News, Other Stuff

Music and books are two of our favorite things, which is why we, duh, like to publish books, and we like to throw parties that feature music.  So, as a natural extention, one of our favorite sites is Largehearted Boy, a blog that features authors writing about the music that influences their work.  Thus we're excited to see LHB publish an essay about the songlist for our newest book MAY WE SHED THESE HUMAN BODIES in the author Amber Sparks's own words.  Check it out. 

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Largehearted Boy MAY WE SHED Playlist

This is part VIII of an VIII part series by Portland author Aaron Gilbreath consisting of his interviews with members of Portland's homeless population.  See Part VII here.  Stay tuned for an affordable e-book edition of Aaron's series that will feature a new piece not previously published.

Aaron Gilbreath is a burrito-obsessed essayist, journalist, and housesitter. He resides in Portland and his work can be found all over the place.  Click here to learn more about him. 

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Introduction

Like all interesting people and places, Portland, Oregon is a multifaceted character. There is Portland the socially progressive utopia of artists, food carts and environmentally conscious urbanism. And there is the Portland of pretension, heroin addiction, racial separation and rampant homelessness. The city occupies a county that has over 15,000 homeless people. That figure includes not only people who sleep on the street and in shelters, but those who sleep on friends’ couches and in cars and in transitional housing. In 2009, Oregon ranked first in the nation for homelessness per capita.

Those of us who have lived here long enough to have watched the city change from a sleepy little low-rent secret to a globally hyped mecca of gastronomy and marketable eccentricity know that no matter how empathetic your constitution, the sheer scale of homelessness here means that you can easily became immune to the presence of it. Two soiled feet sticking out from under a blanket, a body curled in a doorway atop cardboard slabs – to Portlanders, these sights can become as unexceptional as a sign at a coffee shop advertising gluten-free muffins. I don’t like growing accustomed to human suffering. Empathy should never grow callouses. Yet overly accustomed is what I’d become. Here I was, surrounded by the homeless, yet I knew close to nothing about them or their lives. So I spent the summer of 2011 speaking to them on the street.

About two years ago we published our first book, the awared-winning coming-of-age novel Sophomoric Philosophy by Victor David Giron (yes, me).  SP was influenced in part by JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, along with books like Joe Meno's Hairstyles of the Damned and movies like Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused.  Though the book is set in the early 00's, most of it takes place in the first-person narrator Alex's recollections of his teenage years in suburban Chicago.  So it seems appropriate that author / illustrator Nathan Holic would write an in-depth essay for Burrow Press Review analyzing SP in the context of Catcher in the Rye and his own reflections on being a new father. 

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Sophomoric Philosophy - Burrow Press Review

Curbside Splendor Publishing & Madame ZuZu's present SALON SPLENDOR - a night of intimate readings, literary discussion, warm music, and world-class tea at Billy Corgan's northshore Tea House, Madame ZuZu's!

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The program for the evening will include ORIGINAL WORK composed on the topic of "ORIGINS" by the following authors:

Kathleen Rooney
                           Okla Elliott
                              &nbs

This December we're publishing our most ambitious book to date, from a size and cost perspective, a 10 x 10 220 page coffee-table style book about beds and things that happen there called The Way We Sleep.   It's an anthology edited by husband-wife duo C. James Bye and Jessa Bye.  The LA Review has published the first review and it's a nice one.  You can read it below.  The Way We Sleep will retail for $20, but can purchased now here on pre-order at only $14.99 with FREE shipping. 

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"At once a hybrid text and a compendium of tales related more or less loosely to the theme of sleep, this generously sized volume edited by C. James Bye and Jessica Bye offers flash-length tidbits and short stories by well-known and less well-known writers, interviews with movie and TV directors, and a healthy dose of comics." -- LA Review