Catch us here at our favorite annual Publication Fair on Sunday, December 22nd! This is the first place where Chris Maday’s Exercise Poems will be available, as well as reprints of The Collected Plays 2010-2015 by Portland Preschoolers and other hits for your Holiday shopping pleasure!
Two Plum Press began at the IPRC, when Justin Hocking was the Executive Director. First, when Andrew was an intern and sharpening his letterpress skills during after hours. Later, at the Division space, with a big dream to make a perfect bound chapbook start to finish at the center. It can safely be said that it wouldn’t exist as it does without the generosity and warmth of Justin Hocking. Justin left the IPRC to start teaching writing shorlty after the publication of The Great Floodgates of The Wonderworld, which was the winner of the Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction in 2015. We were thrilled when he submitted a book to the press, the beguiling exploration of letters and ideas shared between Walt Whitman and Bram Stoker called PS: The Wolves.
It was a delight to host another well attended reading at the IPRC, also featuring Joshua James Amberson and Karliegh Frisbee Brogan (who were both MFA students of Justin’s and are in the same writing group together) + our dear Chris Maday, whose new book Exercise Poems is the next title to be published.
We are good snacks and drank good drinks and kept the Halloween spirit going for another day.
We returned to the event where Two Plum Press made it’s debut, lo those many years ago, the Portland Zine Symposium! We thought it was the best one in years. The new PNCA building, where it took place, is light and airy and centrally located. The lunches for vendors they had delivered were super good and such a nice touch! Way to go, PSZ organizers! Here is a photo of Alex looking cuter than everyone else that day.
Zachary Schomburg, author of Hear Oars, organized a wonderful series of “off-campus” events during the 2019 AWP Conference called No Fair/Fair. Here is a great article about it that appeared in the Portland Mercury in the same issue as the Two Plum article!
These events included a two day book fair (the first Portland-area book fair in the spring, maybe ever?), and a Friday night epic reading with two locations and simultaneous readings every 20 minutes, from 5 p.m. to midnight.
Carol Ellis and Ross Robbins represented Two Plum Press during the Friday evening readings at Outlet. Zachary Schomburg read from his latest book, Pulver Maar, which includes pieces that first appeared in Hear Oars. Andrew read later that night representing Quotidian Press (run by Two Plum author Delphine Bedient).
Alex and Andrew hung deep with their water bottles at the book fair, nearby Quotidian and long-time pals Big Big Wednesday, where they even received a visit from esteemed author Chris Maday
Andrew and Sofie had the pleasure of hearing Jess Ardnt give a reading at Reed College in the Elliot Chapel, the same day Mercury article was published. We met Jess by chance at the 2017 Wordstock after party. Having been a huge fan of Jess’s contributions to Diner Journal, usually related to cocktails, we invited Jess to write a cocktail (or at least cocktail-threaded) book for Two Plum Press. Jess agreed, and there has been much discourse about the shape this book will take. It will happen someday! In the meantime, we highly recommend Jess’s book of short stories, Large Animals.
