of linked life stories, Virginia's Apple: Collected Memoirs, is a thrilling book that pulls memories through creative visionary transmography. I felt like I was swimming inside the imagination of all the brilliant women who came before me and who have kept me alive, as well as those who are coming after us. With poetic and erotic power, this book helped me remember to keep going as long as it takes for change to emerge. What a triumph. I feel gratitude.” — Lidia Yuknavitch
The fourteen literary memoirs collected in Virginia's Apple explore pivotal episodes across poet and writer Judith Barrington's life. Artfully crafted, each one stands alone yet they are linked--characters reappear and, taken together, the pieces create a larger narrative. The content is wide-ranging: the early days of the Second Wave of feminism--the exhilaration, the wildness, the love affairs, the surprises, and the self-invention, as well as the confusion and conflicts of those heady times; navigating a sometimes precarious existence as an out lesbian long before it was commonplace; leaving England and becoming an American citizen; finding a life partner; and growing old with an inherited disability. The author's friendship with the distinguished poet Adrienne Rich is the subject of one story. In another, there's an appearance by the notorious murderer, Lord Lucan, whose wife was a chance acquaintance. These stories are laced with humor and joy, while pulsing below the surface is the slow unfolding of delayed grief over her parents' drowning when she was nineteen, revealing how such a loss can shape a life.
About Judith Barrington
Judith Barrington is the author of Lifesaving: A Memoir, winner of the Lambda Literary Award and a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. She is also the author of the bestselling Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art, which is used across the U.S., Australia, and Europe. Barrington has published five collections of poetry and two poetry chapbooks. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
About Jules Ohman
Jules Ohman is the author of their debut novel, Body Grammar, a coming-of-age queer love story set in the glamorous yet grueling world of international modeling, published by Vintage in 2022. Jules’s work has appeared in Buckmxn Journal,Electric Literature,Lit Hub,Willow Springs, and others. They were recently the Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer in the University of Montana’s MFA program. Jules teaches and writes in Portland, Oregon.
Lainey Oslin, author of I’M NOT THE SAME AGAIN TODAY, reading and in conversation
Delighted to welcome Lainey Oslin who will be reading from her recent debut lyrical memoir, I’m Not the Same Again Today, published by Empowered Press.
About I’m Not the Same Again Today
Equal parts lyrical memoir and self-help poetry book, Lainey lets you in on the details of a life that left the rails and how she used language to outline the landing. While recovering from a life upended at the halfway mark, Lainey rediscovered her love for the woods and words and taps into both to bring you every insight.
“Oslin’s unique perspectives on universal themes offer profound insights, inspire self-reflection, and glitter with tears, laughter, honesty, courage and hope. This book is a treasure to be read cover to cover, and a first aid kit for your soul.” Disney King, Author of Transit of Angels
About Lainey Oslin
Lainey Oslin is a poet and lyrical-verse storyteller living in Washington State. Her daily writings can be found at her Instagram blog @thelaineydayblog.
October Book Club
Join Us for Our October Book Club!
Book: MADWOMAN by Chelsea Bieker
Date: Sunday, October 27, 2024
Time: 4 PM
Location: Up Up Books
Price: Free - though please consider purchasing MADWOMAN at Up Up Books to support our store and amazing community events like this one!
If attending email : michelle@upupbooks.com
About the Book:
The world is not made for mothers.
Yet mothers made the world…
Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she’s landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation.
But when she receives a letter from a women’s prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. As we race between her precarious present-day life in Portland, Oregon and her childhood in a Waikiki high-rise with her mother and father, Clove is forced to finally unravel the defining day of her life. How did she survive that day, and what will it take to end the cycle of violence? Will the truth undo her, or could it ultimately save her?
Chelsea Bieker reading & in conversation with Genevieve Hudson
We are thrilled to welcome Chelsea Bieker, who will be reading from her new novel, the nationally bestselling Madwoman, published last month by Little, Brown. She will be in conversation with Genevieve Hudson. This event will include writing exercises for the audience so please bring a pen and paper!
