Central Eastside

The Literary Arts Bookstore is pleased to welcome Kimberly Blaeser to celebrate her latest book Red Ants. Blaeser will be joined in conversation by Christopher Diaz.

About the book:

with Nico Spadafora, Paleontologist, Founder of The Fossil Team

Image credit: artist Hodari Nundu

Please note this event takes place on Wednesday due to Election Night.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Turns out, nature seems to agree! From the fossil record to the animals living around us today, evolution has a funny habit of coming up with the same solutions again and again. Different animals can end up looking remarkably alike and sometimes even behaving alike despite evolving completely independently. This fascinating phenomenon is called convergent evolution.

In this fun and fascinating pub talk, paleontologist Nico Spadafora will take you on a journey through the weird, wonderful, and oddly repetitive world of convergent evolution. We’ll explore how it happens, why evolution keeps repeating itself, and what these evolutionary “reruns” can tell us about the incredible diversity of life on Earth.

Science Pubs are a casual lecture series located in fun venues across the region, recommended for ages 10 and over.

Zoom Option
If you are unable to join us in person, you can watch on Zoom. You must register in advance. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Nico Spadafora is the founder of The Fossil Team, an education company and traveling museum dedicated to bringing the wonders of natural history to life. He has spent more than two decades studying paleontology, zoology, and the natural sciences, diving headfirst into the scientific literature and developing a deep knowledge of both living and extinct animals. In his teens, Nico earned an internship at the Oregon Zoo where he studied the anatomy, behavior, and traits of elephants, lions, rhinos, and many other animals. He later took his knowledge into the wild as a professional tracker and wilderness educator with Trackers Earth, following the trails and sign of bears, cougars, elk, and other wild animals. Today, Nico specializes in dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals and loves sharing the strange, spectacular, and sometimes downright bizarre stories hidden in the natural world. When he’s not studying, tracking, or obsessing over animals in the wild, he enjoys movies and games cuddled up with his house panthers Puma and Rufus.

Join us for the Portland launch of Any Time But This Time (Mad Creek Books), the debut story collection from LA filmmaker and author Adam Peterson, in conversation with Portland poet, novelist, and painter Zachary Schomburg.

The human condition is dire. We knew that. But it's also always been that way–we've always craved to be sometime else, from the first human woman (Denise, stuck with neanderthals) to the final man (Keith, losing all his language but the name of his girl–that, he'll save). In between, Peterson introduces himself as a shapeshifter, voicing a semi-delinquent and moderately depressed teenage Jesus in "Jesus Does a Hero;" a convincingly polyamorous prairie romance; 1983's fiber optic saleswoman to the local government of Shanghai, Barbara Roach; and a hormonal crop of teenagers sent to fight "the Schmoopys" once their orbit arrives and their hair has gone gray.

As they'll tell you, the findings are fairly straightforward. In all of human history, we have only been one thing: lonely. Well, two things. We've been horny, too.

Unrelenting, bold, and cynical in the way that only a child of Nebraska-gone-Hollywood could write, Any Time But This Time gifts us 300,000 years of humans destined to be alone, willing to give it all up for connection.

"As history tends to shave off the weird bumps and ridges of our past, it's exhilarating and unsteadying to read a collection that ambitiously seeks to provide a kind of bizarro reimagining of our world. Any Time But This Time is odd and hilarious and yet so tenderly human, so unafraid of cataloging all the strange desires and cruelties and moments of true connection that have somehow gotten us to this moment in time, and then it rockets beyond that to imagine an even stranger future. This is wildness of the highest order, unforgettable and highly original."
—Kevin Wilson, author of Now Is Not The Time To Panic

"The stories in Adam Peterson's Any Time But This Time are funny, but, like, really, really funny, but like, the kind of funny that make you laugh and laugh and then make you question your own soul, or whether you even have a soul, because Adam Peterson has slyly tricked you into laughing at some of the worst possible things, the most terrible of people, the most dire of situations. He has made you laugh the kind of laughter that keeps you honest, makes you see the world as it really is. This is a fabulous, unrelenting collection of stories, full of gorgeous, punchy, compulsively readable prose. Do yourself a favor: pick it up, take it home, and start reading."
—Manuel Gonzales, author of The Miniature Wife and other stories

