Clark College hosted award-winning author Kaveh Akbar on October 3 to a near-capacity audience of about 100 people. With nearly every seat full (and some attendees standing), Akbar read from his novel Martyr! and answered questions posed by the audience.

The first Columbia Writers Series event of the academic year attracted multiple creative writing classes, the Addiction Counseling Education Students Club (ACES), Clark’s Vice President of Instruction Dr. Terry Brown, and Clark librarians with a pop-up check-out cart featuring works by Akbar as well as past CWS speakers.

Akbar spoke extensively about his writing process (he called himself an ‘ox’ writer who needs to write every single day) and what drove his writing of Martyr!. Historically a poet, he found himself writing a novel. He said, “I tried to tell the story in lyric poetry. But I’m not a good enough poet to do that. I recognized I needed to learn a new skill.” He started with the idea of Orkideh — a performance artist at the center of the book — and the other characters evolved from their narrative need to exist along with Orkideh.

In Martyr!, Cyrus, who is a recovering alcoholic, becomes obsessed with having a meaningful death and decides to write a book about martyrs. When he sees that Orkideh, who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, is living out the rest of her life in an art museum, he undertakes a journey to visit her. The book explores the tension and commiseration between their two perspectives on death, along with multi-layered ideas on family, love, grief, and so much more.

Akbar shared the relationship between writing and addiction recovery. He said that doing the work of recovery involves a kind of honest self-analysis that is also key to writing honest work. “If you’re really doing the recovery work… it means you’re taking a searching and fearless look at your own life. It means that you’re rigorously accounting in ways that are not ethically infantilized, that are not rhetorically hygienic… you have a leg up.”

While writing is his profession, he shared that recovery, and working in recovery groups to help others in recovery, is the central mission that drives him. “The work of my life, the actual what I do with my life, is working in my recovery community.”

Though the poet has become a novelist, Akbar still writes love poems for his spouse and knows he will continue writing poems for the rest of his life. He believes his poems don’t have to be published to be meaningful.

When asked about how he creates his characters, he replied, “I wanted my characters to feel like the people I know.”

Kaveh Akbar is an acclaimed poet, novelist, and editor, whose works appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, and Best American Poetry. He is the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf and Pilgrim Bell, with Martyr!, his debut novel, recently becoming a New York Times bestseller and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year. His writing delves into themes of empire, immigration, addiction, and the healing power of art.

The Columbia Writers Series hosted Akbar along with the college’s Addiction Counseling (ACES) Club.

Next Up:

Winter Columbia Writers Series: Paisley Rekdal, January 30, 2025, at 1 p.m., GHL 213. Rekdal is the author of four books of nonfiction, and seven books of poetry, most recently, West: A Translation, which won the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her work has received the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, and various state arts council awards. The former Utah poet laureate, she teaches at the University of Utah where she directs the American West Center.

Spring Columbia Writers Series: Chelsea Bieker, May 29 at 10 a.m., PUB 258A-C Bieker is the author of three books, most recently the nationally bestselling novel, Madwoman, a Book of the Month club pick the New York Times calls “brilliant in its depiction of the long shadows cast by domestic violence.” Her first novel, Godshot, was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and named a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, Heartbroke won the California Book Award and was a New York Times “Best California Book of 2022.” Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Marie Claire UK, People, The Cut, Wall Street Journal, and others. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, as well as residencies from MacDowell and Tin House. Raised in Hawai’i and California, she lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children.

Photos: Clark College/Jenny Shadley
View more photos from the event on Flickr: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBLiuf

Andrew Leland quoted Georgina Kleege’s Sight Unseen to explain his own relationship to his work: “Writing this book made me blind.”

Authors Andrew Leland and Justin Taylor discussed Leland’s new memoir, The Country of the Blind, at the Spring Columbia Writers’ event. It was attended by Clark creative writing students, students from the nearby Washington State School for the Blind, and staff from Cannell Library and Disability Support Services (DSS).  

