Calendar
CONCERT: Francis Pigeon, Yucky Star, Chandler Trey
An evening of ethereal indie / folk songwriters - Francis Pigeon, Yucky Star, Chandler Trey Johnson at Mother Foucaults
Saturday, March 21st
Join us for an evening of indie /alt singer songwriters.
Donation - $10 (cash / venmo at doors)
RSVP Online - Cash or venmo tickets collected at doors
Doors @ 6:30 pm
Music at 7 pm
715 SE Grand
With ~
Yucky Star - You may know Kate Koller as the player of dreamy cello lines that make you drool, yucky star is all the magic you’ve always known to come from kate & then some.What was once in danger of becoming a collection of unfinished songs is finally making its way to the ears of listeners in portland & soon beyond, and the world is all the better for it.Their stream of consciousness lyrics flow like honey. With distinctive guitar parts in sticky nonstandard tunings you might be tempted to steal.Their voice hits that sweet spot between your ears and your eyes & the lyrics will not only sit with you THEY WILL FOLLOW YOU AROUND.After seeing your first yucky star set you’ll wonder why you never heard them before & when you’ll get to hear them again.
Francis Pigeon -Known by few as the dream queen, Francis Pigeon blends the lines of reality with her honest, ethereal and journeying lyricism. Her songs take on a world of their own as she navigates the dynamics of the human condition, carefully considering each outlook with ripeness. Don't be surprised if the effects of her siren songs portal you into inner territory you haven’t yet explored. Like it or not, Ms. Pigeon will coerce you into contemplation, but never leave you without a lifeline. She is currently frolicking along the sidewalks of Portland Oregon, befriending raindrops, rats, and of course, pigeons.
Multi - Instrumentalist Chandler Trey Johnson's full band
BOOK LAUNCH : BY THE WATERS OF PARADISE by Clare Kinberg
By the Waters of Paradise is a riveting family history that paints a startling portrait of racism and antisemitism and the lasting effects across generations.
In 2016, author Clare Kinberg discovered her estranged Aunt Rose's death certificate on the internet. What followed was an unearthing of contradictions of what "family" means in a segregated United States.
In the 1930s, Rose, an Ashkenazi Jewish woman, married Zebedee Arnwine, an African American man. The Arnwines faced a multitude of barriers due to their interracial marriage, and Rose faced familial and community ostracization for her choice. Her siblings, including Kinberg's father, kept her existence a secret from their children while building a strong sense of family and reinforcing the segregation between Jewish and Black communities. Some eighty years later, Kinberg, whose wife and daughters are descendants of the African diaspora, traced the life and legacy of her aunt. This masterful memoir weaves the genealogical and historical journeys of Rose and Zebedee with discussion of Rose and Kinberg's Jewish ancestry in Romania and Ukraine and investigates their mutual decisions to settle their interracial families in Michigan.
By the Waters of Paradise is more than just a memoir—it is a reckoning with racism in a day and age when it is needed more now than ever.
"By the Waters of Paradise is both an intimate memoir and a history of racism, religion, and politics, Kinberg reveals her aunt's story with sensitivity. She discovers the jagged intersections of Jewish and Black history in the United States, where white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and capitalism delimited each group's opportunities in turn—and sometimes in startlingly entangled ways." ——Lila Corwin Berman, professor of history and of Hebrew and Judaic studies, New York University
About the Author: Clare Kinberg is a writer, editor, and activist. She is the publisher and editor of the Washtenaw Jewish News and was the editor of Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal from 1989–2011.
Imaginary power and insurgent art: A conversation with Richard Gilman-Opalsky and Abigail Susik.
Imaginary power and insurgent art: A conversation with Richard Gilman-Opalsky and Abigail Susik.
Saturday, April 4
6:30 PM
Richard Gilman-Opalsky is a professor of political theory and philosophy in the School of Politics and International Affairs at the University of Illinois, where he is also a professor in the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. He is the author of nine books, including Communist Ontologies, Imaginary Power, Real Horizons, The Communism of Love, Specters of Revolt, and Precarious Communism. His work has been translated and published in Greek, Spanish, French, and German.
Abigail Susik is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at Willamette University and Joint Series Editor of Bloomsbury’s Transnational Surrealism imprint. She has published numerous books, including Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance (Penn State, 2022), and Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (Manchester, 2021). Her new book on surrealism and anti-racism is forthcoming from Verso in 2027.
Monthly Café Littéraire — French Conversation Classes “Read Little, Read Together”
This winter and spring, L’École Buissonnière invites you to a monthly Café Littéraire, a French conversation class rooted in literature, seasonal culture, and thoughtful exchange.
Inspired by French cafés as places of ideas, debate, and imagination, these gatherings offer a slow, intimate approach to the French language. Each 90-minute session opens a thematic doorway through short literary texts, guided conversation, and gentle creative practices.
The focus is not performance or fluency at all costs, but presence, curiosity, and pleasure in thinking together.
Each month highlights a seasonal cultural moment in France, including traditions that shape language and collective imagination.
APRIL 5th | Read Little, Read Together
Lire peu, mais lire ensemble
Seasonal focus: Poisson d’Avril médiatique & la tradition du chocolat et des œufs de Pâques
From 10:30 to 12 pm (90 minutes)
📍 Practical Information
When: First Sunday of each month, February–May
From 10:30 to 12pm (90 minutes)
Where: Mother Foucault’s Bookshop
Group size: Limited to 10 participants
Pricing: Full bundle: $90
→ Includes all 4 sessions + a convivial Garden Party (a French-style apéro) celebrating French culture at the end of the cycleSingle session: $20
Drop-in: $25
Monthly Café Littéraire — French Conversation Classes “The Art of Argumentation à la Française”
This winter and spring, L’École Buissonnière invites you to a monthly Café Littéraire, a French conversation class rooted in literature, seasonal culture, and thoughtful exchange.
