abreu & Giles 3/15 @ Stumptown Division

Switch No. 50: manuel arturo abreu & Samantha Giles

Where: Stumptown Division, 4525 SE Division St., Portland

When: Friday, March 15, 5:30 p.m. PROMPT

It's our 50th Switch reading!!! We are super glad to celebrate it with Samantha Giles from Oakland and Portland's own manuel arturo abreu--both have new books. Start your weekend right. Come early to get a coffee, we'll start sharp.

manuel arturo abreu (b. 1991, Santo Domingo) is a poet and artist from the Bronx, currently living/working from a garage in southeast Portland. With text, ephemeral sculpture, and photography, they work in a process of magical thinking with attention to ritual aspects of aesthetics. Recent projects and engagements with MoMA (NYC), the Frye (Seattle), Yale Union (Portland), AA|LA Gallery (LA), and Rhizome + the New Museum (online). abreu is the author of three books, most recently the Oregon Book Award creative nonfiction finalist Incalculable Loss. They also co-facilitate home school, a free pop-up art school in Portland. https://manuelarturoabr.eu



Samantha Giles grew up in an industrial section of Santa Monica, California, and currently lives in the flatlands of Oakland. She holds a BSW from San Francisco State University and an MFA from Mills College. Giles is the author of Total Recall (Krupskaya,2019.) Previous work includes hurdis addo (Displaced Press, 2011) and deadfalls and snares (Futurepoem, 2014), both of which won CA Conrad's Sexiest Poem in the years they were published. She was also a Headlands Center for the Arts Resident in 2017. An arts administrator, editor and curator, Giles has been the Director of Small Press Traffic since 2009.

Chao & Boykoff + Wahnetah 12/1 @ Project Object

Switch No. 49: Geneva Chao and Jules Boykoff, with art by Jules and Jessi Wahnetah

Where: Project Object, 2502 NE Sandy Blvd.

When: Saturday, December 1, 3 p.m.

We are super excited to have this event at Project Object, which supports women, LGBTQ and POC artists and designers. In addition to our readers, the event will feature beautiful wooden box lamps/mirrors picturing activist heroes, handmade by Jules and Jessi Wahnetah (photo below!) plus Project Object's incredible store collection of art and artifacts--just in time for local holiday shopping.

Genève/Geneva Chao is the author of three books of poetry (one of us is wave one of us is shore, a bilingual discours amoureux; Hillary Is Dreaming, a dream journal of the 2016 election; and émigré, a history of emigration and loss in English, French, Guernesais, and Hawaiian pidgin) and several translations. Chao lives in Los Angeles.

Jules Boykoff is the author of three books of poetry – Fireworks (Tinfish Press, 2018), Hegemonic Love Potion (Factory School, 2009), and Once Upon a Neoliberal Rocket Badge (Edge Books, 2006) – and winner of the annual CAConrad Sexiest Poetry Award. He lives in Portland with Kaia Sand and Jessi Wahnetah, and teaches politics at Pacific University. More at www.julesboykoff.org






Jessi Wahnetah is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. She lives in Portland with her three cats, chicken, and leopard gecko, and attends St. Mary’s Academy.

Eckes, Mutschlecner, Ogi, Strom 10/27 @ Ford Food and Drink

Switch No. 48:  Ryan Eckes, David Mutschlecner, Alyssa Ogi and Dao Strom 

Where: Ford Food and Drink 2505 SE 11th Ave, Portland

When: Saturday, October 27, 7 pm sharp 

Ryan Eckes is a poet from Philadelphia. His latest book, General Motors (Split Lip Press, 2018), is about labor and the influence of public and private transportation on city life. Other books include Valu-Plus and Old News (Furniture Press 2014, 2011). His poetry can be found in Tripwire, Slow Poetry in America Newsletter, Entropy and elsewhere. In recent years, he has worked as an adjunct professor and labor organizer in education. He won a Pew Fellowship in 2016.  

David Mutschlecner is a poet who lives and works in New Mexico. His books include Icon, Esse, Sign, and Enigma and Light, all published by Ahsahta Press. He is interested in theopoetics, where the poetic imagination breathes new life into philosophical-theology. In 2011 he won an award from the Fund for Poetry. His first book of prose, called Poetic Faith, was published by the Lune Press in 2016. He has been frequently published in the journal New American Writing.

Alyssa Ogi writes and teaches in Portland. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon, and her poetry can be found in Best New Poets 2017, The Crab Orchard Review, and other journals. 