Leland’s book shares his experience of slowly losing his sight due to a degenerative eye disease, Retinitis Pigmentos (RP).  More than a description of his life, his memoir explores history, disability justice, and what it means to identify as blind.

With emotion, Leland said a blind reader described his memoir as “the story of our people.” Leland added, “it’s incredibly moving for me that it might have value.”

Writing the book helped Leland process his recently accepted identity as a blind person. At the beginning of his journey, “blindness did not feel like a word connected to me.” As he wrote, he evolved from using third person to describe the blind community (they) to using the first-person plural (we).

The book covers some of the history of innovation driven by blind people. The first typewriters, audiobooks, and LP records were adaptations designed for blind accessibility. Adaptations can become their own form of art as blind people experiment with how to communicate information within the world’s inaccessible design. As Leland put it, “Alt text is poetry.”

An early form of Optical Character Recognition was the Kurzweil Reading Machine, which scanned print books and turned them into computer-spoken words. The inventor designed it for blind people, working closely with the National Federation of the Blind.

When Xerox purchased the machine, the company laid off the blind sales staff. The technology then became a foundation for the internet, which today remains largely inaccessible to the blind. Only 2% of home pages are fully accessible to screen readers.

Leland said, “Often, after it [the technology designed for accessibility] gets coopted into the mainstream, the accessibility falls away.”

According to Leland, information access is one of the biggest barriers affecting blind people. The disability justice movement seeks to change barriers to access for blind people and for all those experiencing disabilities — including multiple disabilities. Key to the movement is understanding how experiences of disability intersect with other identities such as race, class, and gender.

He shared his own experience of diving into disability justice, and how his views started out as naive but became more complex as he talked with more people. “My privilege is intact and will continue to be intact as a blind person… to be a blind person of color is a radically different experience.”

He advised college students to be unafraid to engage with the disability justice movement even if their knowledge is incomplete. “It’s an important first step to be like, ‘I think it’s like this’ and then you take the tires off.”

Leland also shared his advice on writing. He advocates for a regular writing practice — even if you’re not writing with a goal of being published — to prepare you to write when you have something important to say.

“The butt-in-chair principle I think is really important,” Leland said and added “don’t be a hermit… it’s important to be sharing your work with readers.”

Find books by Andrew Leland and Justin Taylor at Clark’s Cannell Library or local independent bookstores.

About Andrew Leland

Andrew Leland’s debut book, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight, about the world of blindness (and figuring out his place in it), was published in July 2023 by Penguin Press. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other outlets. From 2013-2019, he hosted and produced The Organist, an arts and culture podcast, for KCRW; he has also produced pieces for Radiolab and 99 Percent Invisible. He has been an editor at The Believer since 2003. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and son.

About Justin Taylor

Justin Taylor is the author of the novel Reboot, the memoir Riding with the Ghost, the novel The Gospel of Anarchy, and two collections of short fiction: Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever and Flings. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Bomb, and Bookforum, among other publications. He has taught writing at the graduate and undergraduate levels in programs all over the country, including Columbia University, N.Y.U., the University of Southern Mississippi, and the University of Montana. He is a contributing writer to the Washington Post’s Book World and the Director of the Sewanee School of Letters. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

About the Columbia Writers Series

The Columbia Writers Series has been a part of Clark College since 1988, bringing local, national and international authors to the college throughout the year. Writers who have visited Clark College through the series include Ursula Le Guin, Donald Justice, Sherman Alexie, Marvin Bell, William Stafford, Jamaica Kincaid, Gerald Stern, Carolyn Forchè, Natalie Diaz, Karen Russell, Jess Walter, Dana Spiotta, Mitchell Jackson, and many others.

Next up: Learn more about the Creative Writing Festival

Photo: Clark College/Carly Rae Zent

The college community and the public are invited to the Columbia Writers Series kick off its 2023-24 season with Sindya Bhanoo, recipient of the 2023 Oregon Book Award for Fiction. The free event begins at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 19 in PUB 258 A-B. 

