Small is huge, Wells Fargo tells us with a Pleasantville main street gloss. It’s tough to admit when a cynical corporate slogan hits the mark, but I can’t think of a better way to describe Portland’s Future Tense Press and its portfolio of literary fire-starters. Run by literary community extraordinaire and Powell’s ambassador Kevin Sampsell, […]
Read more "Dreaming Fantastical Stories: Szilvia Molnar"As sane, reasonable members of society, the fantastical entertainment industry raises important questions. Questions like, who keeps greenlighting Adam Sandler movies? Why wasn’t Wild given a heftier Oscar push? Why does Jennifer Lawrence have to write essays demanding to be paid a wage comparable to her male counterparts? How in the name of all that […]
Read more "The Unsinkable Effie Brown"The year was 2003. It was the year I graduated high school and moved to Portland. It was also the year that an anticipated box office bomb ended up becoming one of the most successful movies of the burgeoning millennium: Pirates of the Caribbean. No one was expecting a movie based on a theme park […]
Read more "Don’t Curse Cookie! Empire Fears and Impressions"In this golden age of television, there is much joy. Between the premium channels like HBO and Showtime, new world players Netflix and Amazon, and even the occasional cable network, the art of the TV series has enjoyed a recent renaissance. The freshness and vibrancy of these shows is largely thanks to the diversity that […]
Read more "True Detective’s Lady Cop Problem"Over Independence Day weekend we went camping in Crater Lake. When we checked in, next to the Pacific Crest Trail hiking box I had to Instagram in Wild homage, they handed us a pamphlet on the park. I unfolded its accordion creases to reveal the lake map framed in photos of wildflowers and mountain chickadees. […]
Read more "The Day That Doom Went Viral"On Sunday, I caught snippets of my husband Matt’s Mother’s Day phone call with his mom. I was trying not to eavesdrop in between running out to water the new plant starters and sautéeing onions for dinner because frankly that’s a dick move. But I couldn’t help overhearing him describe his recent bout of tonsillitis […]
Read more "My Wife"I heard that the first place I’d worked in Oregon shuttered today the same way we hear everything now: a Facebook post. A friend was tagged in a dim cell phone shot snapped in the dying Lloyd Center Mall in Portland. Lloyd Center has been dying since I first moved to Portland in 2003. A […]
Read more "The Corset’s Last Breath: Frederick’s of Hollywood is Dead"By now we all know about the controversy shrouding the mysterious surprise announcement that Harper Lee’s new/super-old novel, Go Set a Watchmen, would be published after “disappearing” for half a century. It’s tough to remember, in the week of sordid details since, how pure and incredible and fantastic those initial moments were. The moments lived […]
Read more "To Tweet a Mockingbird: A Love Letter to Literary Twitter"I have been camping in my house for a week. This sounds strange when I say it to people. They ask, to clarify, if I’ve moved back into my house. Like every question this year, the answer is complicated, full of footnotes and asides and more questions—“did I tell you…?” “Did you know that…?” “Well, […]
Read more "Camping"Dear Tucson, You’re probably wondering why I didn’t say goodbye. You’re probably upset, and I understand how you would feel that way. If you step back from your raw emotion, however, I think that you’ll start to see the rivets in our lives that led us here. We weren’t happy, Tucson. Not together. I know […]
Read more "The Break-Up Letter"
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