Writing
A formal education in creative writing and a career in editing nonfiction, fiction, and (for better or worse) poetry have left me with an obsession with storytelling via voice—either by honing mine or defining and sculpting someone else’s. I’ve written and edited marketing and branding copy in my role at Tin House magazine, and been a freelance writer for the Portland Mercury and other outlets for over ten years. As an arts and hospitality writer, I love writing jokes and waxing poetic about cocktails or theater, but my favorite jobs are interview-based features, when I get to focus on someone else’s story and try to capture and interpret their voice and its intersection with my own.
When I ask one of them a question, they both answer, Bommakanti meandering casually from the present moment into their history, Golay gently steering her back to the topic at hand when necessary. They look at each other as often as at me, seeming to read the answers to my questions in each other’s faces.
Tiffin Asha: Indian Food Built on Passion and Justice
Portland Mercury | July, 2019
If taste is at least partially psychological, there may be a cultural terroir that young Oregon distillers are taking advantage of: it’s possible for a gin to taste better because it’s made down the street from you, or recalls a nostalgia for a grandparent’s garden, or because it’s one more step toward closing the gender gap in the liquor industry.
A Taste for Equality: The All-Women Freeland Spirits is Closing the Gender Gap in the Liquor Industry
Portland Mercury | May, 2018
4.3 seconds. That’s how much of a scene a stop-motion animator completes on an average shooting week during a Laika movie production. Unless you're a speed reading champ, it probably took you that long to read this sentence. And that’s just animation—a step that comes years into Laika’s process.
Poetry in Stop-Motion (archived link)
Movie Pilot Fanzine for Kubo and the Two Strings | August, 2016
Gaskin holds together a deliriously bizarre persona, swinging wildly from demanding action on the part of the audience to desperately pleading for it, from posturing bravado to shaking vulnerability, and from slapstick to self-harm.
Confronting the Audience in Keyon Gaskin's Its Not a Thing at BodyVox
Portland Mercury | September, 2015
John San Nicholas is also the only actor who can always read Lewis’ sometimes-purple soliloquies completely naturally, with the amiable tragedy of someone who genuinely doesn’t believe his story quite matters, but is wrong.
Getting Lost in E. M. Lewis’ Magellanica
Portland Mercury | February, 2018
The following is, I swear to god, a direct quote from the husband: “We’re O’Malley’s people. We used to come to O’Malley’s all the time. We loved it, that was our spot. So you’re gonna have to—HOLY SHIT IS THAT RASHEED WALLACE? THIS IS MY FAVORITE BAR!”
And to that, I raise my tiny, tiny negroni and say, “Ball don’t lie.”
5 & Dime is Winning Over Neighbors in Foster-Powell
Portland Mercury | April, 2019
So it was a combination of the mother’s fate to cook and the son’s passion for it that led them, while visiting Gloria in North Portland, to respond to the “For Lease” sign in the window at Lombard and Albina. Once again, without planning to, Zoraya Zambrano owned a restaurant.
Casa Zoraya: Zoraya Zambrano Finally Has Her Name on the Door
Portland Mercury | July, 2019
The metalheads introduce themselves to the woman, Isabel, there to fix the car. She seems to be familiar with them, or at least their purpose: They’re a touring amusement park, and their park is based on a number of things they’re interested in: art, music, nature, children’s books, bubbles. (Exemplary line: “Isabel! Bubble machine!”)
The Absurd Joy of French Metalheads and a Touring Amusement Park in La Mélancolie des Dragons
Portland Mercury | September, 2015