Bhanoo is the author of the story collection Seeking Fortune Elsewhere. She is the 2023 winner of the Oregon Book Award for fiction, the New American Voices Award and an O. Henry Prize.  

Seeking Fortune Elsewhere was a finalist for the Pen/Bingham Award and longlisted for both the Story Prize and the ALA’s Carnegie Medal for Excellence.  

A longtime newspaper reporter, Sindya has worked for The New York Times and The Washington Post. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon and teaches creative writing at Oregon State University. 

The Columbia Writers Series was launched at Clark College in 1988, bringing local, national and international authors to the college and the region. 

Other events featured during the 2023-24 series are: 

• Tuesday, Feb. 13 at 11 a.m.: Anis Mojgani, the tenth Poet Laureate of Oregon. A national and international poetry slam champion, his work has appeared on HBO, NPR and in The New York Times. He is the author of six books of poetry, the opera libretto Sanctuaries, a forthcoming children’s picture book and his latest collection, The Tigers, They Let Me.  

• Monday, April 29 at 11 a.m.: Andrew Leland. His debut book, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight, about the world of blindness and figuring out his place in it, was published in July 2023 by Penguin Press. His writing has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and The San Francisco Chronicle, and more. He is a former host and producer of The Organist, an arts and culture podcast for KCRW. He also has produced segments for Radiolab and 99 Percent Invisible.  
   
• TBD in May: Clark College literary week. A week of literary events both on and off campus to engage the college community and the Southwest Washington community. 

Learn more about the Columbia Writers Series at www.clark.edu/cc/cws. 

Author Cecily Wong will speak about her work on Tuesday, May 2, from 11 a.m. to noon in Penguin Union Building 258. This free public event is part of the Clark College Columbia Writers Series.  

Wong is the author of three books. Her debut novel, Diamond Head (Harper, HarperCollins), was a Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Selection, recipient of an ELLE Readers’ Prize, and voted a best debut of the 2015 Brooklyn Book Festival.  

Her latest novel, Kaleidoscope (Dutton, Penguin Random House) was published in July 2022 to rave reviews. Wong is also the co-author of The New York Times bestseller Gastro Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to Food (Workman Publishing). 

Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The LA Review of Books, Self Magazine, Bustle, Atlas Obscura, and more. She has spoken at book festivals across the country and was keynote speaker at the Hawaii Book and Music Festival.  

A graduate of Barnard College, Wong spent 13 years living in New York. She now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and daughter.  

Upcoming Writing/Literary Opportunities at Clark: 

• Clark’s Spring Writing Workshop is Saturday, May 20. It will be an in-person event featuring a variety of speakers and workshops. Learn more here.  
• The Swift: Clark College Literary Journal 
• Learn more about Columbia Writers Series at www.clark.edu/cc/cws. 
• More events are planned for the week of May 15—look for announcements about the Subtext Literary Festival.

Photo: Heather Hawksford

The Clark College Columbia Writers Series continues its 2021-2022 season with writer and critic Lincoln Michel. This event, which is free and open to the public, will be held virtually on Thursday, March 3, 10:00-11:00 a.m. The event will be held on Zoom (passcode: Clark).

Lincoln Michel’s debut novel, The Body Scout (Orbit), was named one of the ten “Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2021” by the New York Times. He’s also the author of the story collection Upright Beasts (Coffee House Press) and the co-editor of the anthologies Tiny Crimes and Tiny Nightmares (Catapult). His fiction appears or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, Granta, NOON, Lightspeed, and elsewhere. His essays and criticism appear in the New York Times, The Guardian, and Lit Hub, among others. You can find him online at lincolnmichel.com and @thelincoln.

