First Wednesday Reading April 1: Verlena Orr, Valentina Gnup, Judith Arcana, Liz Nakazawa April 1, 2009

Oregon Literary Review co-hosts First Wednesdays, a series of readings, performances and wine-tasting at the Blackbird Wine Shop, 3519 NE 44th off Fremont, 7-9pm. Readers and performers interested in participating should contact Julie Mae Madsen at maemadsen [at] gmail.com with an expression of interest and sample work.

The readers/performers for April 1 are Verlena Orr, Valentina Gnup, Judith Arcana, Liz Nakazawa

Liz Nakazawa has been a freelance writer and editor since 1984 and has published articles on a variety of subjects such as health, gardening, education and the environment. Her work has appeared in The Oregonian, Oregon Business Magazine and the Christian Science Monitor. Deer Drink the Moon, which was named one of the 150 books for the Oregon sesquicentennial, is her first book. The anthology highlights the poetry of 33 Oregon poets.
Verlena Orr, twice nominated for Pushcart, hails from north-central Idaho, one mountain west of Missoula, Montana. Raised on a farm, she attended grade and secondary school in Kamiah, Idaho on the NezPerce reservation. She has published 3 chapbooks and one full-length collection of poems and work has appeared in small magazines and journals from California to the UK. Has lived in Portland since 1963 and holds an MFA from University of Montana. She will be reading from latest chapbook, “One More Time From the Beginning."

Valentina Gnup was born in Santa Monica, and lived in Santa Barbara, California until 2002 when she received her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University. She then moved to North Carolina, where she taught writing at Greensboro College for five years and met her second husband. In 2005 her chapbook Sparrow Octaves won the NC Writers’ Network Mary Belle Campbell Book Award. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals, including Nimrod, Mary Journal, Chelsea, Brooklyn Review and Crab Orchard Review. She has two adult daughters and she is married to the poet John Blackard. They live in Portland—just blocks from the Blackbird Wine Shop.

Judith Arcana writes poems, stories, essays and books. She’s just published 4th Period English, a chapbook of poems about immigration and related themes. Her most recent full-length book is the poetry collection What if your mother; among her prose books is Grace Paley’s Life Stories, A Literary Biography. Judith lives in Portland’s Hollywood district, in an apartment above the library. Visit juditharcana.com.
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ALSO
upcoming
April 21st
at Krakow Koffeehouse, 3990 N. Interstate, 7-8:30pm.
Rosanne Parry, Dan Raphael and Christy Caballero
Dan Raphael enjoys writing and performing poetry. He is the author of 16 books, including the re-released Bop Grit Storm Cafe, and Breath Test. His poems have appeared in around 300 publications and sites, recently in Portland Review, Heavy Bear, Knock Journal, Otoliths and Writer's Dojo. But sometimes it’s best to see Dan live, in places like Wordstock, Burning Word, Powell’s, Portland Jazz Festival and the Richard Hugo House. Dan works for the dmv; arranges poetry readings; reads too much news and analyses; and brews, drinks & reviews beer.

All it took was one day of helping out no her best friend’s ranch in eastern Oregon to convince Rosanne Parry that being a cowboy was not her true calling—and stock horses everywhere are grateful. The lessons in calf roping didn’t stick but the stark beauty of eastern Oregon and the kindness and generosity of the ranching community made a lasting impression. Rosanne found a similar rapport among the military families she knew when her husband, an army officer, was deployed to the First Gulf War. Writing HEART OF A SHEPHERD allowed her to combine her experiences with both communities. Rosanne now lives in an old farmhouse in Portland, Oregon with bunnies and chickens and her husband and four kids. She wrote this story in her tree house.


Christy A. Caballero is a freelance writer and photographer, who lives a couple of deer trails off the beaten track in Oregon. The woods, the sound of the river, or the sight of the ocean can all put a smile on her face. Her work has earned national awards, including the National Federation of Press Women Communications Contest and the Dog Writer's Association of America "Maxwell" Award. Christy has contributed stories to several volumes of A Cup of Comfort. She is a daily newspaper correspondent, with numerous print magazine pieces, including centerpiece features for Alaska Business Monthly.