Happy hour has never been this nerdy before

The first of our three happy hours starts today at the Quarter Lounge! See you at 5:30! Our first set of happy hour readers is going to help us live up to City Art’s assertion that APRIL is Seattle’s “most literate booze fest/booziest indie lit fest.”

Rich Smith is a poet whose work has appeared in Tin House, Guernica, and other places. He is the author the chapbook The Great Poem of Desire  forthcoming from Poor Claudia.

Amber Nelson is the editor of Alice Blue Review, an online journal and print books publisher based in Seattle. She is the author of This Ride is in Double Exposure, an e-chapbook published by H_NG M_N.

Rebecca Bridge is a poet and musician. Her work has appeared in the Boston Review, Ink Node, and other places. She was the winner of the 2009 Indiana Review ½ K judged by Lydia Davis.

Today in Stuff #1

Welcome to the first edition of Today in Stuff, our mostly literary-themed roundup of things that caught our eye.

First off, congrats to a boatload of super-talented Portland writers. The 2012 Oregon Book Awards Finalists were released today, and some of our favorite writers (and people) made the cut. Among the cream of the crop are
- Aidan Koch (in the Pacific Northwest College of Art Graphic Literature Award) for her beautiful The Whale (Gaze Books);
- Matthew Stadler (in the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction) for Chloe Jarren’s La Cucaracha (Publication Studios) [and yes, I am aware that his ‘website’ is a sorta overwhelming internet text experiment essentially saying that, no, Matthew Stadler is not on the internet; you should go there anyway]
- Emily Kendall Frey (in the Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry) for The Grief Performance (Cleveland State University Press)
- Carl Adamshick (in the Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry) for Curses and Wishes (Louisiana State University Press) [Carl Adamshick also runs the excellent Tavern Books]
- Lidia Yuknavitch (in the Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction) for The Chronology of Water (Hawthorne Books)
- Sarahlee Lawrence (in the Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction) for River House (Tin House)

There are plenty of other great finalists; check them all out here.

A little bit of stop-motion video love for you as well, to soothe the passing of a Monday. Try not to think about much work this took.  (Via GalleyCat and Goodreads)