"Deeply entertaining, the stories in this collection crackle with the spark of imagination, invention, and compassion. Peterson writes with a satisfying blend of humor and pathos, fearless in both wit and empathy. For lovers of George Saunders and Haruki Murakami, with a dash of Aimee Bender, this collection also feels somehow entirely fresh."
—Aja Gabel, author of Lightbreakers

"Each story in this collection is a window into unseen moments of history, and deftly conveys the "incomprehensible beauty, all too comprehensible horror" of the human experience. Peterson's voice carries an almost prophetic weight, masterfully balancing the lyrical, existential, heartbreaking, and humorous with a skill and style akin to writers like George Saunders and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. From the first cave woman to identify as human, to the unraveling of language as our species dies off, I was enraptured by this book, and felt genuinely changed after reading it. Uniquely funny, profoundly moving, and innovatively written, Any Time But This Time is a rare and exciting feat of literature."
—Erin Slaughter, author of A Manual for How to Love Us and The Dead Dad Diaries

Adam Peterson is a writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. He's the author of the prose poetry collections My Untimely Death, The Flasher, and [SPOILER ALERT] (with Laura Eve Engel). His short fiction has appeared in Epoch, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and a mess of other places. His films have played at HollyShorts, Fantasia Fest, and Just for Laughs, among many other festivals.

Zachary Schomburg has written books of poems like Wool Moon (Black Ocean, 2026)and a novel, Mammother (Featherproof, 2017). And he's a painter too. In fact, he once painted a painting owned by Adam Peterson. He lives in Portland with B and Y.

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between a native bee and a honey bee? Or wondered what they do all day? Have you dreamed of becoming a beekeeper, wanted to plant more flowers for our winged friends, or wished you could taste honey fresh from the comb? Well, this is the event for you.

Join Bee The Change Landcare for a morning of bee-loving curiosity, hands-on learning, and community connection, alongside some wonderful local educators, makers, and pollinator enthusiasts. Bees are woven into so much of everyday life, from the fruit on the table to the flowers blooming along the sidewalks. Yet there is so much happening in their little worlds that people rarely get to see. Peek into those worlds, explore what it means to be in a reciprocal relationship with bees, and learn how we can cultivate more resilient gardens, ecosystems, and food systems for pollinators and people.

• Discover the difference between native and honeybees and how planting flowers, food, and habitat can support healthy pollinator populations right in your own neighborhood
• Get your hands into the world of native bees. Join Bee The Change and Portland Fruit Tree Project for a community Mason bee cocoon harvest. Learn how to safely harvest, clean, and store cocoons so the next generation is ready for spring.
• Taste the sweetness of the season. Join Bee The Change and Bee Built for a freshly crushed honeycomb demonstration, honey tasting, and conversation about thoughtful honey bee stewardship.
• Meet your local pollinator community. Explore beautiful bee houses and hives from Bee Built, preserves and opportunities to get involved with Portland Fruit Tree Project, garden signs from Sharotonin Signs, and local honey and stewardship opportunities from Bee The Change.

Have a Mason bee house at home? Bring your filled nesting reeds or trays for harvest. No bee house? No problem. Come learn, get your hands a little sticky, and make some new bee-loving friends

Join us for a reading and celebration of Paul Maziar’s Junebug. The evening with feature musical guests Kelli Schaefer and Drew Grow.

When asked for eight words to describe Junebug, Maziar channeled Agent Cooper: “Everyday, once a day, give yourself a present.” But did he mean the present? Either way, Junebug is a gift.

Junebug situates Paul Maziar’s latest acts of listening and attending, transmission and transcription. He’s built a modular space suggestive of both the theatre and the gallery, performance and (inter)play. The aphoristic title sequence hones sharp accessibilities — we find words available to us, for our limbs and limbics to hold, hurrumph, to slap our knees and share. A mysterious dramatis personae pervades Junebug’s expanse across the mental maps Maziar graphs as he organizes streets of words and questions what their design might reference. We encounter, among others, Toulouse-Lautrec, Agnes Martin, Eva Hesse, Jack Whitten, Colette, Robert Walser. Who are all these characters in Maziar’s parade? Maybe there’s some insight in the final serial sequence, “Hives,” which states that “The real thing is inside of what everything appears as.” The real in Junebug asks us to admire the distance between the surface and the subject. We already have the right tools.