Inspired by French cafés as places of ideas, debate, and imagination, these gatherings offer a slow, intimate approach to the French language. Each 90-minute session opens a thematic doorway through short literary texts, guided conversation, and gentle creative practices.
The focus is not performance or fluency at all costs, but presence, curiosity, and pleasure in thinking together.
Each month highlights a seasonal cultural moment in France, including traditions that shape language and collective imagination.
MAY 3rd | The Art of Argumentation à la Française
L’art de l’argumentation à la française
Seasonal focus: La Fête du Travail — le 1er mai & le muguet
From 10:30 to 12 pm (90 minutes)
📍 Practical Information
When: First Sunday of each month, February–May
From 10:30 to 12pm (90 minutes)
Where: Mother Foucault’s Bookshop
Group size: Limited to 10 participants
Pricing: Full bundle: $90
→ Includes all 4 sessions + a convivial Garden Party (a French-style apéro) celebrating French culture at the end of the cycleSingle session: $20
Drop-in: $25
🎾 Portland Tennis Courterly: Big Issue Release Party
Portland Tennis Courterly: Big Issue Release Party
https://tenniscourterly.com/
Saturday, June 6, 2026
7:00 PM 9:00 PM
Reading : The Hunger Artists
March 11th at 5 PM
In “The Hunger Artists,” a Portland State University graduate English course taught by Dr. Sarah Lincoln, scholars and artists are asked to engage with philosophy, theory, and literature that depicts both the personal and political significances of experiences of hunger, including famine, hunger strikes, anorexia, and other forms of “disorderly eating.” Students from the class will read from their work, inspired by writers such as Kafka, Louise Gluck, and Eavan Boland. If you are intrigued by a woman who accidentally swallows a wasp or the analysis of Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman, please join us March 11th at 5 PM
Concert - Blair Borax + Where's Beth
Saturday March 7th
7:00pm | $12 -via venmo
Join us for an evening of folk singer songwriters.
Blair Borax:
Born on the East Coast, and home to the West, Blair Borax’s relationship with music began unexpectedly in 2016, when a friend gifted her a cheap guitar. Since then, Borax has become a prolific songwriter, recording artist, and performer, known for her distinctive voice, captivating melodies, and thoughtful songwriting that taps into the heart of being human.
Since she quit her day job in 2022, she has released three full length albums and played over 350 shows across the country.
Her third full length record, The Color Green (2025) is a collection of ten songs, searching for hope in dystopian times.
Blending intimate storytelling, gorgeous melodies, and rich instrumentation, The Color Green wanders through growing up, falling in love, missing home, watching parents get old, thinking about life and death, and slowing down to savor all of it.
Fans of Adrianne Lenker, Hannah Cohen, and Angie McMahon may find something to love in her music.
https://blairborax.bandcamp.com/album/the-color-green
Where's Beth:
Where’s Beth is the alt folk project of songwriter Sarabeth Weszely. Voice and lyrics clear as glass, her music carries the kind of honesty that makes a room go still. Raised in the Midwest and trained as a writer, Weszely brings a literary sensibility to her songs, shaped by close observation and restraint. She lived seven years in New York City, where she recorded for my mom & other lovers (2022) and Bone Broth (2024).
These early releases introduced her devotion to shared domestic spaces and the emotional textures of the mundane.
Her sophomore album Ache Is A Cricket In The Night continues this exploration of everyday life but widens its emotional landscape.
Across its songs, Weszely writes in tiny weather systems: a fridge that stops humming, a clogged drain gurgling like human pain, strangers pointing out untied shoes in the grocery line, white ants burrowing through wood at dusk.
These images widen into reflections on grief, anger, the quiet accumulation of loss, and the ordinary ache of being alive.
Recorded live in Weszely’s Seattle home studio, Ache Is A Cricket In The Night trusts presence over perfection. It does not rush toward resolution but stays, listens, offering itself as a companion and trusting that even the smallest details can hold entire emotional worlds.
Monthly Café Littéraire — French Conversation Classes “The World of the Francophonie”
This winter and spring, L’École Buissonnière invites you to a monthly Café Littéraire, a French conversation class rooted in literature, seasonal culture, and thoughtful exchange.
Inspired by French cafés as places of ideas, debate, and imagination, these gatherings offer a slow, intimate approach to the French language. Each 90-minute session opens a thematic doorway through short literary texts, guided conversation, and gentle creative practices.
The focus is not performance or fluency at all costs, but presence, curiosity, and pleasure in thinking together.
Each month highlights a seasonal cultural moment in France, including traditions that shape language and collective imagination.
MARCH 1st | The World of the Francophonie
Le monde de la francophonie: Aimé Césaire and Négritude: poetry as resistance, identity, dignity
From 10:30 to 12 pm (90 minutes)
📍 Practical Information
When: First Sunday of each month, February–May
From 10:30 to 12pm (90 minutes)
Where: Mother Foucault’s Bookshop
Group size: Limited to 10 participants
Pricing: Full bundle: $90
→ Includes all 4 sessions + a convivial Garden Party (a French-style apéro) celebrating French culture at the end of the cycleSingle session: $20
Drop-in: $25
Book launch : "When Beauty Carved Your Name" Jodhi Mather-Pike
Join us for the book release of Jodhi Mather-Pike's "When Beauty Carved Your Name". The book is a collection of poetry and photography exploring love, sexuality, grief, family, identity, and the elusive pursuit of beauty.
