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In 2017, Judith Arcana sent a postcard to the old Mercury offices in Old Town/Chinatown. I was the arts editor at the time—it was my first real journalism job—and after many stories covering local theater (I still think about the plays I saw at Shaking the Tree) and books (a reading at Powell’s followed by […]
Beloved Portland author Ursula K. Le Guin’s legacy will be celebrated and discussed at this year’s Portland Book Festival. EUAN MONAGHAN/STRUCTO I knew the pandemic isolation had really gotten dire when I started missing everything about in-person author events, including those inevitable nine words that can sink an otherwise good time: “This is more of […]
Courtesy of Graywolf Press It seems impossible, but Maggie Nelson’s new book On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint made me feel better about climate change. It also made me feel worse, because to get through the book, which examines the idea of freedom through themes like art and drugs, I had to read […]
Looking to get cultured? From a bookstore in a welcoming old house to the oldest art museum on the west coast, Portland has the goods. Here’s where to go to see art and grow your book collection. Where To See An Art Show Portland Art Museum (1219 SW Park) The Portland Art Museum is the […]
BRYAN AULICK Two years ago, Mockingbird writer and longtime Portland mystery writer Chelsea Cain deleted her Twitter account. She’d faced a cycle of internet outrage that had nothing to do with alleged social justice warriors and everything to do with reactionary intolerance toward women makers and thinkers. (Just ask Anita Sarkeesian and Zoë Quinn.) The […]
Chelsea Cain returns to Twitter and comics with her new Image series Man-Eaters.
GeekCraft Expo When GeekCraft Expo launched in Portland in 2016, the Mercury’s preview, which I wrote, was disparaged and derided on Reddit. I mention this not as a sympathy-grab—as a woman with a public-facing byline, I’m no stranger to inducing ire simply by existing—but because in my experience, to be disparaged on Reddit is to […]
The triumphant return of Portland’s most accessible geek gathering.
“That’s all you have on at the end of the day, the music and your shoes.” That’s how Viva Las Vegas, the subject of the documentary Thank You for Supporting the Arts, describes her day job at Mary’s Club. But when the Portland stripper/writer/musician discusses her philosophy about stripping, it’s clear there’s much more at […]
Viva Las Vegas discusses financial independence, stripping as art, and positive depictions of sex workers.
I’m Photoshopped onto New York Review of Books editor Robert Silvers here, but this is really what my desk looks like. Suzette Smith Dearest Readers, After almost four years of dedicated feminist rants and the only job that has ever taken full advantage of my multiple dubiously useful arts degrees, today is my last day […]
AUTHOR PHOTO BY SOPHIA SHALMIYEV Leni Zumas’ Red Clocks envisions a dystopian future that could happen tomorrow: A personhood law grants citizenship rights to fetuses, outlaws abortion, and bans in-vitro fertilization. Single adults will soon be banned from adoption and intrauterine insemination (IUI). Women seeking abortions in Canada are stopped at the border’s “Pink Wall.” […]
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