Readers can request Lincoln Michel’s books Upright Beasts (2015) and The Body Scout (2021), among others, through Clark College Libraries or find them at Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries and Multnomah County Library.

The Columbia Writers Series was launched at Clark College in 1988, bringing local, national and international authors to the college and the region. This year’s lineup of authors will continue with award-winning poet Morgan Parker on May 12.

Individuals who need accommodation due to a disability in order to fully participate in this event should contact Clark College’s Disability Support Services (DSS) Office at 360-992-2314 or 360-991-0901 (VP). The DSS office is located in room 013 in Clark’s Penguin Union Building.

The Clark College Columbia Writers Series continues its 2019-2020 season with national award-winning writer Terese Mailhot. This event, which is free and open to the public, will be held on Monday, February 24, from 11 a.m. to noon in Penguin Union Building rooms 258 A & B on Clark College’s main campus.

Terese Mailhot is from Seabird
Island Band. Her work has appeared in Guernica,
Pacific Standard, Granta, Mother Jones, Medium, the
Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. She
is the New York Times bestselling
author of Heart Berries: A Memoir.
Her book was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for
English-Language Nonfiction, and was selected by Emma Watson as the Our Shared
Shelf Book Club Pick for March/April 2018. Heart
Berries was also listed as an NPR Best Book of the Year, a Library Journal
Best Book of the Year, a New York Public Library Best Book of the Year, a
Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year, and was one of Harper’s Bazaar‘s Best Books of 2018.
She is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award, the Electra Quinney Award for
Published Stories, a Clara Johnson Award, and she is also the recipient of the
Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature. She
teaches creative writing at Purdue University in Indiana.

The Columbia
Writers Series was launched at Clark College in 1988, bringing local, national
and international authors to the college and the region. This year’s lineup of authors will continue in the spring with
Subtext, a week-long festival beginning on May 18 and featuring a variety of
literary events.

Information
about the Columbia Writers Series is available at www.clark.edu/cc/cws.

This event is held on Clark College’s main campus at 1933 Ft. Vancouver Way. Directions and maps are available online. Individuals who need accommodation due to a disability in order to fully participate in this event should contact Clark College’s Disability Support Services (DSS) Office at 360-992-2314 or 360-991-0901 (VP). The DSS office is located in room 013 in Clark’s Penguin Union Building.

The Clark College Columbia Writers Series kicks off its 2019-2020 season with “The Female Gaze” with 2019 National Book Awards Fiction Longlisters Kali Fajardo-Anstine (Sabrina & Corina) and Kimberly King Parsons (Black Light). This event, which is free and open to the public, will be held on Thursday, November 7, from noon to 2:00 p.m in Penguin Union Building (PUB) room 161 on Clark College’s main campus.

The event includes a reading
and discussion on building buzz around debut short story collections and
highlighting the many faces of contemporary female identity in literature. It
will feature brief readings, a moderated conversation, and question-and-answer
session followed by a book signing.

“The Female Gaze” is presented
by the National Book Foundation and Clark
College in a new partnership.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine is
from Denver, Colorado. Her fiction has appeared in The American
Scholar, Boston Review, Bellevue Literary Review, The Idaho Review,
Southwestern American Literature, and elsewhere. Kali has received
fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and Hedgebrook. She received her
MFA from the University of Wyoming and has lived across the country, from
Durango, Colorado, to Key West, Florida.

Born in Lubbock,
Texas, Kimberly King Parsons received her MFA from
Columbia University. Her fiction has been published in The Paris
Review, Best Small Fictions 2017, Black Warrior Review, No
Tokens, Ninth Letter, and The Kenyon Review, among others.

The Columbia Writers Series was launched at Clark College in 1988, bringing local, national and international authors to the college and the region. After “The Female Gaze,” this year’s lineup will continue with the writer Terese Mailhot on Monday, January 27; the poet Ilya Kaminsky will read during spring term.

Information
about the Columbia Writers Series is available at www.clark.edu/cc/cws.

