Despite my natural pessimism, this book broke down my defenses and set me up to root for a well-earned, conventional kind of happy ending. But then it took a turn and became an altogether different story, leaving me to sputter along with the characters, “Unfair—this is not what I was expecting.” I was crushed. And …
BY ALEX BEHR May 18th, 2020 on The Rumpus.net That Little Bit of Magic: A Conversation with Ramiza Shamoun Koya The Royal Abduls, Ramiza Shamoun Koya’s debut novel (Forest Avenue Press, December 2019), drops us into a Muslim American family twisted by generational expectations and self-doubt. It’s told in shifting views by Amina Abdul, an …
Ramiza Shamoun Koya has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in publications such as Columbia Review, Lumina, Washington Square Review, and Mutha Magazine. She has been a fellow at both MacDowell Colony and Blue Mountain Center. Her father was born in Fiji, her mother in Texas, and she was …
Oregon-based Forest Avenue Press‘s founder and publisher Laura Stanfill is featured in a documentary in the Wordsmiths series produced by Jonah Barrett, presented by Oly Arts. This is part of the Main Street Writers Movement, which aims to “strengthen the literary ecosystem, increase the volume of the literary publishing conversation, and earn more visbility for …
On Monday, April 1, booksellers from around the region gathered in Portland with authors and publishers following a booksellers’ education session from the American Booksellers Association. The Authors on the Map book signing and a happy hour hosted by Forest Avenue Press, Counterpoint Press, and Tin House Books were an opportunity for booksellers to meet …
The Hour of Daydreams is a gorgeous read that should be relished as one would a piece of dark chocolate cake. Rich with tantalizing characters and delicious prose, this is a novel that readers, both young and old alike, won’t be able to help but savor. —Leslye Walton, winner of a 2015 PNBA Book Award and author of The …
When I edited the collection City of Weird: 30 Otherworldly Portland Tales for Forest Avenue Press, I got to do something really fun: publish a writer who once published me. Kevin Sampsell (This is Between Us, and A Common Pornography) edited the anthology Portland Noir (Akashic) in 2009. It was a super cool collection—all noir …
Hill’s characters are so precisely written, they feel as real as you and me, despite the generations of inbreeding, which have left them somewhere off the “normal” scale. Yet, these folks love and hope and yearn like the rest of us, and their stories are magical. Hill has the silver tongue of a master wordsmith. …
Gina Ochsner, author of The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight and recipient of the Oregon Book Award, interviewed Portland author Robert Hill (whose first novel, When All Is Said and Done, was shortlisted for the Oregon Book Awards’ Ken Kesey Award for Fiction) about his second novel, The Remnants, published by Forest Avenue Press. GO: …
“Can I just say… I loved this book. Rarely have I come across a novel that blends story-telling, drama, and great writing quite as well as The Gods of Second Chances. I confess–I bought this book for my husband, but when he fell asleep, I snagged it, and couldn’t put it down. There are moments …
