Carlos Reyes

Carlos Reyes is an Irish-American poet and translator. His books of poetry include The Shingle Weaver’s Journal, a finalist for the Elliston Prize; Nightmarks, and A Suitcase Full of Crows. He has also published nine chapbooks including The Windows, The Prisoner, The Orange Letters, At Doolin Quay, Open Doors, and most recently a translation of Edwin Madrid’s Puertas abiertas.

Hundreds of his poems appeared in national and international literary journals and anthologies including most recently, Let Us Drink To the River, an anthology of river poems, and O Poetry! Oh Poesía! Poems of Oregon and Perú. His poem, "Bridge of the World," appears along with other poetry on Max Cars and Tri-Met buses through Portland’s Poetry in Motion program sponsored by Literary Arts, Tri-Met and the Poetry Society of America.

Carlos recently completed a translation of José Martí’s Escenas norteamericanas (North American Scenes), a book which will be published in Havana, Cuba. And he has translated Poemas de la isla (Island Poems) by Canary Island poet Josephina de la Torre, scheduled for publication by Eastern Washington University Press.

Reyes has been a Yaddo Fellow, a fellow at the Fundación Valparaíso (Mojácar, Spain), and received an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship for poetry. Since 1964, he has been the editor and publisher of Trash House Books, Inc. He is a founding editor of Hubbub: A Magazine of Poetry, and is currently on the editorial board of Ar Mhuin na Muice (On A Pig’s Back), a journal of Irish news, music and culture.

Richard Hoyt

Richard Hoyt is the author of twenty-one mysteries and thrillers; two under the alias of Nicholas van Pelt. His first novel, Decoys, a John Denson mystery, was published in 1980. Since then, he has published seven John Denson mysteries and eight James Burlane international thrillers.

Richard, born in Hermiston, Oregon, grew up on a small farm outside Umatilla, Oregon. His father was a moonshiner and a rodeo cowboy; his mother was manager of the school cafeteria. He has a Master of Science in journalism from the University of Oregon and a PhD in American studies from the University of Hawaii. He served as a counterintelligence agent for the United States Army and was a fellow in international editing and reporting at the Washington Journalism Center. He served briefly as a Washington correspondent for newspapers in the Pacific Northwest and was a reporter for two years for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and three years for the Honolulu Advertiser. He taught journalism and mass media courses at the University of Maryland, College Park, and for six years at Lewis and Clark College in Portland.

In researching his thrillers, I learned that he has traveled to Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, France, Morocco, Mexico, Guatemala, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Gibraltar, Canada, Jamaica, England, Portugal, Hong Kong, Brazil, the Soviet Union, the Netherlands, Spain, and Belize. His last overseas trip to he Philippines lasted over three years. In 1984, he rode Soviet trains from Nadhodka, near Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan to Finland. In 1987, he rode riverboats from the headwaters of the Amazon to the Atlantic Ocean.

Richard’s novel, Siege, won the American Mystery Award as the best espionage novel of 1987. His latest novel, Stomp, set in 1957, is an existential mystery and a coming of age story. It is largely autobiographical, based on Hoyt's growing up in Umatilla. The book deals with true love, a series of rapes, a bit of stalking, near-death train-proximity sex, a murder attempt (by the heroes), ruined lives, a body found after forty years, and the return of the exiled author in time for his appearance tonight, one more stop on an extended book tour.

Jane Glazer

Jane Glazer grew up in small-town Iowa, in a large family, among animals and books. Her father was a veterinarian; her mother an artist. Jane was widowed at 30 but went back to earn an MA in English Literature while raising three children. After a Fulbright year in Dublin, Ireland, and a two-year Peace Corps stint in South America, she taught in Eugene and Portland schools for twenty years. During that time, she began to publish her poetry in small journals.

Her first book of poems, Some Trick of Light, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards in 1994. Her work has been described as "poems of precise observation and social conscience, informed by an educated sensibility and a first-rate mind."

Poems from Some Trick of Light take us to Ireland, Russia, Italy, and Beijing. The first poems in her book are dramatic and provide description of foreign lands with painfully stark commentary. The book’s second section delves into family memories, deaths of grandparents, and the suicide of her husband. The poems are tender and unpretentious, with no trace of the melodramatic.

