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April 26, 2018

Kindness and Gratitude Sent Out

Several months ago, the writing group I lead in Astoria put our heads together to form a new literary organization and produce a print publication. The details of this project are below. If anyone is interested in reading or distributing this unique publication, please make a $10 donation to the Meditations blog and I will mail you five copies. I derive no profit whatsoever from this transaction, as is the case with all my writing since I began writing. I urge anyone out there reading this to contact The League via email and join us for a workshop.

The League of Intertidal Writers announces the release of its debut publication, Kindness and Gratitude. The publication is free and has been distributed around Clatsop and Pacific Counties for the public to read, keep, pass on, mail to friends and family. It features poems, short essays and memoirs that explore the theme of kindness and gratitude.

The League of Intertidal Writers, is a group of writers (and one dog) from around the Pacific Northwest that meets on a monthly basis in Astoria to write, talk, laugh, think, drink, eat and listen in a private Astoria home with a magnificent view of Youngs Bay.

Kindness and Gratitude was the outcome of a kindness and gratitude-themed writing workshop and the culmination of ten other workshops on various themes. Approximately 10-12 writers meet for each workshop from a total membership of about 20 writers. Participants in the workshops feel the presence and contributions of other writers adds originality and richness to the experience of creation.

The group plans to release other publications and invites other area writers to join The League. All writers from poets, songwriters, essayists, novelists, greeting card writers, bloggers, journalists and historians to teachers of writing are welcome. For more information about gatherings and workshops, email leagueofintertidalwriters@gmail.com

Kindness and Gratitude can be picked up at the following locations: libraries, liquor stores, bakeries, driftwood forts, bookstores, coffee shops, Gulley’s Meats and Fort George Brewery in Astoria. The publication is also available as a PDF download to read on a digital device or be printed at home.

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The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

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Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.