The evening will include a brief reading of several poems from the book as well as readings from other Portland poets. Several local musicians will provide ambient and classical music, including the artists Feverkin and Greg Allison. Complimentary wine and cocktails will be available.
Jodhi is a South African poet, musician and photographer currently living in Portland, Oregon. His work focuses on the nature of being and is primarily expressed through examining and capturing daily experiences. His documentary work is exhibited in Portland, with an upcoming exhibit at Franklin Foto for the Month of March.
Feverkin: https://www.feverkin.com/
Greg Allison: https://www.gregoryallison.net/
CONCERT Sammy Volkov & Tispur
Wednesday, Feb 25
from 7 pm to 10 pm
Sammy Volkov
Imagine if Roy Orbison and Townes Van Zandt co-wrote a song - weird - but it kinda works. Alberta-based Sammy Volkov's debut album ‘Be Alright!’ was celebrated by western-Canadian tastemakers, and his second (a country duets collection called 'The Day Had To Come') topped Bandcamp’s ‘Best Country Music of 2024’ list. His upcoming solo album “Songs From the Goodbye Garden” offers an eclectic range of styles, celebrating Sammy’s love for romantic 1960s pop and dreamy chamber folk.
Tispur
Tispur is a folk project led by Samwise Carlson in Portland, OR. They’re known for their angelic voice, unique finger-style guitar technique and gently hypnotic, moving performances akin to the spirits of Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan, and Joanna Newsom.
Translation Tuesday at Mother Foucault's!
Translation Tuesday at Mother Foucault's!
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
7:00 p.m.
Another Translation Tuesday triple feature!
Jacob Boas will read translations of Dutch literary critic Menno ter Braak. Prabu Muruganantham will read from his translations of Tamil poet Devadeval and excerpts of a short story he wrote in Tamil and translated into English. Allison A. deFreese will read translations of Mexican poets Janil Uc Tun and Ileana Garma. The reading will be followed by a short Q&A.
Come have a glass of wine and a listen!
Jacob (Jack) Boas was born in the Netherlands. He has a Ph.D. in Modern European History. His website can be found at www.jacobboas.com
Menno ter Braak – "my books are me" – was Holland's foremost interwar literary critic. "Temporary Illiteracy" (1934), the selection on tap, spoofs the reading habit and that "Monster of Civilization: Homo Lector". Ter Braak killed himself, aged 38, upon Germany's invasion of the Netherlands, May 1940.
Prabu Muruganantham is an immigrant writer, translator and filmmaker from the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Devadevan is a contemporary Tamil poet. His poems express the profound joy of the human subconscious when it experiences unity with nature and the cosmos. Devadevan says, "If we come to understand that what is first expressed in poetry is our own personality, we will begin to take interest in the development of that personality. And the development of personality ultimately leads us to the state of realizing that it is nothing other than continuous self-realization.”
Allison deFreese is president of the Oregon Society of Translators and Interpreters (OSTI) and a former National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation fellow. Her book-length translations, into English, include works by María Negroni, Karla Marrufo, David Anuar, Carolina Esses, and astronaut José Moreno Hernández. Her translations also appear in The Harvard Review, The New England Review, Latin American Literature Today, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Los Angeles Review. She teaches in the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley's MA in Spanish Translation and Interpreting (TIP) Program.
Janil Uc Tun (Ticul, Yucatán, Mexico) won the 2025 “Juegos Florales Hispanoamericanos Quetzaltenango” Award for Poetry (Guatemala), as well as the 2019 "Premio Peninsular de Poesía José Díaz Bolio" (José Díaz Bolio Peninsular Prize in Poetry). Janil’s book Gentry: Or the Name of a Tree with No Memory was awarded the prestigious 2022 “LXIII Juegos Florales Nacionales de Ciudad del Carmen” Award for Poetry. Uc Tun is a founding member of U Yotoch Yúuyum, a collective that promotes art and creativity while strengthening connections to Maya identity and serves as a lecturer in Literatura y Cultura Maya at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán.
Ileana Garma, born and raised in the Yucatan, holds a degree in Visual Arts from the Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán. She has been the recipient of a PECDA (Program to Encourage Artistic Creation and Development/ Programa de Estímulo a la Creación y Desarrollo Artístico) Painting Fellowship (2018-2019) as well as two FONCA (National Endowment for Culture and Arts/Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes) fellowships in Poetry (2013-2014 and 2020-2021). Garma has also received the Premio National in Poetry for her book Caza de letras/The Letter Hunt (UNAM, 2012), the National Charles Bukowski Poetry Prize (2008), and was awarded the 2022 Agustín Yáñez National Short Story Prize for her book Cómo vivir sola después de los cuarenta/How to Live Alone After Forty (Libros del Marqués, 2023).
Concert - Music & Poetry - The Potatoes and Joel Martin from Toledo & Poets
An evening of Music & Poetry - The Potatoes, Joel Martin from Toledo, & Poets Joann Renee & Bethany Lee at Mother Foucaults
Saturday, Feb 21st
Join us for an evening of ethereal folk songwriters & poetry.
