GobQ/Reprobate Books

On the spinner, in the Blue Room,
Powell's, Portland

"'The Fires' is a jazzy read"
- David Biepiel

Proofing Gobsh*te Quarterly # 43-44
Cover art by Graham Willoughby

& featuring:

László Krasznahorkai
Ivan Klíma
Jacek Dukaj
Marge Piercy
Mark Mordue
Jacob Robarts
Rimas Uzgiris
Yahia Lababidi
Mitzi Waltz
Julie Busic
George Seminara

(& many others)

Paul Merchant
translator, Poems (1904), C.P. Cavafy
translator, Twelve Poems About Cavafy, Yannis Ritsos
Gobsh*te Quarterly contributor.

Congratulations to Friend of Gobsh*te Quarterly Richard Nash on his new venture!

--

"In the last year, I've had a bunch of conversations with young people in their early-mid 20s and even more conversations with the parents of people in their early-mid 20s. About how to start living independent lives. And, man, some of it was heartbreaking. And also inspiring. So I'm doing something about it. Some of you know I became an Executive Coach in 2018 and I'm now expanding my practice to encompass these young people launching themselves into a new phase of their life.

It's "Group Coaching for Young Professionals." An intimate group of eight, yours truly facilitating, helping each other find their best selves and navigate the city's workplaces. Like group therapy, but with an action-oriented, forward-looking, pragmatic bent. Doing it in group format makes it more affordable, and also offers the young people the chance to listen to and talk to peer strangers in a facilitated environment.

For the moment, it's just in-person, apologies to the non-New York-dwelling kids. I think in 2027 I might be able to figure out a way to make it work virtually but in the short run I do feel it can be valuable to have these young people be able to interact with each other IRL, especially given the loss of a year or more of social interaction people that age experienced during the pandemic.

It'll start in late February, once a week, early evening, and I'll aim to add a couple more sessions later in the year if all goes according to plan. I've posted a link in the comments to a flyer that gives more detail, and I'm happy to discuss with anyone who wants to learn more about it."

1 copy left at Broadway Books!

this new green leaf
translucent with autumn

this soft autumn rain
softer than spring

– two couplets

I flew home and said it all again:
went door
to door, street
to street, to all the squares of the city
fingernails snagging in sleeves, anything
to get their attention and make them listen

The Trojans said
You have an expatriate mind
said
Shouldn’t you be discussing this somewhere else
said
Look: nothing but thin blue air.

– from “The Agenda”

Great news at Powell's ! - 20% off Sitewide!

Literary Arts Bookstore, Oct 7th, 2025

L to R: Jeff VanderMeer, Omar El Akkad, and Crystal Willer (archivist for the Katherine Dunn bequest, Lewis & Clark College, Aubrey R. Watzek Library) in conversation on the work of Katherine Dunn.

This event celebrated the posthumous release of Dunn's short story collection, "Near Flesh".

We are humbly grateful and pleased and proud to be able to say that Katherine Dunn was a Gobsh*te Quarterly contributor ( #13/14, "What It Means..." Available through Literary Arts Bookstore).

Many thanks to Mother Foucault's Bookshop, the readers, and the appreciative audience! A lovely late summer bloom.

Tonight at 7!
At Mother Foucault's -

Gobsh*te Quarterly presents
poetry you'll find nowhere else!

Portland poet and Holbrook Award winner Douglas Spangle will read from Holderlin’s “Bread and Wine”

poems by WW2 German poet Peter Huchel

and poems by contemporary Swiss poet, Florian Vetsch.

Portland poet Michael Shay will read from Austrian Late Romantic poet Georg Trakl.