ABOUT MADWOMAN
"Chelsea Bieker breathes thrilling, risky energy into the familiar trope of the madwoman .. . [Bieker’s] prose crackles with tiny shocks and arresting images . . . [her] writing is raw, breathlessly confessional, brilliant in its depiction of the long shadows cast by domestic violence, the constant tension carried by survivors. However, her true secret weapon is humor.”— Catherine Chidgey, The New York Times Book Review
"A gripping, gritty, gorgeous book about motherhood, the traumas of domestic violence, and the mad, raw, funny, wrenching, astonishing things we do to survive… This book made me laugh and cry. It reads like a thriller and a love song. It’s about being crushed and rising strong."— Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild
The world is not made for mothers.
Yet mothers made the world…
Clove has gone to extremes to keep her past a secret. Thanks to her lies, she’s landed the life of her dreams, complete with a safe husband and two adoring children who will never know the terror that was routine in her own childhood. If her buried anxiety threatens to breach the surface, Clove (if that is really her name) focuses on finding the right supplement, the right gratitude meditation.
But when she receives a letter from a women’s prison in California, her past comes screeching into the present, entangling her in a dangerous game with memory and the people she thought she had outrun. As we race between her precarious present-day life in Portland, Oregon and her childhood in a Waikiki high-rise with her mother and father, Clove is forced to finally unravel the defining day of her life. How did she survive that day, and what will it take to end the cycle of violence? Will the truth undo her, or could it ultimately save her?
ABOUT CHELSEA BIEKER
Chelsea Bieker is the author of the debut novel Godshot, which was longlisted for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize and named a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, Heartbroke won the California Book Award and was a New York Times "Best California Book of 2022." She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, as well as residencies at MacDowell and Tin House. Raised in Hawaii and California, she now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children.
ABOUT GENEVIEVE HUDSON
Genevieve Hudson is the author of the novel Boys of Alabama, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Their other books include the memoir-hybrid A Little in Love with Everyone, and Pretend We Live Here: Stories, which was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. They live in Portland, Oregon
Martha Gies reading and gathering
Thrilled to welcome the writer, teacher and activist, Martha Gies. She will be reading from her newly released collection of essays, Broken Open.
About Broken Open
“I admire so much in these interlinked essays – their unabashed elegance, their contemplative and emotional landscapes, their origin here at home in Oregon, their light-handed learnedness and abundant allusions. There’s an added pleasure in noting how Gies’ work, so finely turned in itself, falls on a distinguished spectrum amidst Brodsky and Ozick and Ruefle. This book is a beautiful thing.” – M. Allen Cunningham, author of We Are Guests of Ancient Time
Broken Open is a memoir told in essays exploring a life robustly and thoughtfully lived by Martha Gies, an acclaimed teacher, writer, and activist now entering her eighth decade. With dry wit, sharp insights, and deep empathy for the underdog, Gies writes about the principal illusions and disillusions of childhood and the experiments made in exploring “right livelihood,” following both fate and choice to a wise and forgiving assessment of what it all means.
About Martha Gies
Martha Gies was raised in the solitude of rural Oregon with a love of literature and a yearning for friends unmet. Her family’s relative affluence discomforted her and provoked a lifelong preoccupation with justice. Unlikely jobs—asparagus packing manager, deputy sheriff, cocktail waitress, stage manager—provided material for writing. She founded Traveler’s Mind, an annual ten-day workshop in non-touristic communities in Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, India, Mexico and Nicaragua, and taught it for twenty years. Martha began publishing journalism in the seventies and later studied fiction with Raymond Carver. Her short stories and essays have appeared widely in literary magazines, including Gettysburg Review, The MacGuffin, Notre Dame Review, Orion, The Sun, Zyzzyva, and various anthologies. Martha’s previous book, Up All Night, profiled Portland’s graveyard-shift workers and was selected by Oregon’s two largest newspapers for their Ten Best of the Year lists.
Scavengers & Querencia Press Presents: A Portland Book Festival Off-Site Reading
Scavengers Literary Magazine and Querencia Press Presents: A Portland Book Festival Off-Site Reading!
Come here some of Scavengers and Querencia’s amazing contributors read from their work!
Cameron Walker reading & in conversation with Erica Berry
Delighted to welcome Cameron Walker, author of the recent collecition of short stories, How to Capture Carbon, who will be in conversation with Erica Berry.
About the Book
How to Capture Carbon: In a dozen luminous stories, award-winning author Cameron Walker brings readers to the water’s edge, where the known world collides with magic and with the mysterious depths of the human heart. Here, a pandemic turns children into sea creatures, a baker kneads unusual pie crusts during a California mudslide, and a young man sets off to see the world in a flying coat. Lyrical and dreamlike, How to Capture Carbon navigates the seas of a changing climate and the transformative power of loss--and of love.