Donation - $10 -$15 sliding scale (cash / venmo at doors)
Doors @ 7 pm
Music at 7:30 pm
With ~
The PotatoesThe Potatoes are a five-member band from Portland, with a wonderful mix of sound from guitar, drums, accordion, trumpet, and vocals. They mainly sing sad songs, but mix it up with friendly banter in the live show and a stage presence with says, "We're all in this together." Like our friend Kurt Vonnegut, The Potatoes are here to help us all get through this thing, whatever it is.https://thepotatoes4.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/the_potatoes_band/
Joel Martin from ToledoJoel Martin is a songwriter from Toledo, Washington - hence the moniker "Joel Martin from Toledo," Joel's songs are a fascinating combination of deep lyrics and intricate melodies, which inspire and keep you on your toes. Joel has a talent for weaving various themes (such as mortality, baseball, nature, spirituality, and more) into songs which are very pleasant to listen to. Joel currently lives on the central coast of Washington State and enjoys sharing his music around the Northwest.
https://joelmartinfromtoledo.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/joelmartinfromtoledo/?hl=en
& Poetry from ..
Joann Renee
https://joannrenee.com/poetry/
https://www.instagram.com/jrbpoetry/
Bethany Lee
https://www.bethanyjoylee.com/
A Night of Queer Communism:Celebrating the publication of Pinko Magazine Issue IV
A Night of Queer Communism
Celebrating the publication of Pinko Issue IV
Editor Max Fox in conversation with Madeline Lane-McKinley & Sloane McNulty
Friday February 20 at 7 PM
Max Fox is a writer, translator, and founding editor of Pinko Magazine.
Madeline Lane-McKinley is a writer based in Portland, whose latest book is Solidarity with Children: An Essay Against Adult Supremacy (Haymarket Press, 2025).
Sloane McNulty is an adjunct professor, videographer, and organizer in Portland, OR. They have published work in Cyborgology, Culture Critique, and Oregon Arts Watch and are currently working on a book entitled Anti-Ethics: Gender, Threat, and the Rise of Postmodern Fascism.
Poetry evening with 4 Portland-based poets -- Genevieve DeGuzman, Eric Larsh, Judy Nahum, and Breen Nolan and visiting poet Clayton Adam Clark
Thursday, February 19
7:00 PM
Join us for an evening of poetry with 4 Portland-based poets -- Genevieve DeGuzman, Eric Larsh, Judy Nahum, and Breen Nolan -- plus visiting poet Clayton Adam Clark. They will each share poems from their recent collections and then circle up to talk creative processes, inspirations, their love of poetry, etc. and whatever else the audience wants to hear about.
Clayton Adam Clark lives in Saint Louis, his hometown, where he works as a mental health counselor in private practice alongside his wife, Tina, and their therapy dog, Tank. His latest poetry collection, Auscultate, was published by Galileo Press in 2025, and his debut poetry collection, A Finitude of Skin, won the 2017 Moon City Poetry Award (Moon City Press, 2018). He is especially grateful for an Artist Support Grant from the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis, which is supporting his travel for this reading.
Genevieve DeGuzman is a poet and essayist based in Portland. She has received the Oregon Literary Fellowship and StoryBoard Fellowship, as well as support from Vermont Studio Center, Poets & Writers, Oregon Arts Commission, and the Regional Arts & Culture Council. An Alice James Award finalist and Tin House alum, Genevieve has work in The Adroit, Poetry Northwest, phoebe, RHINO, and other publications. Her first collection Karaoke at the End of the World is forthcoming March 2026 from JackLeg Press.
Eric Larsh is a writer and musician living in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of Desert (2024, Cathexis Northwest Press). His writing can also be found at Los Angeles Review, Thin Air Online, and elsewhere. Eric received his MFA from Portland State University. He also hosts MAKE SPACE RADIO, a biweekly independent radio show at Freeform Portland.
Judy Nahum (she/her) lives and writes in Portland, OR. An alum of Tin House and the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, Judy has work in Pile Press, Muleskinner Journal, and Yes, Poetry, among others. Her first poetry chapbook, i have wrestled with the way clouds weep, was published in 2024 by Querencia Press.
Breen Nolan is a writer from Rochester, New York. She holds an MFA from the University of California, Riverside-Palm Desert, where she received the 2023 Founder’s Award and was the inaugural recipient of the Lizi Gilad Silver Memorial Scholarship. She previously served as Managing Editor of The Coachella Review. Her poetry chapbook is forthcoming from Cooper Dillon Books in spring 2026. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her family.
Concert - Shore Pines, Essie & The Hum, Emma Bakshi Davis
Wednesday, Feburary 18th
Evenbrite RSVP : https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1980237543800?aff=oddtdtcreator
Join us for an evening of Indie Pop & folk singer songwriters.
Donation - $10 (cash / venmo at doors)
RSVP Online - Cash or venmo tickets collected at doors
Doors @ 7 pm
Music at 7:30 pm
715 SE Grand
With ~
Shore Pines takes a glitchy, jazz-inflected approach to aughts-era indie rock. Their songs feature twinning guitar and trumpet riffs, warm synths, and whirling female vocals. Having spent the last two years in a flow of indie nostalgia and galactic sounds, the band released their debut album, Loom, in May 2025.
Essie and The Hum craft ethereal indie-folk rock shaped by the magic of live performance. Based in Portland, OR, their sound drifts from intimate, slow-burn ballads to full-throttle rock moments, pulling listeners into a wormhole they won’t want to leave.
Emma Bakshi Davis is a Portland-based singer/songwriter blending intimate indie folk with the melodic flair of modern pop. Inspired by nature, the human mind, and the intensity with which she experiences the world, she writes honest, evocative songs exploring vulnerability, and resilience. Emma released her debut single, Lover of the Wind, in October 2025.
