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Books
Posted inQueer Guide 2025

Always Here Bookshop Finally Comes Home

After two years operating as a pop-up, this queer bookstore has a new, permanent North Portland space. 
Avatar photo Taylor Griggs

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. […]

Posted inQueer Guide 2025

Rediscover Portland Cartoonist Rupert Kinnard and 50 Years of Black, Gay Comic History

A new collection of his work explores his artistry and activism.
Avatar photo Kjerstin Johnson

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 […]

Posted inOutdoors

How to Rockhound a Rainbow of Rocks in Oregon and Washington

Geology enthusiast Alison Jean Cole on where to find the geological equivalent of a hot trans man.
Avatar photo Alison Jean Cole

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 […]

Posted inComics

Rediscover Portland Cartoonist Rupert Kinnard and 50 Years of Black, Gay Comic History

A new collection of his work explores his artistry and activism.
Avatar photo Kjerstin Johnson

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 […]

Posted inBooks

Oregon Book Awards: Literary Arts Recognizes Genre Standouts and Reading Advocates

Portlanders Kimberly King Parsons and Charity E. Yoro are among the 2025 winners.
Avatar photo Suzette Smith

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 […]

Posted inBooks

Author Q & A: Omar El Akkad on Gaza, Power, and the Stories Empires Steal

The award-winning author discusses his urgent new book and why we must resist the impulse to forget.
Avatar photo Emma Pattee

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 […]

Posted inLove/Sex 2025 ❤️🍆🍑

Reading the Waves Fucks

Lidia Yuknavitch’s newest nonfiction celebrates the body, in all its slippery, squishy glory.
Avatar photo Emma Pattee

[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…” […]

Posted inBooks

The Mercury’s Favorite Books of 2024

On this list, revolutionary writings share space with Portland zombies and memories of the Barefoot Contessa
Avatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photo Andrea Damewood, Cameron Crowell, Melissa Locker, Suzette Smith, Blair Stenvick, and Joe Streckert

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!

Posted inVisual Art

Carson Ellis Draws a Snapshot of Old Portland in Her New Diary Memoir, One Week in January

Avatar photo Taylor Griggs

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 […]

Posted inComedy

Ian Karmel’s Memoir T-Shirt Swim Club Covers the Comedian’s Weight Loss and the Immaculate Snacks of His Youth

His two stand-up shows at Revolution Hall will steer clear of memoir material, but probably still include funny party stories.
Avatar photo Suzette Smith

Shortly after I finished T-Shirt Swim Club, I worked out. Which isn’t to say that the first book by comedian Ian Karmel advised me to do that. There’s just a genuine pump-up quality to Karmel’s memoir, which he co-wrote with his sister, Dr. Alisa Karmel.  T-Shirt Swim Club is, as Karmel described to the Mercury […]

Posted inLGBTQIA+

Author Q&A: Intersex Activist Alicia Roth Weigel on Her New Memoir Inverse Cowgirl

A visit to Powell’s City of Books uncovered no books about intersex experience, so she vowed to write one.
Avatar photo Kye Grant

A crushing visit to Portland’s very own Powell’s City of Books inspired Alicia Roth Weigel to write a memoir about her experience as an intersex activist. We spoke with her about the book and a new documentary she’s featured in, ahead of a book signing at PSU’s 5th Ave Cinema.

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