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“When you call my name, it’s like a little prayer. I’m down on my knees, I wanna take you there.”
Its shelves are filled, the stage is built, and now Mother Foucault’s wants to buy. The vintage bookshop announced Tuesday that it’s seizing a chance to purchase the building it currently occupies, at 715 SE Grand. That opportunity expires on September 21, if it can’t raise $300,000 for a downpayment. Built in 1892, the Nathaniel […]
John and Rafael Hart, the couple behind North Portland’s worker-owned, queer-focused Always Here bookstore, are planning to stick around for the long haul. After about a year and a half operating their store as a pop-up, Always Here recently reopened in the old Craft Factory storefront on the corner of N Williams at Going Street. […]
You’ve probably seen Rupert Kinnard’s smile if you’ve passed the downtown Portland mural on NW Couch at Broadway. A wheelchair user since a car accident in 1996, Kinnard sits between Kathleen Saadat and Lynn Nakamoto, two other icons of Portland’s queer history. Look closer, to the bottom of the mural, and you’ll see two smaller […]
As simple pleasures are gay and hiking is gay, it feels easy to declare that the sport of rockhounding is also a gay activity. And the Pacific Northwest is home to the pros. For this guide, I have collected some recommendations for where you might find beautiful rocks, and eventually build your own rainbow. Let […]
You’ve probably seen Rupert Kinnard’s smile if you’ve passed the downtown Portland mural on NW Couch at Broadway. A wheelchair user since a car accident in 1996, Kinnard sits between Kathleen Saadat and Lynn Nakamoto, two other icons of Portland’s queer history. Look closer, to the bottom of the mural, and you’ll see two smaller […]
We have a new cadre of Oregon Book Award winners, the prized title bestowed upon the state’s storytellers by letters-loving nonprofit Literary Arts. In addition to seven awards for works in specific genre categories, the organization also recognized the founders of two reading-focused efforts—Street Books and A Kids Co.—at a special ceremony Monday night. Street […]
Emma Pattee’s debut novel Tilt takes place over the course of a single day, the day that the decades-overdue Cascadia earthquake rocks Portland. It unfolds via the wry inner monologue of Annie, who is a swole 37 weeks pregnant and shopping for a crib at IKEA when it all comes down. Tilt follows her on […]
It all began with a tweet. In October 2023, weeks after Israel began bombing Gaza, the writer Omar El Akkad shared a video showing a destroyed city street in Gaza. El Akkad wrote, “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to […]
[Read all of the articles in our Love/Sex issue HERE! Looking for a print copy? Look at this handy-dandy map!—eds.] The writer Garth Greenwell once wrote about attending a lecture at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and hearing a writer say that an ideal sex scene would be a single sentence “they sat down on the sofa…” […]
Portland as ground zero for a zombie plague. Bisexual exes on a romcom food and wine tour. And how pointless it is to try to guess what happens next in a MIranda July novel. It’s the Mercury’s favorite books of 2024!
While looking through some old boxes a few years ago, Carson Ellis found several pages of diary entries from 2001, documenting her first week living in Portland. The journals detailed the 25-year-old Ellis new life in the city, as she moved into a “scrappy but cheap and fabulous” Southeast Portland warehouse, smoked a lot of […]
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