About Cameron Walker
Cameron Walker is the author of the children’s book National Monuments of the U.S.A. and the essay collection Points of Light. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Orion, and The Last Word On Nothing. She lives in California with her family.
About Erica Berry
Erica Berry is the author of Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear which won the 2024 Oregon Book Award. Her essays appear in the New York Times, the Yale Review, the Guardian, and other publications. She is a contributing editor at Orion magazine and teaches writing in Portland, Oregon.
Many Seasons and Writing the Self
Workshop with author Frances Badalamenti where you will talk about the art of writing self, the craft of book-writing and book-editing and practice the writing of self
Kitchen Table Magazine Event
Learn all about what goes into the making a of magazine from crowdfunding to the production process with Kitchen Table Magazine.
Thursday, October 10 at 6PM, publisher and editor of Kitchen Table Magazine, Brett Warnock, and Katrina Clasen, the design director and webmaster of Kitchen Table Magazine will take you through their journey from crowdfunding to getting Kitchen Table Magazine into your hands.
Whether you’re a writer, foodie, maker, illustrator, or just love beautiful design, this event is perfect for you. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn how to produce a print magazine from scratch!
Book Launch: Ginette DePreist's Reach Up: My Beautiful Journey with James DePreist, in conversation with Isaac Thompson
We’re thrilled to welcome Ginette DePreist for a celebration of her memoir, Reach Up: My Beautiful Journey with James DePreist. She will be in conversation with Isaac Thompson.
Praise for the Memoir:
James DePreist, who began as a jazz player, arranger and composer, overcame racial prejudice and a profound disability on his way to becoming an internationally acclaimed orchestra conductor. For the last thirty-five years of his life, Ginette DePreist was not just his wife, but a professional partner and bulwark. Her warm, wise, and engaging memoir, rich with behind-the-scenes observations of the classical music scene, is a dual portrait of a protean musician and an inspiring marriage - ANTHONY TOMMASINI Former Chief Classical Critic, The New York Times.
About Ginette DePreist:
Originally from Quebec City, Ginette was married to James DePreist for more than thirty years, accompanying him throughout his remarkable career. She now resides in Portland, Oregon.
About Isaac Thompson:
Isaac Thompson is the President & CEO of the Oregon Symphony and a prolific violinist. He studied music at the University of Cincinnati and received his Master of Music from The University of Texas at Austin.
Write-In
Join writer Stephanie Victoire for a creative writing meet-up and workshop!
The meet-up is free. Please let Stephanie know if you’ll be joining by emailing her at stephanie.victoire@yahoo.co.uk
Write-In is a chance for you to discuss what you’re working on, inspire each other and write together in a supportive and motivational way, but most of all, find joy in the process.
You’ll hash out sticking points, challenges and potential blocks no matter what the project or idea, be it short story, personal essay, novel, memoir, collection of poems or just an outline or thought.
This meet-up is free. Please let Stephanie know you'll be joining by messaging her: stephanie_victoire@yahoo.com
Poetry Saves Lives: Sherri Levine and Elisa Carlsen reading from their latest collections
Sherri Levine is a poet, mental health advocate, a teacher, and a former poetry series host living in Portland, OR. She won the Lois Cranston Prize and won first place in the Oregon Poetry Association Contest
Sherri has published four poetry collections, with the most recent, her illustrated poetry book, I Remember Not Sleeping, published by @fernwoodpress in 2024
Elisa Carlsen grew up in Humbolt County, Nevada. A queer, outside poet and artist. Elisa’s poems have won awards from the Writer’s Guild of Astoria and the Oregon Poetry Association. She was the finalist for the Editor’s Prize at Harbor Review and has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Elisa is a Poetry Editor at New American Press.
Elisa’s poetry collection Cormorant, was published in 2023 by @unsolicitedp and is a work of contrition. These poems are political and personal - a response to the federal government’s plan to kill thousands of cormorants in the name of salmon recovery and a tribute to the person who died from heartbreak because of it.
Freedom to Read! A Diverse Book & Culture Fair
Up Up Books will be at Freedom to Read! A Diverse Book & Culture Fair on Saturday from 11am - 5 pm
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