Join us for an evening of poetry with Chris Vanjonack, Weston Morrow, and Callum Angus.
OUT OF BODY by Chris Vanjonack:
A wildly inventive collection of interconnected speculative stories—spanning the multiverse, demonic attachment, and life after death—from an electrifying new voice in fiction. Throughout this apocalyptic collection, an aimless ghost haunts his ex-girlfriend for evidence that she's actually upset about his death, three friends discover a device that purports to predict the best day of its users' lives, and a drunken posse descends into the woods in search of the clowns that have been terrorizing their small town. Morbidly funny and brilliantly observed, Out of Body is an atmospheric, dead original feast for the senses.
"Chris Vanjonack is a freight train of talent, and he's at full-throttle in Out of Body. This is a mind-bending, world-splitting, wildly entertaining debut--a significant event on the landscape of contemporary fiction."
— Patrick Ryan, New York Times bestselling author of Buckeye
Chris Vanjonack is a writer and educator from Denver, Colorado. A recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Award, his fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in One Story, Volume 0, Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and he teaches creative writing at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop. Out of Body is his first book.
CLOUD BUILDER by Weston Morrow:
What do we owe the dead? This is the question at the heart of Cloud Builder, in which National Poetry Series winner Weston Morrow interrogates the burden of legacy and the ever-watchful gaze of our deceased loved ones. His search takes him from the landscapes of the late Romantics to the soccer fields and baseball diamonds of present-day Washington State, along the way reanimating figures from his own and our collective past. These poems reawaken long-dead painters and musicians, collapsed bridges, derelict ferries, and dormant volcanoes, confronting him with his failure, at times, to ask what it is we owe the living.
"A tender, achingly pensive debut; a feat of a collection…"
—Ariana Benson, author of Black Pastoral, winner of the Academy of American Poets Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
Weston Morrow is the author of the 2025 National Poetry Series winning collection, Cloud Builder. His recent poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Boulevard, The Adroit Journal, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. He holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an M.A. in English Literature from Central Washington University. A former print journalist, he teaches writing at The Ohio State University.
A NATURAL HISTORY OF TRANSITION by Callum Angus
A Natural History of Transition is a collection of short stories that disrupts the notion that trans people can only have one transformation. Like the landscape studied over eons, change does not have an expiration date for these trans characters, who grow as tall as buildings, turn into mountains, unravel hometown mysteries, and give birth to cocoons. Portland-based author Callum Angus infuses his work with a mix of alternative history, horror, and a reality heavily dosed with magic.
"Callum Angus is one of the younger writers I'm most excited by, with a mind full of marvels and an ear to match. Every story surprises; every sentence strives gorgeously toward music. This is writing as transition, as entrancement, as transcendence."
—Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness and What Belongs to You
Callum Angus is a trans writer, publisher, and teacher. He is the author of the short story collection A Natural History of Transition (Metonymy Press, 2021) which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, an Edmund White Award in Debut Fiction, and an Oregon Book Award. It was also an honorable mention for the Otherwise Award (formerly the Tiptree). His next book, Stream, is a work of experimental nonfiction forthcoming from Curbstone Books in 2027.
In 2019, Cal started smoke and mold, an online literary journal with an expiration date that publishes nature writing, broadly defined, by trans and Two-Spirit writers. The journal is still going strong with a team of 20 editors and readers, and publishes two issues per year (along with a smattering of interviews and visual art) until 2031, when the project will be archived in print and online. You can read new and back issues at smokeandmold.net.
Since 2014, Cal has taught creative writing in a variety of universities, workshops, and independent organizations. After burning out on adjuncting and becoming generally disillusioned with the false promises and conservative politics of universities, he started hosting his own online classes and workshops focusing primarily on speculative literature, unusual forms, and of course, trans nature writing, and in 2025 he launched the celium workshop at celiumlit.net. If you're interested in taking a class with Cal, that's the place to go.