Dao Strom is a writer, artist, and musician whose work explores hybridity through melding disparate “voices”—written, sung, visual—to contemplate the intersection of personal and collective histories. She is the author of a bilingual poetry/art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else (Ajar Press, 2018), an experimental memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People + music album East/West (2015), and two books of fiction, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys (2006) and Grass Roof, Tin Roof (2003). She is the editor of diaCRITICS and co-founder of the arts collectives, She Who Has No Master(s) and De-Canon. www.daostrom.com 

Gluck, Hasegawa, Quinn, Seidenberg, & Fry 9/29 @ Ford Food & Drink

Switch No. 47: We're thrilled to host Robert Glück, Kreg Hasegawa, Hajara Quinn, and Steven Seidenberg; plus a Q&A with artist Jolyn Fry

Where: Ford Food and Drink
2505 SE 11th Ave, Portland 

When: Saturday, September 29, 7 pm sharp


Robert Glück served as director of San Francisco State University’s Poetry Center, co-director of Small Press Traffic Literary Center, and associate editor at Lapis Press. His books include two novels, Jack the Modernist and Margery Kempe, two books of stories, Elements and Denny Smith, a book of poems and short prose, Reader, and with Kathleen Fraser, a book of prose poems, In Commemoration of the Visit. With Camille Roy, Mary Berger, and Gail Scott, he edited Biting the Error: Writers on Narrative. Glück prefaced Between Life and Death, a book of Frank Moore’s paintings, and he made the film Aliengnosis with Dean Smith. Most recently, Glück published Communal Nude: Collected Essays, and Parables, an editioned artist book with Cuban artists Jose Angel Toirac and Meira Marrero Díaz. In 2019, Margery Kempe will be republished by New York Review of Books Classics. Glück lives “high on a hill” in San Francisco.

Kreg Hasegawa is the author of two chapbooks: The New Crustacean (2006) and 3 Tales (2018). New work is due out in Tether. He is the editor of Smoke Specs, a chapbook press. He lives in Seattle and works as a dutiful public librarian.

Hajara Quinn lives in Portland OR where she works as the Program Director at the Independent Publishing Resource Center. Her poems have appeared in Gramma Daily, Gulf Coast, The Volta and Sixth Finch. Her first book, Coolth (Big Lucks 2018), was the winner of the Ruth Stone First Book Prize.

Writer and artist Steven Seidenberg is the author of Situ (Black Sun Lit, 2018), Itch (RAW ArT Press, 2014), Null Set (Spooky Actions Books, 2015), and numerous chapbooks of verse and aphorism, including Duration Knows No Law (ypolita press, 2016). He co-edited the three issues of pallaksch.pallaksch. (Instance Press, 2014-2018), is a member of the Right Window artists collective, and has had shows of his visual work in the US, Mexico, Japan, Germany and Italy. His collections of photographs include Pipevalve: Berlin (Lodima Press, 2017) and Choshi (Littlefield's, 2017).

Jolyn Fry was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She graduated with honors from Pennsylvania School of Art and Design in 1996. Since moving to Portland, Oregon, the following year, she has exhibited her continually evolving body of work in many group and solo shows. Whether depicting literal, physical landscapes or those of a more personal, emotional nature, Jolyn says, 'Surrendering to my artistic process grants me the kindest perspective of myself and the life that moves around me.’ She currently works as a teacher at Radius Community Art Studio in SE Portland.


*photo courtesy of Migyoung Won

Arterian, Lee, Tran April 2 @ Ford Food and Drink

Switch No. 46: We're thrilled to host Diana Arterian, Janice Lee and Stacey Tran

Where: Ford Food and Drink
2505 SE 11th Ave, Portland 

When: Monday, April 2, 7 pm sharp

Diana Arterian is the author of Playing Monster :: Seiche (1913 Press, 2017), the chapbooks With Lightness & Darkness and Other Brief Pieces (Essay Press, 2017) and Death Centos (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013), and coeditor of Among Margins: Critical & Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics (Ricochet, 2016). Her creative work has been recognized with fellowships from the Banff Centre, Caldera, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo; and her poetry, essays, and translations have appeared in Asymptote, BOMB, Black Warrior Review, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. Born and raised in Arizona, Arterian currently resides in Los Angeles, where she serves as poetry editor at Noemi Press and is a PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California.

Janice Lee is the author of KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), Reconsolidation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2015), and The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). She writes about the filmic long take, slowness, interspecies communication, the apocalypse, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? She is Founder & Executive Editor of Entropy, Co-Publisher at Civil Coping Mechanisms, and Contributing Editor at Fanzine. After living for over 30 years in California, she recently moved from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon where she is an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Portland State University.