WHY PRINT? A MIXER AND PANEL EVENT HIGHLIGHTING THE ROLE OF PRINT IN AN DIGITAL-FIRST WORLD
For at least the past several years, there’s been talk of a “print revival" in media—but did print ever really go away?
We're gathering editors and designers from local independent and nonprofit publishers at @motherfoucaultsbooks for a conversation about the role of print in a digital-first world.
Join @kitchentablemag, @provecho.magazine, @buckmanjournal, and @oregonhumanities to discuss:
✴ Why does print persist, not only as nostalgia, but as a still-revolutionary technology for storytelling and connection?
✴ How do print magazines offer unique tools for community building?
✴ How can print media elevate stories and voices that get lost in platform and algorithm-driven media?
✴ What challenges do small independent publishers face in sustaining print media today, and what potential solutions exist?
The first half of this event will be dedicated to discussion and Q&A, and the other half will be for socializing and community building.
No RSVP needed!
Come celebrate Valentine's Day at the bookshop ❤️
Come celebrate Valentine's Day at the bookshop ❤️
Saturday, February 14th
7 PM - 10 PM
With candlelight and champagne, cakes and books and oysters and caviar
Featuring live hot jazz music by Dave Ricketts of “Gaucho" from S.F.
Twenty dollars per person
Or 📞 Call the shop (503)236-BOOK
A benefit for L’École Buissonnière
Poetry Reading : Christopher Adams "Lardo Bardo" with Lauren Isa Arri, Gaspar Burden, Chris Maday, Bee Dunlap
“Lardo Bardo” poetry reading with:
Christopher Adams
Lauren Isa Arri
Gaspar Burden
Chris Maday
Bee Dunlap
Friday, February 13
7:00 PM
CONCERT: Trigger Object, Ember Veil, Troll Hart Piano
An evening of ethereal, dark folk, experimental, dark wave ! - Trigger Object, Ember Veil, Troll Hart Piano at Mother Foucaults
Wendesday, Feb 11
Link to RSVP : https://www.eventbrite.com/e/trigger-object-ember-veil-troll-hart-piano-at-mother-foucaults-tickets-1980277947649?aff=oddtdtcreator
Donation - $10-$20 sliding scale (cash / venmo at doors)
RSVP Online - Cash or venmo tickets collected at doors
Doors @ 7 pm
Music at 7:30 pm
715 SE Grand
With ~
Vern Avola is a composer, multimedia artist, based in Portland, Oregon. She founded EMS Records. Avola's solo sound works uses deep electronic sounds to geomap the hidden layers that also come with a given "present moment"; from the guttural subterranean or the hallways of the earthly punk and DIY culture to consensual abduction and flight. Avola's compositions hold space for these physical stretches that become emblems of safety when society faces a truth in zero control within a political predestination. In this process Avola brings an ability back to the listener to think and exist outside of man's algorithm.Since 2007, Avola has performed this work internationally and has released several albums on Sige Recordings, An Out Recordings, Accident Prone Records, Gravity Records and Nadine Records. She currently has a radio show on East Village Radio and has had radio shows on KRCB, KFFP, The Neon Hospice (UK) and Repeater Radio (UK).
Ember Veil
Ember Veil is a dark folk project that weaves stories and spells from the past into gothic soundscapes. Using a wide range of ancient and contemporary instruments, Ember Veil expresses a desire for a deeper connection with both the distant past and the present world around us. Their live performance is an immersive storytelling experience, including reading from medieval texts, live drumming, and handcrafted costumes.
25 years of devoted musical practice and many long stories of spiritual exploration have led to the faerie forest operas of "Troll Hart Piano", Troll Hart's solo project.In Troll Hart Piano, Troll unleashes the mythological storyteller as an integrated expression of her spiritual practice. With operatic singing and narration in tongues somewhere between jazz-scatting and primal glossolalia, the ancient spirits of the woodland realm are summoned to journey the harmonic halls of Troll's fantastical piano-based improvisations and compositions.
Concert - Larsen Gardens With Kyle J. Glenn & Mikey Whalen
Sarah Edmonds’s career in music exists to paint an intimate portrait of transformation and acceptance. Blossoming with the warmth and care required to look within, her music as Larsen Gardens is an alchemical reflection of what it’s like to boldly shine light into a shadowy place. Hailing from music city where she was a devotee to cool jazz and intimate vocal stylings of the 40s and 50s and where she made a jazz record with world-renowned pianist Beegie Adair, Sarah found her writer’s voice when she moved to Seattle in 2017. Embracing her penchant for nuanced oddity and vulnerability quickly empowered her writer’s voice, and Sarah established herself as a musical and creative force in Seattle. Her collection of songs gained the interest of Nashville friends and producers Jen Gunderman (Sheryl Crow, Jayhawks) and Joe Pisapia (KD Lang, Guster), and the result is a dreamy, hopeful kaleidoscope of mellotron, washy guitars, twinkling piano, and, in some tracks, lo-fi apartment-recording and producing. Her record affirms that it’s okay to feel how you feel: “A lot of people are out there feeling things and they don’t even know it; or they're scared to show it. Being real with ourselves about the nuance of sad or unwanted feelings can actually be quite pleasurable when we sense we’re not alone in it…and wow when someone realizes this they crack right open into love and acceptance and it’s one of the most beautiful things to witness.” So setting the scene for this kind of transformation, we learn, is hardly as important as respecting the path by which to get there–the path of transcendence through self-acceptance, accomplished only with the fiercest of kindness and willingness to remain open-hearted no matter the obstacle. Moonflower showcases both the raw and well-executed in “Feel Good,” the easy listening and vulnerability of “Clouds,” and finally the hopeful foreshadow of work to come in the explosive “Halfway There.” With this record and the live transmission of its gift, listeners receive an experience of dimensional beauty that is mysteriously and simultaneously deeply human and altogether transcendent.
