Kevin Sampsell

Oh wow. It’s like I had a summer vacation or something (yeah, right).

But some cool stuff has been happening and I’m here to update!

I have a new story in the City of Weird anthology! It’s a book that’s been haunting lots of Portland bookshelves lately (it’s a bestseller at Powell’s). In a book full of scary tales and weirdness, my story is about riding public transit in Portland. Thanks, Gigi Little! Boo!

I’ll be reading my story at Lit Crawl this Friday the 4th. It’s also Wordstock this weekend and I’ll be roaming around there a lot to see friends and look at books.

I have a show of mostly new collages up at Rudy’s Barbershop on SE Division in Portland. It’s called The Beauty of Passing Through. I’m really pleased with it. Many of the pieces were made just in the last month inside the “Collage Garage,” the art studio in the backyard of my new home in Northeast Portland. It’s a space I share with fellow collage artist Kurtiss Lofstrom. We’re thinking about opening it up for shows and events sometime in 2017. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I hope you’ll come to the reception of my Rudy’s show on November 17th.

I’ll also be in Los Angeles this month! You know I love L.A. and all my peoples there. I’ll be at the book release party on November 19th for Meredith Alling’s debut, Sing the Song, which I’m publishing on Future Tense. So pumped for this book! Always exciting to find daring new writers and help them get their genius out in the world.

What else?

I was on the Go Away, I’m Reading podcast and we talked for so long it became a two-parter…

I haven’t been working on my next novel as much as I want to this year but I am working on other writing, including essays on anxiety and sports…

I collaborated with Siel Ju on this great illustrated story for 7×7 called Vaseline…

My poem “Anti-Extinct” is now available as a tote bag (and T-shirt) from Backwords Press…

I voted for Hillary…

I’ve been reading a lot (often too many books at once!). My faves this year have been by Ottessa Moshfegh, Rob Roberge, Melissa Broder, Mary Ruefle, Jon-Michael Frank, and Chelsea Martin…

and like so many other folks, I have been listening to Angel Olsen.