Stacey Tran is a writer from Portland, OR. She is the creator of Tender Table, a storytelling series about food, family, identity. She is the author of Soap for the Dogs (Gramma, 2018).

dan raphael & Anastacia-Renee 3/16 7:30 p.m. @ Ford Food and Drink

Switch No. 45 brings together two incredible performers: Anastasia-Renee from Seattle and Portland's own dan raphael

Where: Ford Food and Drink
2505 SE 11th Ave, Portland 

When: Friday, March 16, 7:30 p.m. sharp

Anastacia-Renee is the current Civic Poet of Seattle, recipient of the 2017 Artist of the Year Award, and former 2015-2017 Poet-in-Residence at Hugo House. She is the author of five books: Forget It (Black Radish Books), (v.), (Gramma Press) 26, (Dancing Girl Press), Kiss Me Doll Face (Gramma Press) and Answer(Me) (Winged City Chapbooks, Argus Press) and has received writing fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Artist Trust and Jack Straw, as well as a writing residency from Ragdale. Her theatrical mixed-media project, 9 Ounces: A One Woman Show, is a multivalent play unapologetically downward dogging its way through class, race, culture, oppression, depression, survival and epiphany. Her cross-genre writing has appeared in the anthologies: Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism, Sinister Wisdom: Black Lesbians—We Are the Revolution, Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks and literary magazines in and print and online: Split this Rock, Painted Bride Quarterly, Crab Creek Review, Seattle Review, Bone Bouquet, Duende, Synaethesia, Banqueted, Torch and many more. She teaches poetry and creative writing at Hugo House and Seattle University and lives as a superhero in Seattle with her wife and dog.

For over three decades, dan raphael’s been active in the Northwest as poet, performer, editor and reading host. The Closer You Get to Nowhere, his 20th book, will come out this fall from Last Word Press, which published Everyone in This Movie Gets Paid in June 2016. Current poems appear in Caliban, Otoliths, Courtship of Birds, Blackbox Manifold and In Between Hangovers. He is prose editor of Unlikely Stories, hosts the Fo Po Poetry series, and writes & records a news poem every Wednesday for the KBOO Evening News.

Brolaski, Larsen, & Tillinghast 1/13 7 p.m. @ IPRC

Switch No. 44 pairs Julian Talamantez Brolaski from Santa Barbara, David Larsen from New York City, & Julia Clare Tillinghast from right here in Portland...

Where: IPRC, 318 SE Main St., Portland, OR

When: Saturday, January 13, 7 p.m. sharp

$5 donation at the door; no one turned away

Julian Talamantez Brolaski is poet and country singer, the author of Macho Chango (forthcoming Wave Books 2019), Of Mongrelitude (Wave Books 2017), Advice for Lovers (City Lights 2012), gowanus atropolis (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011), and co-editor of NO GENDER: Reflections on the Life & Work of kari edwards (Litmus Press / Belladonna Books 2009).  Julian is the lead singer and rhythm guitarist in the bands Juan & the Pines (NYC) and The Western Skyline (Oakland).  It currently lives in Santa Barbara, researching and editing a book on the Mescalero Apache initiation ceremony with its grandmother, Inés Talamantez.

David Larsen is a US poet and translator of pre-modern Arabic literature. His article on the prison poetry of ‘Alī ibn al-Jahm (d. 863 CE) appeared in a 2016 Festschrift for Everett Rowson, and in 2017 his translation of the Names of the Lion of Ibn Khālawayh (d. 980) was brought out in a new edition by Wave Books. His verse collection The Thorn came out in 2005 from Faux Press. At The Switch, he'll read cat poems dating to the 8th-11th centuries. David Larsen lives in New York City.

Julia Clare Tillinghast is from Michigan. She studied poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and Virginia Tech, where she received her MFA. She has spent a number of years, on and off, living in Istanbul, Turkey, and is Co-Translator, along with Richard Tillinghast, of Dirty August, a Selected Poems of the experimental 20th-century Turkish poet Edip Cansever. In addition to translations in Agni, Guernica, Arts & Letters, Poetry Daily, The Boston Review & others, she has had or has forthcoming original poems in 3:AM Magazine, The Bakery, Fence Magazine, H_NGM_N, Passages North, Pank, Pleiades, Rattle, Salt Hill, Sixth Finch, Sou'Wester, and Tin House. She lives in Portland with her partner, Matthew, and children, Owen & Hamza.