This
event is held on Clark College’s main campus at 1933 Ft. Vancouver Way. Directions
and maps are available online. Individuals
who need accommodation due to a disability in order to fully participate in
this event should contact Clark College’s Disability Support Services (DSS)
Office at 360-992-2314 or 360-991-0901 (VP). The DSS office is located in room
013 in Clark’s Penguin Union Building.

The Clark College Columbia Writers Series continues its 2018-2019 season with noted poet Claudia Castro Luna. This event, which is free and open to the public, will be held on Thursday, January 31, from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. in Gaiser Hall room 213 on Clark College’s main campus.

Claudia Castro Lunais the Washington State Poet Laureate. She served
as Seattle’s Civic
Poet from 2015-2017 and is the author of the Pushcart-nominated Killing Marías (Two Sylvias Press)
and This City, (Floating Bridge Press) and the creator of the
acclaimed Seattle Poetic Grid. Born
in El Salvador, she came to the United States in 1981. She has a Master of Arts
degree in Urban Planning, a teaching certificate, and a Master of Fine Arts in
poetry. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, La Bloga,
Dialogo and Psychological Perspectives,among others. Her non-fiction work can
be read in several anthologies, among them This Is The Place: Women
Writing About Home, (Seal Press). Castro Luna is currently working on
a memoir, Like Water to Drink, about
her experience escaping the civil war in El Salvador. Living in English and
Spanish, she writes and teaches in Seattle. Since 2009, she
maintains Cipota bajo la Luna, a blog with reflections,
writing, and reviews.

The Columbia
Writers Series was launched at Clark College in 1988, bringing local, national
and international authors to the college and the region. This year’s lineup of authors will continue with:

Winter

• February 2019 (date TBA): Elizabeth McCracken, award-winning
  fiction writer.

Spring

• May 20, 2019: Alexis Madrigal, author, journalist, and staff
  writer at The Atlantic.
• May 21, 2019: Gina Oschner, award-winning author and Clark
  alumna
• May 22, 2019: Release of Phoenix,
  Clark College’s award-winning arts and literary journal

Information
about the Columbia Writers Series is available at www.clark.edu/cc/cws.

This
event is held on Clark College’s main campus at 1933 Ft. Vancouver Way. Directions
and maps are available online. Individuals
who need accommodation due to a disability in order to fully participate in
this event should contact Clark College’s Disability Support Services (DSS) Office
at 360-992-2314 or 360-991-0901 (VP). The DSS office is located in room 013 in
Clark’s Penguin Union Building.

The Clark College Columbia Writers Series is offering a week of writers, readings, and events on the college’s main campus during its fourth annual Subtext Literary Festival. On May 14-17, the college will host well-known authors, as well as readings and events by Clark students and faculty. (See full schedule below.)

The Columbia Writers Series was launched at Clark College in 1988, bringing local, national and international authors to the college and the region. Information about the Columbia Writers Series is available at www.clark.edu/cc/cws.

Schedule

Monday, May 14

Poetry-To-Go Event
11 a.m. – 12 p.m. in the Cannell Library

In the tradition of poet Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems, Clark College writing professors will set up vintage typewriters and type personalized poems for passersby on their lunch hour in Cannell Library. Stop by for a hot-off-the-press poem, or if you’re feeling inspired, type a poem yourself.

Columbia Writers Series presents Roger Reeves
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m., PUB 258 A-B:

Roger Reeves’s poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Best American Poetry, and Tin House. He was awarded a 2015 Whiting Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, and a 2013 NEA Fellowship. His first book, King Me (Copper Canyon Press, 2013), won the Larry Levis Reading Prize from Virginia Commonwealth University, the Zacharis Prize from Ploughshares, and the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award. He is an Associate Professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin.

