Wednesday, June 3, 6-7ish pm | 814 SW 10th Ave.
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Join us for our summer reading at Grand Gesture Books! Themed restless, this reading features authors whose work contends with ennui, displacement, and falling out of love among other manners of restlessness. We’re thrilled to host local talent as well as two out-of-town authors stopping through Portland touring with new books! Check out the lineup:
Stephanie Adams-Santos is a Guatemalan-American interdisciplinary artist writer whose work spans poetry, prose, screenwriting, and illustration. Their work reflects a fascination with the weird, numinous, and primal forces that shape inner life. They are the author of several full-length poetry collections and chapbooks, including Dream of Xibalba (selected by Jericho Brown as winner of the 2021 Orison Poetry Prize; finalist for a 2024 Oregon Book Award and Lambda Literary Award) and Swarm Queen’s Crown(finalist for a 2016 Lambda Literary Award).
Stephanie served as Staff Writer and Story Editor on the television anthology horror series Two Sentence Horror Stories (CW/Netflix), winner of a 2022 Gold Telly Award in TV Writing. Stephanie has received screenwriting fellowships from The Gotham, Sundance, Film Independent, and Ojalá/Universal. They are also a recipient of the Miller Foundation Spark Award for Oregon artists. Most recently, Stephanie wrote for the new season of Nocturno, a Latinx horror radio anthology hosted by Danny Trejo for iHeart Radio. In addition to their literary work, Stephanie is creating an original tarot deck that blends poetry, animism, and ancestral magic.
Santi Elijah Holley is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and the author of three books, including An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created, and the forthcoming Beg Borrow Steal: The Visionary Art of Melvin Van Peebles and the Rise of Independent Black Cinema. He lives in NE Portland.
Matt Knutson is a graduate of the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop. His debut fiction collection, So Far Behind I Thought I Was First, is forthcoming with Pool Party Books in December 2026. He’s been a resident at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and his work has appeared in Cola Literary Review, Cold Signal, Bat City Review and elsewhere. His manuscript Quiet Homes in the Hills was a semi-finalist for Iron Horse Literary Review’s Chapbook Contest, and his story “Stormin’ Norman’s Ferry” recently won Midsummer Dream House’s Fiction Contest. Originally from San Diego, he now lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and son.
Nora Lange’s debut novel Us Fools was awarded the The Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, was named a best book of 2024 by The Boston Globe and NPR, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Nora’s short writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Believer , BOMB, and other places. Her collection, Day Care, is out now.
Lange is participating in the Pool Party reading while on tour.
Kerri Schlottman is a writer of literary fiction novels, most recently Daytime Moon with Unnamed Press. Her novel Tell Me One Thing was named a 2025 Storytrade Literary Fiction Finalist, a two-time 2024 PenCraft Fiction Award Winner, a 2023 American Book Fest Best Literary Fiction Book Finalist, and a Shelf Awareness Best Book This Week. Kerri works to support artists, performers, and writers in creating new projects and is a graduate professor at NYU in the arts department.
Schlottman is participating in the Pool Party reading while on tour.
Travis Abels
Adam Deutsch
Brian Stephen Ellis
Edy Guy
Laura Gibson
Genevieve Hudson
Lydia-Mae
Luke Goebel
Lauren Lavín
Margaret Malone
Lauren Mantis
Frayn Masters
Camille McDaniel
Jules Ohman
Kimberly King Parsons
Jon Raymond
Justin Taylor
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