A second collection, Moles and Mausoleums, is ready for publication.

Kevin Sampsell

Kevin Sampsell is the force behind Future Tense Press of Portland, which received an Oregon Literary Arts grant in 1998. Future Tense is dedicated to publishing work by people often thought of as weirdoes or outsiders. As part of his promotion effort, Kevin organized the Future Tense Reading Series at Umbra Penumbra and produced a series of readings in bookstores and cafes that mixed the spoken word with music. Debuting this month, Kevin curated and hosted The Kamikaze Reading Series at the snazzy little theater and café called Raindog in North Portland.

Kevin’s own books include How To Lose Your Mind With The Lights On, The Patricia Letters, Children’s Book, Haiku You, and Invisible Radios: re-mixes, statistics, jokes, etc. A new short story collection, Stuck, is due out from Incommunicado Press in early 2000. His poems, collages and stories have appeared in many zines and journals.

Kevin is also a part-time book critic and writes reviews and articles for Plazm, Snipehunt, Anodyne, Willamette Week, Resonance, Besmirched, and Carbon 14. Plus, he works at the famed Powell’s City of Books in Portland where he schedules author appearances.

He has a four-year-old son Zach and is married to Ritah Parrish.

Ritah Parrish

Ritah Parrish has made a name as a humorous performance poet and in 1996 and 1997 was the queen of Portland’s poetry slam scene. Her work has been cited for its outrageous jocularity combined with unflinching details of brutality.

Her first book of poetry was Ribbed For Your Pleasure. She is also the author of the short story collection, Pink Menace, which contains an assortment of harsh examinations of human perversion written in a most engagingly droll way. Reviewers have said these stories are devilishly twisted views on our inner dilemmas and complex psychological issues without any hint of misery or angst. The characters just do what they must.

Ritah starred in the one-woman shows: I Think He’s A Sociopath But the Dance is Saturday Night, and Bite Down Hard. Her latest two-woman show, Bottomless, ended its Portland run last night.

Judith Arcana

JUDITH ARCANA is the founding director of the Union Institute Center for Women in Washington, D.C., and a professor of literature and women’s studies in the union’s Graduate School. She has also taught at Loyola University of Chicago, Columbia College, and The Prison Project at the Illinois State Reformatory for Women among many other places. She has participated in workshops at Fishtrap, Flight of the Mind, and Ragdale Retreat for Writers and Artists and has produced videotapes on feminine sexuality for the Union Institute Center for Women.

Judith is the author of Our Mothers’ Daughters, Every Mother’s Son, and Celebrating Nelly. Her most recent book is Grace Paley’s Life Stories, A Literary Biography.

Judith is a longtime teacher of writing and literature and is a prolific writer of articles, essays and speeches about women’s issues, including abortion, mother-blaming, ethnic and racial stereotypes. Her work has been published in the US, England, and Canada. She is a poet and story writer as well with work appearing recently in Nimrod, CALYX, The Temple and Sojourner, ZYZZYVA, and Fireweed: Poetry of Western Oregon, as well as Poetry Motel, 13th Moon, Rhino, Exit 13, and the 1996 contest issue of Passager. She also had recent work in the Cleis Press anthology Nice Jewish Erotica and the Ann Landers Encyclopedia.

She states,

I write for pleasure, I write to satisfy my own desire for writing, my longing for it; I write for an audience, I want to engage that audience, I want anybody who reads or hears my work to be taken into the words, the images, their rhythm and meaning. Performing my work is important to me, a source of joy and exhilaration, and of course offers one way I can actually contact my audience. When I read, I'm like any other live performer, putting out and responding to the vibe/energy.

Vern Rutsala

Vern Rutsala was born in 1934 and is a native of Idaho. He received his BA from Reed College and an MFA from the University of Iowa. Nine books of his poetry have been published, four chapbooks, and over 700 poems which have appeared in literary reviews and anthologies. He has won numerous prizes including the Carolyn Kizer Poetry Prize (twice), a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Oregon Masters, and two from the National Endowment for the Arts. He received the Juniper Prize for his book, Little Known Sports, and won the Oregon Book Award in 1992 for Selected Poems.