Kyle J. Glenn (he/him) is a singer-songwriter from Portland, Oregon, who has been writing and performing his own songs since 2014. His music blends folk rock, alt-country, and singer-songwriter traditions, and his latest record, “Everywhere is Close to Somewhere Else”, reflects a decade-long journey to find "home." Inspired by artists like Gillian Welch, John Prine, and Big Thief, Kyle's story-driven songs have earned him features on Kink FM 102's Homegrown Discovery and performances at venues across the U.S., Spain, and Portugal. Kyle can be found around the PNW performing solo and backed by his band, The Wandering Kind.
Mikey Whalen
https://mikeywhalen.com/
Is a Portland-based songwriter who draws inspiration from the songwriting heavy hitters of decades past. His songs tell stories of lovable misfits and existential woes, sometimes melancholic, sometimes humorous, and often both.
Postal Social Club
Postal Social Club
Come to Postal Social hour at Mother Foucault’s 💌
Write letters and postcards while drinking tea and also somehow socializing.
We’ll provide pens, typewriters, stationary, envelopes…bring yourself, a friend, your favorite quill pen if that’s your thing…and drop by between 2-4 pm
For introverts (well, one introvert at a time), there is the option to grab your cup of tea and head upstairs to the secret solo letter-writing desk, and participate in a quieter fashion.
Other People's Poems (OPP)
Other People's Poems (OPP)
Memorize someone else’s poem and come recite it (or just listen).
Friday, January 6
7 PM sharp
BOOK LAUNCH : Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá: A Soul Suspended Between Two Worlds by Jorge Xolalpa
What does it mean to belong when you’re told—explicitly or quietly—that you don’t?
In Ni De Aquí, Ni De Allá, Jorge Xolalpa delivers a raw, intimate memoir about growing up between borders, cultures, and expectations. With unflinching honesty and unexpected tenderness, he explores identity, migration, family, and the quiet resilience it takes to survive when the world keeps asking you to choose a side.
This is not a story about having all the answers. It’s about learning to live in the in-between—where longing, love, and self-acceptance coexist. Through moments of loss, humor, fear, and hope, Xolalpa reminds us that belonging isn’t something we’re granted—it’s something we claim.
For anyone who has ever felt invisible, displaced, or torn between worlds, this book is a mirror—and an invitation to finally take up space.
Jorge Xolalpa
Jorge Xolalpa is a Mexican-born author and filmmaker whose work explores identity, belonging, and life in the in-between. A self-published writer, he has built a devoted readership by telling honest, deeply personal stories rooted in resilience, migration, and self-discovery. His writing is known for its emotional clarity, vulnerability, and refusal to soften the truth for comfort.
Through his work, Jorge centers voices often left out of the conversation, offering stories that resonate with anyone who has ever felt unseen or out of place. He lives and works in the United States.
"Imagine all the People": A Talk on Digital Futures, Computer-Human Interaction, and Radical Innovaton by author Dr. Alexander Reid Ross
Join the Computer-Human Interaction Forum of Oregon for a Talk on Digital Futures by author, activist, and professor Alexander Reid Ross
“Imagine All the People”: Socio-Ecological-Technical Imaginaries and Utopian Movements
John Lennon’s famous directive to “imagine all the people” is virtually impossible for social movements that require enemies and scapegoats to foster egalitarian visions of the future. Building on research into the far right, this talk describes the emergence of powerful socio-ecological-technical imaginaries in the 21st Century and their relation to social movements and community organization. Discussing the rising movement against data centers and right-wing social media, it locates imaginaries in the complex, mimetic struggles for freedom in which technology seems to threaten as much as it promises. In the contexts of theories like “abundance,” accelerationism, and eco-modernism, it possible today, as utopianism and pessimism surge, for “all the people” to fit into our imagined past, present, and future?
Alexander Reid Ross is an award-winning geographer working at the intersection of human-natural systems, focusing on climate, water, and the political far right. He holds a doctorate from Portland State’s Earth, Environment, Society program, and his work has appeared in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, the Hydrological Sciences Journal, The Public Historian, and the Annals of the American Association of Geographers Review of Books. He has produced three books, with a forthcoming work on Shakespeare and the concept of the sublime due out later this year.
All are welcome. Free to enter, small donations to cover expenses encouraged.
LINK TO RSVP https://luma.com/e1kr1wn2
Monthly Café Littéraire — French Conversation Classes "The Café as a Place of Thought"
This winter and spring, L’École Buissonnière invites you to a monthly Café Littéraire, a French conversation class rooted in literature, seasonal culture, and thoughtful exchange.
Inspired by French cafés as places of ideas, debate, and imagination, these gatherings offer a slow, intimate approach to the French language. Each 90-minute session opens a thematic doorway through short literary texts, guided conversation, and gentle creative practices.
The focus is not performance or fluency at all costs, but presence, curiosity, and pleasure in thinking together.
Each month highlights a seasonal cultural moment in France, including traditions that shape language and collective imagination.
FEBRUARY 1st | The Café as a Place of Thought
Le café comme lieu de pensée
Seasonal focus: La Chandeleur (crêpes, light returning)
We’ll explore how cafés have shaped French intellectual and artistic life, read a short text together, and reflect—en français—on solitude, presence, and the art of being together.