Charles North: From short poems to prose poems to the wonderful fragments collected in its title poem, Paul Maziar’s writing revels in imaginative discontinuity. Junebug is smart, witty, surprising—and inspiring—throughout.

Merrill Gilfillan: These works step up in the name of Poetry and its heartwood, its ever-salvational “What’s on the river today?”

Tetra Balestri: Maziar manages to resurrect a conversation started sometime in the early to mid-20th century that cuts through the present-day pandemonium with polish and swagger. Junebug is a pair of pants worth trying on.

Simone Kearney: Reading Paul Maziar’s Junebug, I feel the tightrope walker’s high-wire balance between the forces of levity and gravity, the contexts of interior and exterior, the concocted and the perceived, thought and overheard speech. These poems make me wonder how it is that we move through the world, which is also a moving-through language.

I’m reminded that language bears a strange mystery. It’s always received and always being made at the same time; it’s a material we inherit and get to play with. In Maziar’s work, overheard phrases and sayings arrive solidified, brick-like things. The language resembles the fragments of familiar tunes — an echo, or memory of one — appearing as the freshest, strangest thing newly imagined.

I feel the intimacy and elusiveness of unspoken thought in the poems: words not yet uttered, still inside the mind. This makes me feel the dynamics of inside and outside that are part of the human drama. Am I looking at something the poet is looking at, or am I inside his head? Maziar lets us inhabit uncertainty. This is living language just being breathed, catapulted from lips, cemented into freshly-thought speech.

Junebug lets me delight in the way language can tend to trip over itself: “I’d rather stimulate than simulate”; “a certain vigor (or vinegar?).” Decontextualized, speech is absurd, funny, strangely moving: “I’m not going anywhere until I see a horse.”

What emerges is a tour de force composed of song, slogan, slip of the tongue, reverie, note, advertisement, fragment, nonsense, musing, hiccup, rupture, tidbit, epiphany. “The only faith he had was in the confusion of his experiences,” Maziar writes, suggesting that one thing we can do amid such confusion is continue to place words onto the page — in relation to ourselves, to others, to images, and to other words. And those words keep coming to meet us: flat, full, flowing, tired, zippy, and ready for more.

Kelli Schaefer's latest record, Even Still, could be the soundtrack to a modern gothic, a playlist for a trudge through a muddy forest or the accompaniment to a subconscious mantra. She demonstrates deftness in refusing to confine herself to a single genre. Schaefer excavates her past while planting herself deeper into the avant-garde, offering a fresh take on the age-old singer-songwriter trope, delivering haunting melodies over swirling woodwinds, piano, classical guitar, and upright bass.

The Pacific Northest's beloved troubadour, musician/artist Drew Grow (Slang, Modern Kin, Pastor's Wives) is back with new songs and a new stripped down method. Spotted playing solo shows around Portland this summer, he is out on his own, debuting new music and packing a wall of little guitar amps. It's new digs for the artist. Drew's solo approach, raw and exposed, is even more striking than the bands of his past. His powerful voice still ringing through as ever, magnetic and arching over the solo guitar and twisted old amps. The sound is momentous and vulnerable, seeming to come from a deeper place. What have you brought us?

A $10 ticket supports our musical guests, Kelli Schaefer and Drew Grow.

A gaming-themed, adults-only night at OMSI with the museum floor open after hours. The program pairs curated vendors and themed lectures with the interactive exhibits and planetarium shows, drawing on the science and engineering behind games, simulation and play. Food and drink are available for purchase and a happy hour runs from 5:00 PM ahead of the 6:00 PM start. Attendees must be 21 or older; government-issued photo identification is required at the door and no minors are admitted. A good crossover evening for the Portland game development, hardware and science communities. Held at OMSI, 1945 SE Water Ave, Portland. Ticketed, with advance purchase recommended as these evenings regularly sell out. https://omsi.edu/events/omsi-after-dark-game-on/

Polish those D10s and shuffle your cards because OMSI After Dark: Game On! is back. Whether you’re a historian of retro gaming, an expert in dueling, or a card deck collector, this event is friendly for all players.

