Arts-and-Culture Writing
FEATURES:
No Alternative How it Felt to Believe in Alternative Rock (from Alive in the Nineties)
I Am Nothing to Put to Rest: The Life and Legacy of Post-Punk Poet Lydia Tomkiw and Algebra Suicide (from Maggot Brain) (print-only)
Little Bits of Paper Everywhere: An Oral History of Snipehunt Magazine and Kathy Molloy(cover story from The Portland Mercury)
Accidental Visionary: The Unlikely Career of Portland Experimental Filmmaker and Installation Artist Vanessa Renwick(from The Portland Mercury’s Fall Arts & Entertainment Guide)
BOOK REVIEWS:
We Were Tired of Being Mild: Reading Surrealist Post-Punk Poet Lydia Tomkiw (from Propeller)
Voices that Filled the Years: Catherine Lacey’s Pew Listens to the American South (from Propeller)
Questioning Her Own Questioning: On Leslie Jamison’s Make It Scream, Make It Burn (from The Millions)
Pulver Maar: New Bizarre Poems from Zachary Schomburg (from The Portland Mercury)
Shared Delights: Poet Ross Gay’s Year of Delightful Living (from The Seattle Times)
Hanif Abdurraqib’s Go Ahead in the Rain is a Biography of A Tribe Called Quest and It’s Also Much More (from The Seattle Times)
No Answers at All: The Futility of Love in Catherine Lacey's The Answers (from The Los Angeles Review of Books)
Inner Soundtracks and Apparitions: Joe Bonomo’s Selected Work (from The Los Angeles Review of Books)
Uproot by Jace Clayton (from The Rumpus)
The Contradictory Desires of Popular Music (from Electric Literature)
Violation, Collected Essays by Sallie Tisdale (from Zoetic Press' Rhizomatic Ideas)
Felicity Fenton Dives into Social Media Addiction (from The Portland Mercury)
Everything You Know About Poetry Is Wrong: Matthew Zapruder’s New Book, Why Poetry, Is Here to Help (from The Portland Mercury)
Nicole Krauss Transforms What We Think We Know: The Novelist’s Latest, Forest Dark, Questions Everything (from The Portland Mercury)
Elena Passarello’s Animal Collection (from The Portland Mercury)
Sarah Manguso’s Book of Dread (from The Portland Mercury)
Going Underground: Portland’s Justin Hocking Explores the Subterranean (from The Portland Mercury)
Pretentiousness by Dan Fox review (from The Rumpus)
Loving the Questions: Aaron Gilbreath Considers Everything We Don’t Know (from The Portland Mercury)
Tear Research: The Crying Book(from The Portland Mercury)
Diane Williams’ Rich Kid Lit (from The Portland Mercury)
Sardonic Women, Clueless Nice Guys: And Other People Like You (from The Portland Mercury)
Teen Angst Turns Inward in See You in the Morning (from The Portland Mercury)
Alicia Jo Rabins Goes to Divinity School (from The Portland Mercury)
The Art of Cruelty: The Celebrated (and Ignored) Stories of Joy Williams (from The Portland Mercury)
Valeria Luiselli’s Eccentric Dental Records (from The Portland Mercury)
Dear Diary: Sarah Manguso Ends Her 25-Year Affair (from The Portland Mercury)
Subterranean Pop: Bruce Pavitt’s Notes From The Underground (from The Portland Mercury)
Running Up That Hill: Life and Death on Boyfriend Mountain (from The Portland Mercury)
Books of the Year, 2015-2018 (from The Portland Mercury)
Soundings Book Reviews (selected reviews for Orca Books, 2004-2013)
MUSIC WRITING:
Selected Brief Music Blurbs (from The Portland Mercury)
Albums of My Year, 2009-2022 (from assorted publications)
Goodnight, Sweet Prince: Remembering His Purple Reign (from The Portland Mercury)
The Gossip's Standing in the Way of Control (from March Danceness)
Advance Base’s Daisy-Chained Vignettes (from The Portland Mercury)
Record Review: EMA Exile in the Outer Ring (from The Portland Mercury)
Karl Blau Gets a Little Bit Country: The Experimental Songwriter Makes His Foray into Accessibility on Introducing (from The Portland Mercury)
What it Takes to Operate a Tape-Based Record Label in 2015 (from Performer Magazine)
The Intimate World of Diane Cluck (from American Songwriter)
Advanced Falconry: The Flight of Mutual Benefit (from Performer Magazine)
Record Review: Jessica Dennison + Jones (from The Portland Mercury)
Tower of Meaning: The Baroque Dub of Colleen (from The Portland Mercury)
Critic’s Pick: Beck's Stereopathetic Soulmanure (from The Portland Mercury)