From 10:30 to 12 pm (90 minutes)
📍 Practical Information
When: First Sunday of each month, February–May
From 10:30 to 12pm (90 minutes)
Where: Mother Foucault’s Bookshop
Group size: Limited to 10 participants
Pricing: Full bundle: $90
→ Includes all 4 sessions + a convivial Garden Party (a French-style apéro) celebrating French culture at the end of the cycle
Single session: $20
Drop-in: $25
CONCERT Berkley & Sam Weber
Join us for a night of singer /songwriters at Mother Foucault's books
Saturday January 24th
RSVP
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/berkley-sam-weber-at-mother-foucaults-tickets-1976671581912
Sam Weber
Sam Weber is a Portland-based songwriter whose name you might have seen on marquees beside Dawes and Feist, or in liner notes as a songwriter on the new Madison Cunningham record, Ace. His latest LP, Shape Confused Cowboy Be You pushes the boundaries of what it means to be a songwriter in the 21st century. He is a Scorpio.
About Berkley
With a voice that straddles delicacy and huskiness, Portland songwriter Berkley (Andy Jones) takes the mantle from the 70s Laurel Canyon scene.
Jones’s signature progressive flourishes and expansive influences keep him out of the heritage revivalism pack as he ventures into new (for him) territory of country-tinged, folk-leaning tunes on his grant-winning second LP, Vaquero.
Book Launch — Hybred, by Jamie Mustard and Francesca Filomena
Book Launch — Hybred, by Jamie Mustard and Francesca Filomena
Set in a future-adjacent, alternative Los Angeles, this is a story of staggering poverty, drugs, and violence and of an artistic child who finds beauty in the ugly and sublime hope in our conflicts.
HYBRED shows us how in our most marginalized communities lies an astonishing amount of genius which goes unnoticed and is so often tragically wasted.
Nine-year-old Johnny James lives in The Casque, the poorest neighborhood in Greater Angeles, where he shares a one-room apartment with his mother, stepfather, two brothers, and an army of cockroaches. He spends his days in the sweltering heat of the neighborhood, at the movie theaters, playing tackleball, or drawing – but there’s no money for him to go to school.
As death, addiction, and violence swirl through the neighborhood, Johnny grows up with friends, adventures, and magic around him. And he discovers how to use art, beauty, and personal strength to transcend the forces destined to hold him back.
Jamie Mustard is an artist, a futurist, and a writer with a focus on perception in the physical world. Growing up in severe poverty and illiteracy in inner city Los Angeles, Jamie overcame obstacles to graduate from the London School of Economics. He currently works as a strategic multi-media consultant, teacher, interdisciplinary art, design, and product futurist. He is the winner of The National Indie Excellence Award as well as the OWL Outstanding Works in Literature Award for his book, The Iconist. And his memoir Child X is being published in July 2025 by BenBella Books.
TRANSLATION TUESDAY
Translation Tuesday at Mother Foucault's!
Tuesday, January 20, 2026
7:00 p.m.
Translation Tuesday triple feature!
Jay Boss Rubin will read three poems he translated from Swahili by Tanzanian author Euphrase Kezilahabi. Ági Bori will read her translations from Hungarian of a flash fiction piece by Miklós Vámos and two poems by Anna T. Szabó. Nina Perrotta will read her translation of a short essay by Mexican writer Julieta García González. The reading will be followed by a short Q&A.
Come have a glass of wine and a listen!
Jay Boss Rubin is a writer and literary translator from Swahili into English. His book-length translations include Rosa Mistika by Euphrase Kezilahabi (Yale University Press) and The Witness of Nina Mvungi and Other Stories by Esther Karin Mngodo (Hanging Loose Press). He is currently at work on the award-winning spy novel New Virus by Halfani Sudy (forthcoming from University of Georgia Press). He is a proud graduate of the Queens College MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation, and he currently serves as Managing Editor of Portland Tennis Courterly.
Euphrase Kezilahabi (1944–2020) was a Tanzanian fiction writer, poet, dramatist, philosopher, and scholar. He wrote six novels, and was among the very first Swahili writers to publish poetry in free verse. Kezilahabi was born and raised in the village of Namagondo, on Ukerewe Island in Lake Victoria. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Dar es Salaam, and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 1995 he joined the faculty of the Department of African Languages and Literature at the University of Botswana, and taught there until shortly before his passing away.
Ági Bori originally hails from Hungary, and she has lived in the United States for more than thirty years. A decade ago, she decided to try her hand at translating and discovered she loved it. She mostly translates for Hungarian author Miklós Vámos, but occasionally renders the works of several poets from Hungarian into English, and vice versa. Her translations and writings are available or forthcoming in Asymptote, The Baffler, Hopscotch Translation, Northwest Review, Pool Party, The Rumpus, Trafika Europe, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. She is a translation editor at the Los Angeles Review.
Miklós Vámos is a Hungarian writer who has had over forty books published, many of them in multiple languages. He is the recipient of numerous literary accolades, including the 2016 Prima Primissima Award, one of the most prestigious awards in Hungary. His most successful book is The Book of Fathers, which has been translated into nearly thirty languages. His ancestors on his father’s side were Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Fortunately, his father—a member of a penitentiary march battalion—survived. His selected writings have appeared in Asymptote, The New York Times, Tablet, and Words Without Borders, among others.
Anna T. Szabó is a poet, writer, and translator. She was born in Transylvania (Romania) in 1972, moved to Hungary in 1987, studied English and Hungarian literature at the University of Budapest, and received her PhD in 2001 (her field of study being the translation of Shakespeare). She has published more than ten volumes of poetry for adults and nine for children, written three books of short stories, twelve plays, and has received several literary prizes. Translations of her poems have appeared in The Baffler, Hungarian Literature Online, and in various anthologies, most recently Under a Pannonian Sky, out from Seagull Books in December 2025.