OMSI After Dark is a monthly event for guests 21 and over to explore the museum with a beverage in hand. On top of being able to roam the museum without minors, the added bonus of these events is the curated vendors and lectures relating to the monthly theme. The Planetarium will host four shows, and the Featured Exhibit is open for an additional fee. This month’s vendors and lectures will focus on gaming, but there will not be an exhibit on it. Check out the list of vendors below to see who is coming.

Join us for the Mountain Writers Series readingswith:
Gerald Costanzo & Michele Glazer

Gerald Costanzo’s Badlands: First Poems, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 1973, and in 1974, In the Aviary, won the Devins Award. Other of his poetry collections include Nobody Lives on Arthur Godfrey Boulevard (BOA, 1992), The Laps of the Bridesmaids (Bits Press, 1992), and most recently, Regular Haunts (Nebraska, 2018). Founder of the Carnegie Mellon University Press (1972), Costanzo served as Director of the Press, also teaching writing and literature courses at Carnegie Mellon University, until he retired in 2024. Costanzo has edited numerous anthologies, among them Three Rivers, Ten Years: An Anthology of Poems from Three Rivers Poetry Journal, and American Poetry: The Next Generation. He has received two N.E.A. Creative Writing Fellowships as well as two Pushcart Prizes for his poetry. He divides his time between Mt. Lebanon, PA and a home on the Oregon Coast.

Michele Glazer is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, fretwork (Iowa, 2021). Others include On Tact, & the Made Up World (Iowa, 2010); Aggregate of Disturbances (Iowa Poetry Prize, 2004); and It Is Hard to Look at What We Came to Think We’d Come to See (Pittsburgh, 1997; AWP Award). She has published poems in The New Yorker, Boston Review, and Lo-Ball, among others. Glazer was the founding director of the MFA Creative Writing program at Portland State University and has been a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and at the University of Montana as the Richard Hugo Chair in Poetry. She lives in Portland.

Join us to celebrate the release of Exorcising the Patriarchy: Leonora Carrington’s Plays and Scenography by Abigail Susik, published by Eberhardt Press

Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) is best known as a painter associated with international surrealism, but she was also a prolific dramatist and scenographer who activated these mediums in her overarching critique of patriarchal society. Replete with production photos and Carrington's artwork, Susik's book examines two of her plays and their scenographies, "Penelope" and "Opus Siniestrus: The Story of the Last Egg". Susik uncovers extensive archival documentation and hypothesizes Carrington's talismanic approach to theater as a "concentrated transformer" of anti- and post-patriarchal horizons.

"'Exorcising the Patriarchy' sheds timely light on Leonora Carrington’s theatrical practice, revealing it as a process of exorcising patriarchal violence. Through its exploration of archival material related to the revolutionary plays 'Penelope' and 'Opus Siniestrus: The Story of the Last Egg', as well as their scenographies, Susik delivers a thought-provoking study that deepens our understanding of Carrington’s use of consciousness as a weapon."
—Karla Segura Pantoja, translator and editor of "Leonora Carrington’s L’Œuvre écrit: Théâtre, vol 3" (Fage, 2022)

Abigail Susik

About the author: Abigail Susik is an art historian based in Portland, Oregon. Her book "Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work" was published by Manchester University Press in 2021, and she has edited several volumes on international surrealism and antiauthoritarianism.

A public lecture and discussion exploring Freud's 1917 essay "Mourning and Melancholia," and what it still has to teach us about loss, attachment, and the unsettled life of the mind. In partnership with L'école buissonnière.
Featuring Kellye McBride, philosopher and editor.

Kellye McBride holds an MA in Contemporary European Philosophy from Kingston University London, completed through a joint program with Université Paris 8, and a BA in Philosophy with departmental honors from the University of Oregon. She has taught philosophy in university and public-humanities settings, including Chemeketa Community College and Portland's People's Colloquium. Her teaching emphasizes critical engagement with primary texts, lively discussion, and making complex theoretical ideas comprehensible without sacrificing their intellectual depth. Kellye is also a professional editor and writer and the creator of Melancholia, a podcast exploring philosophical, psychoanalytic, literary, and cultural approaches to melancholy. Her interests include Continental philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis, death, desire, and the relationship between intellectual inquiry and everyday life.

Tuesday, November 17, 2026
6:30 PM 8:30 PM
Suggested donation $10

This event will also introduce the upcoming six-week seminar In Praise of Melancholia, beginning in January.
The seminar is organized in partnership with L'école buissonnière.