You are invited to join us in welcoming Shelley back to Oregon, chat, and listen to her read briefly from her book. Copies will also be available for purchase and signing. We will have refreshments, wine, and light fare.

Please RSVP by calling Duane or Patricia at 503-284-6403 if you plan on coming (not absolutely necessary, but it helps us plan for turnout).

Shelley’s Portland reading itinerary is as follows:

• Tuesday, August 7 at 7 pm, Annie Blooms
• Thursday, August 9 at 7 pm, Book Release Party at The Hundreth Monkey Studio
• Monday, August 13th at 7 pm, I Love Monday reading series at Borders Books, downtown

Our host has recommended to us that we remove all AOL addresses from our mailing list databases. So we are, unhappily, following their advice.

If you have an AOL address and would like to continue to be on our mailing list, your solution is to get a free email account from Yahoo, or some other service. We hate to discriminate, but AOL has forced us into this corner.

So, for now, our mailing address remains, P.O. Box 12004, Portland, OR 97212. Sorry for any confusion we may have caused.

For those who don’t know, Silverton is a beautiful little historic town on Silver Creek, east of Salem. It is a very literary-friendly town with its own annual poetry festival and a chapter of the Oregon Poetry Association. We are very excited about our move, and setting up a real office with walk-in access.

The address, of course, will also be our home address - we haven’t come into some pot of gold or anything. But it is on the main drag through town, in a business zone next door to the town newspaper, and across the street from City Hall, so we will be able to hang out a shingle.

We plan to keep in close contact with all of our Portland friends. Patty and I are so used to living in the city, it will be quite a change for us, so we expect to visit often.

“Shelley Davidow’s extraordinary, lyrical prose is dense with fragrance, eroticism, and the poetry of recalled passion. The short sections read like perfect snapshots of the past, holding a rhythm and deep sensuality reminiscent of French writers like Monique Wittig and Helene Sixous, whose work this memoir joins as a classic feminist tale–a gem of wisdom and beauty.

“In this important memoir, Davidow’s personal history lives alongside the unfolding, violent history of her homeland, South Africa. Her own particular coming-of-age story walks the steaming red earth of that land….”
–Judith Barrington, author of Writing the Memoir and Lifesaving

“Daring. Courageous. Brilliant. Beautiful. Scrupulously truthful. The Eye of the Moon is unlike anything I’ve ever read, and so astonishingly good I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.”
–Molly Gloss, author of The Jump-Off Creek, The Dazzle of Day, and Wild Life.

“Shelley Davidow has built a mandala, with truth as the single bright bead at the center. This artist walks unblinking through the paradoxes of the colonization of both hemispheres, finding her way through the clashing gates of story and silence, of courage and fear—whichever way the moon faces—by an earth-rooted belief in love. She leaves us awed, breathing in time with her voice, holding this gift like ripe mangos, completed and circling on.”
–Bette Lynch Husted, author of Above the Clearwater –Living on Stolen Land

Review copies will be available in a few weeks from The Habit of Rainy Nights Press.

The US Postal Service is about to raise the rate for small magazines and publications. The new rates, proposed by Time Warner, will raise the cost for little publications by 30%. This is coming up fast (April 23rd), so please act today!

Read this article by Robert McChesney: Common Dreams Article

Send a Letter by going here: www.stoppostalratehikes.com

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Call for Manuscripts

The Habit of Rainy Nights Press is putting out a call for manuscripts. We are looking at one or two projects for 2008. If you have a full-length book of literary-quality fiction, creative non-fiction, or social / cultural criticism, we may be interested in reviewing it. We are not accepting poetry at this time.

Please see our guidelines.

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Coming Events

Poetry from the Streets on the last Friday. 6:30pm at Friendly House, NW 26th & Thurman. CANCELLED!