Tuesday, May 15

Conversation with novelist Marie Bostwick
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m., LIB 101

[NOTE: Space is limited for this event. Please register in advance by emailing anelson@clark.edu.] Marie Bostwick is a USA Today and New York Times listed bestselling author of uplifting historical and women’s fiction, including the popular Cobbled Court Quilt and Too Much, Texas series of books. She has been a featured speaker at the Paducah Quilt Festival and the Houston International Quilt Festival and has given keynote addresses at both the Florida Writers Association and La Jolla Writers conferences.

Phoenix unveiling
3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m., PUB 150

Clark College’s national award-winning art and literary journal, Phoenix, will unveil its 2017-2018 edition with readings from student authors and free copies available for guests. Additionally, Lacy Davis, writer of the graphic memoir Ink in Water, will share her work. An interview of Davis by a Phoenix staffer appears in this year’s journal.

Wednesday, May 16                                                                            

Lecture by Leni Zumas and writing awards ceremony
4:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., PUB 161

Leni Zumas’ novel Red Clocks, published in January 2018, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Publishers Weekly “Top 10 Literary Fiction” pick. She is also the author of the story collection Farewell Navigator and the novel The Listeners, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. Originally from Washington, D.C., Zumas now lives in Oregon and teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Portland State University.

Thursday, May 17

Clark Crossings (student and faculty reading)
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m., PUB 258A:

Clark College students, faculty, and staff will read original essays, fiction, and poetry at this annual event. This year’s theme is “time.”

Columbia Writers Series presents Kate Berube
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m., PUB 258 A-B

Kate Berube (Bear uh bee) is a children’s book author and illustrator. Her book The Summer Nick Taught his Cats to Read was named the Best Picture Book of 2016 by both the Chicago Public Library and the School Library Journal, while her book Hannah and Sugar earned the Eloise Jarvis McGraw Award for Children’s Literature from Literary Arts Oregon and was shortlisted for the Klaus Flugge Prize.

All events are free and open to the public, though pre-registration is required for the Marie Bostwick event. Directions and maps are available online at www.clark.edu/maps. Individuals who need accommodation due to a disability in order to fully participate in this event should contact Clark College’s Disability Support Services (DSS) Office at 360-992-2314 or 360-991-0901 (VP). The DSS office is located in room 013 in Clark’s Penguin Union Building.

Cheston Knapp. Photo: Alexis Knapp

The Clark College Columbia Writers Series continues its 2017-2018 season with Cheston Knapp, managing editor of the award-winning literary magazine Tin House. He will discuss his work and read from his new collection of essays, Up Up, Down Down.

This event, which is free and open to the public, will be held on Thursday, February 15, from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. in Penguin Union Building (PUB) room 258A-B on Clark College’s main campus.

Cheston Knapp is managing editor of Tin House, a literary magazine based in Portland, Oregon. He graduated with a degree in English from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. He is the recipient of a 2015 Oregon Literary Fellowship from Literary Arts and the executive director of the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop. His work has appeared in Tin House and One Story. Up Up, Down Down is his first book. It has received critical praise from the literary world, including this evaluation by Joshua Ferris, author of And Then We Came to the End: “Offering up a steady supply of perfectly chosen words in precision-guided sentences, Cheston Knapp will either break your heart or jolt your spine, and quite possibly bring some of us back to life.”

The Columbia Writers Series was launched at Clark College in 1988, bringing local, national and international authors to the college and the region. This year’s lineup of authors continues with:

• May 14, 2018: Roger Reeves, Pushcart Prize-winning poet
• May 17, 2018: Kate Berube, children’s book author and illustrator

Information about the Columbia Writers Series is available at www.clark.edu/cc/cws.

This event is held on Clark College’s main campus at 1933 Ft. Vancouver Way. Directions and maps are available online. Individuals who need accommodation due to a disability in order to fully participate in this event should contact Clark College’s Disability Support Services (DSS) Office at 360-992-2314 or 360-991-0901 (VP). The DSS office is located in room 013 in Clark’s Penguin Union Building.