Critic’s Pick: Taj Mahal’s Giant Step(from The Portland Mercury)
Critic’s Pick: The Mountain Goat's Coroner’s Gambit (from The Portland Mercury)
Critic’s Pick: Big Thief (from The Portland Mercury)
Everything is New: Briana Marela Goes Overground (from The Portland Mercury)
Natural Disasters: Pain, Beauty, and Chelsea Wolfe (from The Portland Mercury)
Touching the Void: EMA Looks Into the Future (from The Portland Mercury)
Sofas in the Freeway: The Unlikely Pop Songs of Stephen Steinbrink (from The Portland Mercury)
The Other Side of the Mirror: Ruby Fray’s Realized Potential (from The Portland Mercury)
Don’t Think About Rap Class (from The Portland Mercury)
Sinister and Playful: The Dueling Forces of Poppet (from The Portland Mercury)
Phases of the Moon The Resurrection of Dead Moon (from The Portland Mercury)
Interview with Owen Ashworth (from Performer Magazine)
The Stuff That Pierces Hearts: The Importance of Lydia Tomkiw and Algebra Suicide (from Rascal)
Letters With Mixtapes (2009-2012 music blog)
PERFORMANCE, EVENTS, & VISUAL ARTS:
Mother Foucault’s Airstream Poetry Festival (from The Portland Mercury’s Fall Arts & Entertainment Guide)
Sanity TV Puts Autumn Knight’s Audience on the Spot (from The Portland Mercury’s Blogtown)
The Deceptive Simplicity of Torrey Pines(from The Portland Mercury)
Lit Crawl: Now More Than Ever (from The Portland Mercury’s Blogtown)
Wordstock’s Challenge: Too Many Readers (from The Portland Mercury’s Fall Arts & Entertainment Guide)
Read to Me: Our Picks for Tin House’s Summer Reading Series (from The Portland Mercury)
The Pleasing Minimalism of Kate Berube: How the Author Went from Illustrating Iconic Portland Zines to Taking Over Children’s Literature (from The Portland Mercury)
The Movie Inside My Head: The Gun Show’s Gun Conversation (from The Portland Mercury)
Literary Portland: A Brief Tour (from The Portland Mercury’s Fall Arts & Entertainment Guide)
Let the Ghosts In: The Blue Door (from The Portland Mercury)
Tin House’s Perfect Literary Summer Hangout (from The Portland Mercury)
Community Theater, PTSD, and Ronald Reagan (from The Portland Mercury’s Blogtown)
Clone Club: Two Kates’ Age of Anxiety (from The Portland Mercury)
Dreamed-Up Dynasty: Lenae Day Makes Hollywood History (from The Portland Mercury)
Big Big Wednesday is a Beautiful Object: The Local Literary Journal Looks to the Future (from The Portland Mercury’s Fall Arts & Entertainment Guide)
Gimme Fiction! (And Nonfiction.) (And Poetry.): Tin House’s Outdoor Summer Readings Deliver It All (from The Portland Mercury)
Subverting the Unholy History of Morality Plays (from The Portland Mercury’s Blogtown)
Fonograph Editions’ All Vinyl Library: A New Record Label (for Writers) Debuts With Eileen Myles (from The Portland Mercury)
Pitch Black: Portland’s Black Cake Records Turns Writing Into Sound Art (from The Portland Mercury)
The Age of the Maturing Zinester (from Broken Pencil)
Where We Were and Where We Want to Be (from Zine World)
On Ernst Lubitsch's Design for Living (from A Great and Terrible Golden Age, Issue Two: Movies of the 1930s)
INTERVIEWS:
The Stories We Tell About Guantánamo: An Interview with Sarah Mirk (from Propeller)
Judith Arcana’s Biography of Activist Grace Paley Sees Her Whole Life (from The Portland Mercury)
Behind the Zines: An Interview with Russ Forster of 8-Track Mind (from Riot Fest)
Behind the Zines: An Interview with Sarah Mirk (from Riot Fest)
Behind the Zines: An Interview with Jonas Cannon (from Riot Fest)
Portland Literary Detective Paul Collins (from The Portland Mercury)
Speak, Memory: Dao Strom Gives the Past a Soundtrack (from The Portland Mercury)
This is Everything: Welcome to the Disparate Worlds of Writer Casey Fuller (from The Portland Mercury’s Fall Arts & Entertainment Guide)
Experimental in a Good Way: A.M. O'Malley’s Expecting Something Else Defies Genre (from The Portland Mercury)
From a Tent in the Wallowas, a Gallery of Decay: Justin Hocking on Book Arts, Memoir, and Global Warming (from The Portland Mercury)
Housing Hyperbole: Portland Poet Thomas Mowe Lies to His Friends (from The Portland Mercury)