Brooklyn-based Akashic Books is most widely known for championing authors of urban fiction and political nonfiction that falls outside the mainstream, hosting imprints like the Akashic Books Noir series, Punk Planet Books, and Dennis Cooper’s Little House on the Bowery series. Now, to celebrate 10 years of publishing marginalized and outlandishly talented literary innovators, Akashic […]
Evan James
Posted inBooks
OurSpace: Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture
by Christine Harold
Readers interested in the effect of the media environment on our lives will appreciate OurSpace: Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture, a critical examination of the public discourse surrounding the influence of multinational corporations, marketing, and branding. At the center of this examination is a reconsideration of the insurgent cultural and political movement loosely known […]
Posted inBooks
I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence by Amy Sedaris
Picking up I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, Amy Sedaris’ new funhouse of recipes, crafts, social etiquette, and entertaining in general, is kind of like going into the apartment of a lovely, agreeably eccentric Greenwich Village shut-in: There are pantyhose craft projects and drawings of turtles scattered all over the place, and there are […]
Posted inBooks
A Fictional History of the United States
Like A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, A Fictional History of the United States (with Huge Chunks Missing) aims to give a voice to the voiceless, and to feature stories regularly excluded from popular histories of the nation. The world of fiction that unfolds includes everything from a transvestite prostitute version […]
Posted inArt
It’s About Time
Everything You Need to Know About This Year’s Time-Based Art Festival
by Chas Bowie, Alison Hallett, Evan James, and Justin Wescoat Sanders
Posted inBooks
Beasts of No Nation
Reading Uzodinma Iweala’s debut novel, one feels a sense of excitement about the arrival of such a competent new voice in fiction. There is a steady, insightful, lucid quality to his story of a child soldier in Africa that suggests a studied commitment to the craft of storytelling and a talent that outweighs the necessity […]
Posted inQueer
Who the Hell Cares Where We Are?
The Empire’s New Clothes
“Where are we?” The Mercury’s Queer Issue
Posted inBooks
The Bruce Benderson Interview
The Outrageous and Acclaimed Author on His Newest Book, Why He Loves Portland, and His Fishnet Underwear
The Outrageous and Acclaimed Author on His Newest Book, Why He Loves Portland, and His Fishnet Underwear
Posted inUncategorized
Northern Comfort
Andy Ricker Brings Thai Street Food to Portland
The smell of roasted chicken, lemongrass, and coconut curry soup wafts through the crisp December air as I approach Pok Pok. I came here a week ago for a delicious introduction to Thai street food, and now I’m back to learn more. “I went to Thailand for the first time in 1988; I spent three […]
Posted inBooks
Saint Morrissey
Have you ever been at a party, enjoying a little free-range mingling, when suddenly a wild-eyed young man corners you and talks your ear off for hours, determined to baptize you in a pool of esoteric knowledge about his favorite band, book, or film? Sometimes, if your attacker is attractive enough, being stuck in that […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Gunz Yo
Dear Wendy‘s Firearms, Dandies, and Shootouts
We Americans like to see guns in movies. And we prefer the most violent and bizarre showcasing of guns possible: schoolboys and guns, gang members and guns, aliens and guns, blonde supermodels and guns. But Dear Wendy takes the cake—it combines teens and guns in a way that’s both original and unrealistic. The film takes […]