Nina Perrotta is a literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese into English and an editor at Words Without Borders. Her translations have appeared in the Iowa Review, The Common, and La Lucha: Latin American Feminism Today (Charco Press, 2025), among other publications. Her first book-length translation, Clara Alves’s London on My Mind, was published by Scholastic in 2024. She has received grants and fellowships from MacDowell, the Fulbright Commission, the British Centre for Literary Translation, and the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference. In 2022, she was a finalist for the Peirene Stevns Translation Prize.
Julieta García González is a novelist, essayist, radio presenter, and podcaster. She is the author of several novels and short story collections, and her work has appeared in more than a dozen anthologies, as well as publications in Mexico, Spain, Argentina, France, England, and the United States. She has received grants from the Centro Mexicano de Escritores, Fonca, and the Casa Estudio Cien Años de Soledad. She hosts the radio show Acentos and won first prize for the Walter Reuter Prize for Journalism in multimedia in 2022.
Darci Phenix & Slake at Mother Foucaults (Sunday Matinee show)
An afternoon concert of heartfelt folk singer songwriters - Darci Phenix and Slake at Mother Foucaults
RSVP
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/darci-phenix-slake-at-mother-foucaults-sunday-matinee-show-tickets-1979002408477?aff=oddtdtcreator
Darci Phenix is a Portland OR based multidisciplinary artist.
She works with sound and textiles to create worlds inspired by folklore and the landscapes of her heart. She believes traditional crafts like wool-spinning and songwriting hold important responses to the pace and values of the modern world. Belief in community, slowness and real life experiences are at the core of her work.
website: darciphenix.com
Slake
“Like a sword pulled from the sea, Slake’s front person Mary Claire has a voice and song that exists in the realm of ancient lore, forbidden love, and quenched thirst. This bay-area-based artist moves and performs along the water’s edge, creating a melodic sense of belonging in the transient nature of each story crafted.
website: http://www.slake.me/
Portland Book Launch & Reading: Chen, Hasegawa, Macarty & Zdeb
Portland Book Launch & Reading: Chen, Hasegawa, Macarty & Zdeb
Saturday, January 10, at 7pm
Mother Foucault’s Bookshop, 715 SE Grand Ave, Portland, OR
Join us in celebrating the release of four exciting new poetry books! This gathering of four dynamic voices promises an evening of expansive poetics, visionary storytelling, and community celebration.
The End of Welcome by Nicole Alston Zdeb (Airlie Press, 2025)
The Long Now Conditions Permit by Jami Macarty (University of Nevada Press, 2025)
NAOMIE ANOMIE: A Biography of Infinite Desire by Jennifer Hasegawa (Omnidawn, 2025).
Shiny City by Ching-In Chen (Airlie Press, 2025)
This event is free and open to the public!
~ masks & industrial-fragrance-free suggested ~ .
Ching-In Chen is author of recombinant (2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry), and The Heart's Traffic: a novel in poems as well as chapbooks to make black paper sing and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (Leslie Scalapino Finalist).
Chen's Shiny City examines the "real" and imagined history of Riverside, California's Chinatown, juxtaposed with a speculative shiny city of the global future which reconstructs its own kind of history with beauty that emerges from between the cracks. Chen collaborates with Cassie Mira on Breathing in a Time of Disaster, a performance, installation and speculative writing project exploring breath through meditation and environmental justice.
Jennifer Hasegawa is a poet and community archivist. Her latest poetry collection, NAOMIE ANOMIE: A Biography of Infinite Desire is an experimental poetic take on anti-memoir. Her debut collection, La Chica's Field Guide to Banzai Living, won the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award and was long-listed for The Believer Book Award in Poetry. Her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Bamboo Ridge, Bennington Review, jubilat, and Vallum. She was born and raised on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi and currently resides in San Francisco.
Jami Macarty is the author of The Minuses, winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award-Poetry Arizona, and four chapbooks, including The Whole Catastrophe and Mind of Spring, winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Macarty’s 2025 collection, The Long Now Conditions Permit, offers an ecofeminist ethic of care as an antidote to extractive capitalism and patriarchal norms. Macarty supports other writers as an independent mentor, editor, and reviewer, and as a creative writing teacher at Simon Fraser University. Macarty lives in and learns from the arborescent desert around Tucson, Arizona, and the rain coast of Vancouver, British Columbia.
Nicole Alston Zdeb is a writer based in Portland, Oregon. Her debut poetry book, The End of Welcome, holds themes of grief, resilience, and joy as a shell held to the ear holds the sonic image of the sea, as the heart holds the fallout of a suicide, and the body holds defiant against and bends to the machinations of progress. She holds a MFA from Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Bedouin Press published her chapbook, The Friction of Distance. Recently, she’s had poems, photographs, and short stories accepted by Driftwood Press, Lana Turner, SWWIM, and other journals.
Postal Social Club
Come to Postal Social hour at Mother Foucault’s 💌
Write letters and postcards while drinking tea and also somehow socializing.
We’ll provide pens, typewriters, stationary, envelopes…bring yourself, a friend, your favorite quill pen if that’s your thing…and drop by between 2-4 pm
For introverts (well, one introvert at a time), there is the option to grab your cup of tea and head upstairs to the secret solo letter-writing desk, and participate in a quieter fashion.
Learn more about our events.
To organize a reading or book launch, call (503) 236-2665.