Become a member of our Readers' Circle!  With your one-year membership, you'll receive a free book of your choice each month, discounts on all purchases, and invitations to special members-only sales.

Members build a bookstore's community in special ways.  More than ever, it makes us YOUR bookstore.  You commit to getting at least one book from us each month--which means we see you often, and get to know you.  When we have members' events, you'll meet other book lovers who also support your bookstore, and mostly live nearby.  It's a great way to find common ground with your neighbors, and build friendships around your shared love of books.  

If you have a special child in your life, consider a Young Readers' membership.  A child up to age 12 receives a free new paperback or board book each month, plus discounts on other selections, and a birthday card with a special offer.  Your child will also benefit from forming connections within the community, knowing neighbors and being known to them.

We look forward to welcoming you!

The Last Friday of every month brings déjà vu anxiety about making rent, a cloudy awareness of impending mortality and Them's Fightin' Words, our monthly series of gritty blue-collar literary readings MC'ed by local writer and Criminal Class Press poetry editor Johnny No Bueno.

After an open mic, we're proud to present readings from Brian Stephen Ellis and Roy Coughlin.

Mr. Ellis is a transplant to Portland, Oregon from his beloved Boston, Massachusetts. He was a part of the Boston Poetry Slam for six years. He is co-founder of the internationally renowned yes-wave think-tank The Whitehaus Family Record.

Mr. Coughlin repairs washers and dryers for a living. In his spare time he lies about being a writer. His work has appeared at Small Doggies Magazine and HOUSEFIRE.

We are delighted to host Eliot Treichel in an evening of readings from his first collection of short stories about limited but sublime working-class life, Close Is Fine.  

Publisher’s Weekly called Close Is Fine “a clear-eyed and perceptive debut.” Like an album of Polaroid snapshots, Close Is Fine is a finely wrought collection of stories that gives us a brief glimpse into the quirky and complex lives of the inhabitants of a rural Wisconsin town. At times mournful and haunting, this collection celebrates the nobility of simple life—of striving and failing without ever losing hope.

Eliot Treichel is a native of Wisconsin who now lives in Eugene, Ore. In addition to writing, he teaches at Lane Community College in Eugene. He was recently awarded a Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission. To learn more, readers may visit his website, www.eliottreichel.com.

Close is Fine (Paperback)

By Eliot Treichel

$14.95

ISBN-13: 9781932010459
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Ooligan Press, 11/2012

Other Editions of this Title

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The MDRS nears the end of its amazing 20-week run of local poetry readings staged to coincide with this season's St. Johns Farmers Market! Come spend a beautiful summer's day enjoying community poetry, the freshest of food and engaging literature with a fantastic view of our bridge.

This Saturday at Noon, Brittany Baldwin hosts an afternoon of readings by local authors.

Gritty Blue Collar Literature returns on Last Friday!

A new reading series has bullied its way into town -- the kind of literature that looks great with a black eye, that knows the sting of dry-wall in winter-cracked knuckles, that knows the difference between the smells of freshly sanitized stripper poles and black tar heroin. This is the home for the terrifying and obscene.

Join us every Last Friday for "Them's Fightin' Words!" Our host, (local writer and Criminal Class Press Poetry Editor) Johnny No Bueno vows to bring you the grittiest and most down-home writing Portland has ever known.

The second installment of TFW! will be at 7PM August 31st, featuring readings from Dena Rash Guzman and Brian Tibbetts, and an open mic for new writers to get their performing feet wet and veterans to work out their latest pieces.

About this month's features:

Ms. Guzman is a poet and editor whose writing can be found or is forthcoming at Thrush, Rumpus, Gertrude, Lyre Lyre, Fried Chicken and Coffee and elsewhere. She is founding editor of the literary journal Unshod Quills and managing director for Shanghai's only independent English-language press, HAL Publishing. Her first book of poetry will be released by Dog On A Chain Press in late 2012. She also co-produces Unchaste Readers, Portland's only all-female literary series.

Mr. Tibbetts is a writer, musician, printmaker and painter whose writing has appeared in Word Riot, Gobshite Quarterly and Housefire. He is the Fiction Editor of Unshod Quills.

The Market Day Reading Series closes out the August leg of its epic 20-week run of local poetry readings with three transplanted Southerners and one of those Yankees, but not the baseball kind: Viva Astrid, Tommy Gaffney, Fumi Owoso and Jonathan Treadway.

On August 18th, our commitment to providing local poetry as fresh as the produce our neighbors sell at the concurrent St. Johns Farmers Market rolls on with readings from local writers Rick Jolly and Patrick Bocarde! What finer way could there be to enjoy one of the last days of summer?

Rick explains:

i'm not entirely sure when i met patrick. it just seemed like we drifted into each other's company, which felt inevitable since we both moved to portland from the east coast in the early nineties and had been formed or deformed by heavy metal during our teenage years. i think we met at an open mic on grand avenue and then started running into each other at cafe lena where we both taunted the crowd with our experimental bad poetry (or was it bad experimental poetry? it's always hard to tell isn't it?) and where we commiserated & consoled each other while watching Kevin Sampsell do his sexy nervous microphone tricks as brian christopher hamilton looked on, asphyxiated from the waist down in his painted on jeans & snakeskin cowboy boots. we went to literally every friggin poetry reading and became ardent disciples of Dan Raphael until people started to ask if we were a couple (we only experimented with our poetry, though we are both very kinky writers). we were ridiculous AND ubiquitous. which brings us to now. this may be the first time that just the two of us have been the featured readers at an event, which is a big deal considering we've know each other since '92. (patrick claims we read together once but i have no memory of this & it ruins the nice little narrative i've got going so i'm just going to continue my amnesia which i arrived at quite unconsciously.) anyway, it's a big deal.

SJB head mama Néna and Market Day Reading Series host Dan Raphael invite you to come spend every Saturday at Noon in beautiful downtown St Johns, where you can savor the last few weeks of gorgeous summer weather by enjoying community poetry, food and books with us!
On August 11th, MDRS continues its unprecedented 20-week run of local poetry readingsheld in parallel to this season's St. Johns Farmers Market with an afternoon of readings from Fault Lines magazine's editor Dan Encarnacion and contributors Tiel Aisha Ansari, Mike Aspos, Angel Latterell, Darlene Pagan and Ryan Scariano.