CONFLUENCE: an occassional reading series where the rivers meet, curated by Cooper Lee Bombardier

Episode #1 – FEATURING:
From Los Angeles: writer and performer RAQUEL GUTIERREZ!

With Local Guest Writers:
Jyoti Roy
Molly Palmer
Galadriel Mozee
Brook Shelley
Sean Aaron Bowers

$5-10 donation/NOTAFLOF

Author Bios:

>Raquel Gutiérrez has long been a writer and live performer. She is a film actor, curator, chapbook publisher (Econo Textual Objects, established 2014), playwright, arts administrator, and community organizer. She writes about art, culture, music, film, performance and community building and creates original solo and ensemble performance compositions. Running In Place: poems about INSTITUTIONALITY is Raquel’s third chapbook released in March 2015, following #WhiteBoo and Breaking Up With Los Angeles (Econo Textual Objects, 2014). She’s performed her poetry, prose and essay works locally, nationally and internationally as a solo artist in venues such as Galería de la Raza (SF), MOCA (LA), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), LitQuake (SF), Beyond Baroque (Venice), Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Skylight Books (L.A.), as well as numerous university and college campuses (including UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, and Loyola Marymount). Outside of California, Gutiérrez has been presented in venues such as Museo Del Chopo (Mexico City) Smithsonian American Indian Museum, Atlas (presented by The Atlas Review in Brooklyn), and universities such as Cornell and Georgetown University. She’s had the pleasure of being published in both online and print publications including: Huizache; LA Weekly; Artbound; The Portland Review; GLQ; Raspa Magazine; RECAPS and Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing (edited by Lázaro Lima and Felice Picano); and Sinister Wisdom, and in the upcoming summer 2016 journal for Fence Books.

> Galadriel Mozee is a fat black queer stemme writer and artist who walks supported by and in honor of their Wolayta, Gullah, Jamaican and Missourian ancestors. They believe in a benevolent universe that holds them tenderly in the cradle of its heart. They makes big, amazing mistakes. They love watercolor botanical paintings, illustrating children’s stories and creating art at the intersection of their varied and beautiful complexities. You can find their writing published in Kalyani and Curve Magazines, Ambelic Press and The PDX based Women of Color zine “How to live in the city of roses and avoid the pricks”. They are currently working on their first collection of poetry and a children ‘s book. They blog atwww.galadrielmozee.com and is on IG as Moxie_Grit.

>Brook Shelley is a trans lesbian who lives in Portland with her cat, Snorri. She works in tech and writes about dating, art, love, and bodies.

>Jyoti Roy hails from Sydney, Australia where she co-founded the anarchist zine and music distro ‘Beating Hearts Press’. Her writing has been published in CALYX journal, Bitch magazine, and she was a contributing editor to Feminist Review. She holds a master’s degree in publishing from Portland State University.

>Molly Palmer is a writer and editor, who has also worked as a web designer, search engine evaluator, and bouncer. She is published in Permission Magazine, The Chicago Flame and Inferno Magazine, and has edited the book The Ever-Loving Essence of You. She recently came out as a trans woman, and is elated over the new beginnings occurring in her life and writing. She is interested in parapolitics, occulture, neuroscience, feminism, and too many other things to mention. She studies Mandarin and hopes to become an ESL tutor. She’s currently blogging about her transition and trans issues at blitheanima.wordpress.com.

>Sean Aaron Bowers is the author of We Were Warriors(University of Hell Press), published under the pseudonym Johnny No Bueno. He has had poems and essays published inCriminal Class Review, Present Tense,Unshod Quills, and Nailed Magazine. Co-founder of Boston’s Dharma Punx group, Profound Existence, Bowers has facilitated poetry and meditation workshops at Maclaren Youth Correctional Facility, where he was incarnated as a teen. He is the founder of reading series and multimedia project Them’s Fightin’ Words. Sean is the subject of upcoming documentary Heavily Meditated, about the transformative effects of Buddhist mindfulness in the West. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon and is studying to become a college professor and a meditation teacher.

>Cooper Lee Bombardier is a writer and visual artist based in beautiful Portland, Oregon. His writing appears in several anthologies and periodicals, most recently CutBank and NAILED Magazine, and is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Original Plumbing TATTOO Issue, and The Remedy, an anthology edited by Zena Sharman from Arsenal Pulp Press. Cooper teaches writing at Portland State University, University of Portland, through Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools, and online via LitReactor.