For May we have two dynamic women reading at In Other Words. Come join in the fun at 7 p.m. on the 21st. Heidi Schuler is a local up and coming poet currently in the Pacific MFA program who also has just been named the winner of the $5000 Rattle Poetry Prize (one of three Portland poets in the top 11). Stephanie Lenox returns to us with her shiny new book Congress of Strange People and will share her work about the marvelous characters she has found in the Guinness Book of World Records. And as always, prompts, cookies and open mic…
Heidi lives in Portland, Oregon, and attends Pacific University’s MFA program in Poetry with a sanctioned diversion in Playwriting. She has worked as a donut truck driver, waterbed salesperson, and PR specialist with unique success sponging tattoos on small children at the county fair. Her favorite professional experiences have involved fundraising for the arts, staffing the front desk at the famous Shack Up Inn in Mississippi, and working throughout her ages in music as a percussionist, where she has gained the admiration of many female fans in particular, for her skill in hitting things. Her first chapbook “Other Heroes” contains her Pushcart nominated poem “The Trials of a Teenage Transvestite’s Single Mother” which won the Rattle Magazine Poetry Prize in 2012. Copies of “Other Heroes” are available for free as part of Heidi’s exploration in the experience of gifting art, through her website: heidishuler.com
Stephanie Lenox writes about what obsesses her, whether that’s the odd characters in The Guinness Book, the loud talker in the neighboring cubicle at work, or her two young children who spend their days running headlong toward pointy, dangerous things. Her poetry chapbook, The Heart That Lies Outside the Body, won the Slapering Hol Chapbook Contest and was published in 2007. Her full-length collection, Congress of Strange People, was published in 2012. She teaches creative writing at Willamette University and is cofounder of the online literary journal, Blood Orange Review.