Vern Rutsala is currently a professor of English at Lewis & Clark College.

Ronald Turco

Ronald Turco, M.D., is a widely recognized psychiatrist, author and wilderness enthusiast who lives in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of five books whose subjects range from explorations of psychiatric issues to artistic profiles and mystery novels. His book, Walk East on Burnside, is a mystery novel set in the Pacific Northwest. A well-known contributor who has been instrumental in clearing some high profile cases, Ron draws on a lifetime of experiences to weave a haunting tale of crime and criminals

Ron’s second book, The Architecture of Creativity–-Profiles Behind The Mask, uses the same methods of psychoanalysis to define the personalities of eight famous artists based on their artwork.

Closely Watched Shadows is a true crime murder mystery and a personal account of what it took to develop the psychological profile that helped convict Westley Dodd of the murders of three young boys from Washington state. This book penetrates the mind of a pedophile and reveals the harrowing revulsion that drives the hunter, a sensitive man, to examine the dark corners of his soul. It describes Ron’s personal struggle to re-establish his sense of goodness and innocence.

Ron Turco received a BA in Chemistry from Pennsylvania State University and his medical degree from Jefferson Medical College where he received an award for his thesis on dream interpretation. He did his psychiatric training at the University of North Carolina. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, President of the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians, and Associate Clinical Professor at the Oregon Health Sciences University. He received the Outstanding Physician Award from the American Medical Association in 1970 and the Milton Erickson Award of Scientific Excellence by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis in 1971.

Ron Turco is a consultant psychiatrist practicing in Portland, Oregon, with an emphasis on psychotherapy and the minimal use of medications. He is also Certified in Wilderness Life Support, and is an avid horseback rider. Find out more information about Ron and his books at http://www.ronaldturco.com/index.htm.

Diana Abu-Jaber

Diana Abu-Jaber comes from a Palestinian-American family. Her first novel, Arabian Jazz won the Oregon Book Award and was a finalist for the national PEN/Hemingway Award.

Diana received her doctorate in English literature from the State University of New York. Her short fiction has appeared recently in Story and Kenyon Review. Most recently, she wrote and produced an hour-long personal documentary for National Public Radio called "The Language of Peace." She writes book and film reviews for The Oregonian, the LA Times and the Washington Post. She is currently Writer-In-Residence at Portland State University.


She recently returned from Amman where she’d traveled on a Fulbright grant to conduct interviews with Jordanian and Palestinian women in preparation for her novel, Memories of Birth, a book based on her grandmother’s life.

She married my grandfather at age 14 and had seventeen children. When she moved into the desert with my grandfather, who was a descendant of the Bedouins, she built one of the first libraries in Jordan in her home because so many people brought books to her.

-- Diana Abu-Jaber

She also received a National Endowment for the Arts Grant while writing this book.

To learn more visit her website at www.dianaabujaber.com

Brent Walth

Brent Walth is an Oregon journalist whose focus has been on the state's politics and environmental issues. An Oregon native, he attended the University of Oregon where he studied both journalism and political science.

Early on, Brent worked for Willamette Week in Portland, where he won the national Gerald Loeb Award for business and financial reporting. He spent five years in Eugene as chief political correspondent for The Register-Guard and won the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association's top investigative reporting award for his reports on campaign finance.

Brent’s first job out of college was covering the Oregon legislature, and he spent the next ten years reporting on Oregon politics and Congress as a Washington, D.C.-based correspondent for The Oregonian. During that time, he reported on the downfall of Sen. Bob Packwood and helped reveal the phony military record of Congressman Wes Cooley. Last year he uncovered the checkered financial history of Republican Bill Sizemore, a story that won the state's top reporting prize, the Bruce Baer Award.

His 1994 book, Fire at Eden's Gate: Tom McCall and the Oregon Story, chronicles this state's most flamboyant and influential governor. The biography of Tom McCall, now in its third printing, has won wide critical acclaim. Among those praising the book, President Bill Clinton called it a "remarkable biography."