Reading Frenzy ~ An Independent Press Emporium

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2nd, 6PM

Family Outing + Window Unveiling + 16th Anniversary Party!

New Work by Together Gallery Family Artists

Reading Frenzy will be a veritable three-ring circus tonight with an opening reception, window unveiling and 16th anniversary party rolled into one!

First of all, we're so excited to welcome the Together Gallery to the walls of Reading Frenzy this month! Together Gallery was founded in 2007 in the Alberta Arts District and is dedicated to providing a space for outstanding visual expression and an outlet for free thought.

A couple years ago I wandered into their tiny, original space on Alberta and was really impressed, dare I say enchanted, by the work and the energy of their project. I struck up a conversation with founding member Timothy Karpinski which ultimately resulted in this show of young, talented, emerging artists. 

The show will run through September and features new work by ~

• Timothy Karpinski
• David Wien
• Seth Neefus
• Doodles AKA Nick Mann
• Mia Nolting
• Julianna Swaney
• Betsy Walton
• Mia Christopher

In addition to the exhibit, Reading Frenzy will be sporting a full on double window installation by three talented young graphic artists ~ Nicole Lavelle, Sarah Baugh and Justin Flood ~ who have spent a chunk of their summer salvaging, spraying, scouting sawing, hammering, and laser cutting their hearts out to give us this special anniversary gift!

Light refreshments and free beer from Ninkasi!

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3rd, 7PM

Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs

Reading and Signing with William Upski Wimsatt

Reading Frenzy is so pleased to host Billy Wimsatt for the third time, in celebration of his third book, Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs, (Akashic, 2010)!As a potty-mouth graffiti writer from the Southside of Chicago, William "Upski" Wimsatt electrified the literary and hip-hop world with two of the most successful underground classic books in a generation, Bomb the Suburbs (1994) and No More Prisons (1999), which combined sold more than 90,000 copies.

In Please Don't Bomb the Suburbs, Wimsatt weaves a first-person tour of America's cultural and political movements from 1985-2010. It's a story about love, growing up, a generation coming of age, and a vision for the movement young people will create in the new decade. With humor, storytelling, and historical insight, Wimsatt lays out a provocative vision for the next twenty-five years of personal and historical transformation.

William Upski Wimsatt is the author of Bomb the Suburbs and No More Prisons. A maverick graffiti artist, journalist, political and philanthropic organizer, Wimsatt has appeared in hundreds of publications and is a popular speaker at colleges and conferences. He founded the League of Young Voters, worked for Barack Obama in Ohio, and co-organized the first ever briefing of social justice artists with the White House. He was honored as a "Visionary" by Utne Reader, and included in The Source's "Power 30" list. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4th, 7PM

If You Lived Here You'd Already Be Home

Reading and Signing with John Jodzio

A middle-aged masochist in love with a comatose man. A gay birthday clown lamenting the loss of his beloved dog. An amateur veterinarian keeping watch over his suicidal daughter. And a bikini model with a barnacle stuck to her butt cheek. These are just a few of the characters who populate the quirky, offbeat world of If You Lived Here You'd Already Be Home (Replacement Press, 2010) -- a world that feels at once alien and strangely familiar. In these 21 brief, funny stories, John Jodzio documents his characters' disappointment, frustration, and longing for a home that seems forever out of reach. By turns bleak and hopeful, cruel and tender, this is an exciting literary debut by a writer to watch, a writer with a unique and compelling voice.

You may think you've read enough stories about penniless gay clowns who can't get over the loss of a dog, but -- I assure you -- you have not. John Jodzio is the best kind of modern fiction writer: a thematic traditionalist who feels totally new.

-- Chuck Klosterman, author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

John Jodzio is a winner of the Loft-McKnight Fellowship. His stories have appeared in One Story, Opium, The Florida Review and Rake Magazine and a number of other places, both print and online. He's won a Minnesota Magazine fiction prize and both the Opium 500 Word Memoir competition and Opium Fiction Prize. 

Nora Robertson Nora Robertson is a writer and performer who lives in Portland, Oregon. Her fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays, have appeared in such publications as Plazm, Redactions, and Portland Monthly. Her recipe poem, "How to Boil an Egg," was nominated for the 2007 Pushcart Prize. Most recently, she produced and hosted the New Oregon Interview Series, which explores Portland's evolving creative culture through interviewing the artists and culture makers themselves both live and for print. She is currently at work with video artist Jason Bahling on a short poetic film exploring a cooking show gone awry called The Body Show.

Becca Yenser lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of two chapbooks, Small Bright Things and the forthcoming I Am Here to Save You. She crawled on all fours out of the gut-wrenching, war-torn profession of social work only to arrive at the relative safety of a waffle cart, where she finds the waffle timer conducive to writing flash fiction.

Jason Maurer is a Portland native who left a career in advertising last year to write stories about satanic bands, drugs, mental disorders and other memories from his childhood. His first published work will appear in Death Magazine #2 later this month.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8th, 7PM

Death Magazine No. 2 Release Party

with Forrest Martin and Friends!

