Happy Pride from Prose City!
Hello, Prose City community! Things have felt a bit quieter so far this summer, whether under blazing sunshine or more temperate days blanketed by clouds. For Cricket and I, it has been a summer of yard and garden projects, and some lovely gatherings with friends, alongside our ongoing Prose City event series. As always, though, we’ve been thinking about and working on more goodness for our amazing Prose City community.
NEW! Portland Literary Directory
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of phase one of the new Portland Literary Directory! We’d been looking into doing something like this a couple years ago and came across one that had been produced by the wonderful crew at Old Pal, a Portland-based literature and arts magazine. That directory and events calendar has since gone dormant, with many of the things listed there no longer around, so we’ve spent the last couple months creating one that is, to the best of our knowledge, current and complete. We’ve included the publications and organizations that are now dormant or closed, but have put those at the bottom of each category, clearly marked accordingly. Some of the literary journals and magazines still have their digital archives online where they can be accessed and enjoyed, even though they’re no longer publishing new issues or material. Please take a look at the directory and let us know if there is anything missing, or that needs to be updated. We’re already working on expanding and improving it, but we do plan to keep it simple, accessible, and free.
Tell me more!Calling all lovers of magazines, journals and other periodicals!
We have a number of events that we produce, and many more that we love to attend. Book groups are among our favorites. We had an idea and, after it came up in conversation with friends a couple times, we decided the time has come for our first periodical / magazine reading group: Slow With the Flow: A periodical reading club! Print publications hold a special place in our hearts, but we may include readings from online magazines and literary journals, as well. We’re still planning how we’ll handle the cadence, genres and so forth, but if you’re in the Portland area and would like to join a cozy and adorable group focused on readings from magazines and other periodicals, please let us know. If you know someone else who would love this, please share!
Tell me more!Announcing…the Prose City Podcast!
In a world where more than half of online content is now AI-generated slop, there is something especially comforting and enjoyable about hearing the imperfectly perfect voices of real live carbon-based humans — ums, uhs and all. Finding a good podcast can feel like it used to when we would discover a new radio station, and that’s what we’re hoping to invoke with our forthcoming Prose City Podcast. We’ll be focused primarily on the Greater Portland, Oregon literary and associated arts scenes, but we’ll bring in some broader trends and goings on, as well. We have interviews, book reviews, and much more planned, so watch for that and we hope you’ll listen along, share it with others, and share your takes with us!
Decommodifying fun, joy and community
Writers and other creators should be better compensated for their work — and have access to health insurance and other necessities, as well. Alongside the need for that, though, is a parallel fact that it is getting more expensive to have fun, and harder to find things to do that don’t cost money somehow. I put these alongside one another not to imply they’re in direct tension with one another, but instead to point out that it is the same capitalist forces driving both realities. Some recent headlines have been a version of, “When Did Having Fun Get So Expensive? The Summer When ‘Funflation’ Went Wild” (WSJ, June 2026). Back in 2023, there was a flurry of stories along the lines of, “Having fun is more expensive than ever. It’s making people feel worse about the economy” (Business Insider, Oct. 2023). Concerts, literary and book festivals, meals and beverages out, writing workshops — these are all too expensive for too many. Even when events are free or sliding scale, they’re often held at venues where food and beverages are prohibitively expensive. It is our enduring goal at Prose City to continue to get creative toward keeping our events, workshops, and other resources truly free whenever possible, and otherwise as low cost for attendees as we can manage. We’re working on expanding our community partnerships with this in mind, so stay tuned!
Tell me more!Share the love!
Please introduce rad bookish and literary types to Prose City!
This community is amazing because it isn’t about large crowds or faceless clicks and followers, We’re here for the human connection of community, literary joy, and the kinds of conversations that can lift and inspire. Do you know one or more folks who might want to be part of that? If so, we hope you’ll pass this along, and/or share our website with them.
Friends, thank you for being the best little community in the world!
Stuff we mentioned above
- Old Pal. n.d. Retrieved July 5, 2026.
- Landymore, Frank. 2025. “Over 50 Percent of the Internet Is Now AI Slop, New Data Finds.” Futurism, October 2025.
- Sheidlower, Juliana Kaplan, Noah. n.d. “Having Fun Is More Expensive than Ever. It’s Making People Feel Worse about the Economy.” Business Insider, July 2023.
- Steele, Anne, Katherine Sayre, and Rachel Bachman. 2026. “When Did Having Fun Get So Expensive? The Summer When ‘Funflation’ Went Wild.” Wall Street Journal, June 27.