Jane Glazer will be reading from her recently published memoir, “Cornsilk, Growing Up Green,” on Thursday, April 19th at 7 PM in the new LOOKING GLASS BOOKSTORE location. Karen Anna has moved from her old location on S.W. Taylor St. to a charming new space,(red caboose, waterfall garden, fireplace room, the works!) at 7983 S.E. 13th St. in Sellwood. Just circle along the bluff on S.E. 13th St., across from the library and next to the Grand Central Bakery. Cozy and welcoming. Jane’s first venture into prose from her usual poetry.

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The Eye of the Moon review copies to be available

We will have a few review copies of The Eye of the Moon available in late May. We can’t afford to run off very many of these, but if you seriously want to do a review, and have a publication in mind, we would love to send you one. Just let us know.

Judith Barrington says if The Eye of the Moon,

“Shelley Davidow’s extraordinary, lyrical prose is dense with fragrance, eroticism, and the poetry of recalled passion. The short sections read like perfect snapshots of the past, holding a rhythm and deep sensuality reminiscent of French writers like Monique Wittig and Helene Sixous, whose work this memoir joins as a classic feminist tale–a gem of wisdom and beauty.”

We will release The Eye of the Moon in late July.

We are a very small press with volunteer editors. Because of this, we ask that your manuscript be fairly polished, if not professionally edited. In the rare case of a “diamond in the rough,” dealing with a vital and timely subject, we may be inclined to take on some major editing tasks, but we simply do not have the resources to farm out this work. We are extremely picky about this. Polish it up.

We can not pay advances, and the only author compensation beyond royalties, will be in author copies. In exceptional cases we may provide an advertising budget beyond our standard web promotion. Author sales will depend upon the willingness of the author to sell their work. Even the big publishers generally require this, unless you are a superstar.

Please send us a polished manuscript which meets the following criteria:

• 40,000 to 80,000 words,
• literary fiction, creative non-fiction, social of cultural criticism (no poetry at this time),
• work must deal with an important social, cultural or political issue,
• author must be unpublished in the genre (in book-length form),
• in the case of fiction, we require literary quality - we are not looking for pedantic screeds or genre fiction (ie: “entertainment” fiction),
• include a cover letter with a short marketing plan telling us how you would promote your book,
• manuscript should be in rtf (rich text file) format. Please do not send us word or wordperfect documents. Almost all word processors allow you to save in this format.

If you have inquiries, you may email us:
editors (at) rainynightspress (dot) org

I will be attending the Celilo Stories Conference, marking the 50th anniversary of the drowning of Celilo Falls, this next weekend (March 17 & 18), in The Dalles. The conference is free to the public, and is a great chance to hear poets, writers, historians, and native american storytellers talk about the meaning of Celilo Falls.

As I am driving up with an empty car, I would like to offer carpooling to our literary friends. Send me an email to duane (at) elohigadugi (dot) org.

Poetry from the Streets.

Jay Thiemeyer is hosting an open mic the last friday of every month at Friendly House, NW 26th & Thurman, at 6:30pm. Poetry and other works should deal with life on the margins of society. Come read or hear some fine writers and poets.

Calendar Back on Line

After a hiatus of nearly a year, we are once again attempting to keep a calendar of free (or near-free) literary events and open mics in Oregon. This time around we are using Google Calendar. You can see our calendar at our calendar page. There is also a google calendar feed, if you use a feedreader.

This is a preliminary news release for our subscribers. More details to follow.

Duane Poncy and Patricia McLean are poets, activists, performers, and co-founders and publishers of The Habit of Rainy Nights Press, whose first offering was “Raising our Voices– An Anthology of Oregon Poets Against the War.”

Duane, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, is working on a novel about his ancestors and the history of colonialism in the Americas. With Patricia he is a member of Roadside Bomb, a pro-peace, anti-war performance poetry group.

In addition to poetry, Patricia McLean writes fiction and essays. She is involved in anti-poverty work, and her poetry is heavily influenced by this experience. She and Duane recently collaborated on a mystery novel, Bartlett House.