Come celebrate the release of Death Magazine #2 with Forrest Martin and friends! Loud music + free beer + your first opportunity to peruse and purchase the print version in person!

Life is a relationship with fleetingness, and Death Magazine is a tri-annual magazine that speaks to this; a curated journal which asks writers and visual artists to address the topic however they they wish, in whatever tone. What is it, and - if I care - why do I care? Issue #2 features a psycho-sublime cover by Mark Warren Jacques, essays by David Rees (Get Your War On) and Lynda Barry (Ernie Pook's Comeek), artwork by Ian Stevenson and Michael Zavros, and a themed section asking contributors to comment on "superstition" as it relates to death.

Death Magazine is published by Forrest Martin, in Portland, Oregon. Contributors include 6 Portland writers/artists, as well as 17 others from around the world:

• Lynda Barry
• Chad Chesko
• Experimental Jetset
• Brett Glass
• John Faithful Hamer
• Nate Hill / Death Bear
• Mark Warren Jacques
• Eugene Jefferson
• Lori Jones
• Jason Lazarus
• Justin Limoges
• makelike
• Jason Maurer
• David Rees
• Mark Searcy
• Jai Sheronda
• Christopher Stanton
• Ian Stevenson
• Dr. Roger Sty Bantam
• Brecht Vandenbroucke
• Shannon Wianecki
• Michael Zavros
• Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15th, 7PM

Rewild or Die!

An Evening with Urban Scout

Portland's infamous Urban Scout has released his first book entitled Rewild or Die: Revolution and Renaissance at the End of Civilization. Urban Scout will read from his book, teach a few rewilding tricks (like fire-by-friction, natural cordage, coiling baskets and mind-blowing sensory expansion), and wrap things up with a Q&A.

Rewild or Die: Revolution and Renaissance at the End of Civilization, is a collection of essays written by Urban Scout exploring the philosophy of the emerging rewilding renaissance, in which civilized humans are thought to be "domesticated" through thousands of years of sedentary, agrarian life. This way of life is believed to be the root of all environmental destruction and social injustice. Rewilding is the process of undoing this domestication, and restoring healthy, biologically diverse communities. Using thoughtful, humorously cynical and at times angry prose, Urban Scout explores how the ideology of civilization clashes with the wild and wild peoples, and how thinking, feeling and most importantly living wild is the only way to reach true sustainability.

Urban Scout, a fourth generation Portlander, proudly dropped out of high school at 16 to begin his life-long unschooled journey of rewilding. He writes a self-named blog detailing his rewilding projects and writings and created a popular international internet forum and wiki for fellow people-who-rewild. He has received local press (The Oregonian, The Portland Mercury, Willamette Week, The Portland Tribune), national press (ReadyMade Magazine) and international press (Chain Reaction AU, Positive News UK) for his efforts to promote rewilding.

Praise for Urban Scout:

"Urban Scout has a wisdom and intelligence far beyond his years. He is helping us move away from this culture of death and toward a sane culture that will not kill the planet."
-- Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame

"When I feel like surfing a bit nearer the edge, I check out Scout's latest. It's irreverent, angry, informative, and sometimes he's not even nice. Urban Scout is out there exploring and inventing rewilding and contemporary tribal skills with style, and I admire that he doesn't claim to know it all. Scout always takes me down an unanticipated path. We civilized folk have forgotten what he's trying to remember for us."
-- Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28th, 7PM

Richard Yates

Reading and Signing with Tao Lin

Join us tonight for a reading by Tao Lin to celebrate the release of his second novel, Richard Yates (Melville House, 2010).

Richard Yates is named after real-life writer Richard Yates, but it has little to do with him.  Instead, it tracks the relationship between writer Haley Joel Osment, a New Yorker in his early twenties, and Dakota Fanning, his 16-year-old lover.  Moving between Fanning's suburban New Jersey home and Osment's Wall Street apartment, the couple increasingly shuns the outside world as they work to navigate the moral ambiguity of their relationship.   But as the relationship grows more obsessive and Osment becomes more intimately involved with Fanning, she reveals her increasingly disturbing and self-destructive personality.  Osment's own guilt and anger entrap him as they find the relationship -- and their lives -- hurtling out of control.

Tao Lin is an American poet, novelist, short story writer and artist. He's the author of  five books of fiction and poetry, Richard Yates is his second novel. Lin's work has appeared in literary journals, newspapers, and magazines such asNOON, of which he is a frequent contributor, Vice, Esquire, The Stranger, 3:AM Magazine, The Mississippi Review, The Poetry Foundation, Nerve, Bear Parade, The Cincinnati Review, Other Voices, and Fourteen Hills.

"Tao Lin writes from moods that less radical writers would let pass -- from laziness, from vacancy, from boredom. And it turns out that his report from these places is moving and necessary, not to mention frequently hilarious." -- Miranda July

Sponsored by BookSlut!

This event is free and so is the beer!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20th, 7PM

Picture This

Reading and Book Release Party with Lynda Barry!

OMG!!! More info coming soon...