Literary Arts at Pickathon 2023

Stephanie Adams-Santos is a Guatemalan-American writer from Oregon. Their work spans poetry, prose, and screenwriting. Often grappling with themes of strangeness and belonging, their work reflects an endless fascination with the weird, numinous, and primal forces that shape inner life. Stephanie is the author of several full length poetry collections and chapbooks, including DREAM OF XIBALBA (selected by Jericho Brown as winner of the 2021 Orison Poetry Prize) and SWARM QUEEN'S CROWN (finalist for a Lambda Literary Award). Their work has been anthologized in SPECULATIVE FICTION FOR DREAMERS, ATÉ MAIS (a Latinx Futurisms anthology) and a forthcoming anthology of hybrid literature and art. Stephanie served as Staff Writer and Story Editor on the television anthology horror series TWO SENTENCE HORROR STORIES (CW/Netflix). Their episode ELLIOT was winner of a 2022 Gold Telly Award in Writing. As an inaugural fellow of the 2022 Ojalá Ignition Fellowship, Stephanie developed an original fantasy pilot based on the world and characters of the Tarot. Most recently, she was a fellow of the 2022 Sundance Episodic Lab.  In addition to their literary work, Stephanie is creating and illustrating an original Major Arcana tarot deck called Tarot de la Selva.

Joshua James Amberson is a Portland, Oregon-based writer and creative writing instructor. He's the author of Staring Contest: Essays About Eyes (Perfect Day Publishing), How to Forget Almost Everything: A Novel (Korza Books), a series of chapbooks on Two Plum Press, as well as the long-running Basic Paper Airplane zine series.

ERICA BERRY is a writer based in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. She has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, where she was a College of Liberal Arts Fellow. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, The Yale Review, Outside Magazine, Catapult, The Atlantic, Guernica, and elsewhere. Winner of the Steinberg Essay Prize and the Kurt Brown Prize in Nonfiction, she has received fellowships and funding from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Tin House, the Ucross Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. A former Writer-in-Residence with the National Writers Series in Traverse City, Michigan, she is currently a Writer-in-the-Schools with Literary Arts in Portland. Wolfish is her first book.

Sindya Bhanoo is fiction writer and journalist. Her debut collection Seeking Fortune Elsewhere won the New American Voices Award. In 2021, she won an O. Henry Prize. She has worked for The New York Times and The Washington Post and currently teaches creative writing and journalism at Oregon State University.

Chelsea Bieker is the author of the debut novel GODSHOT which was longlisted for The Center For Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and named a Barnes and Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, HEARTBROKE won the California Book Award and was a New York Times “Best California Book of 2022” and an NPR Best Book of the Year. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, The Cut, Wall Street Journal, McSweeney’s, Los Angeles Review of Books, and others. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, as well as residencies from MacDowell and Tin House Books. Originally from California’s Central Valley, she lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children. Her newest novel, MADWOMAN is forthcoming from Little, Brown.

Emme Lund is an author living and writing in Portland. She has an MFA from Mills College. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, TIME Magazine, The Rumpus, Romper, the Portland Mercury, and Autostraddle, among many other venues. In 2019, she was awarded an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship in Fiction. Her debut novel, The Boy with a Bird in His Chest(Atria Books, 2022) was longlisted for the First Novel Prize from the Center For Fiction, was a finalist for an Oregon Book Award,  named a best book of the year by Buzzfeed and The Portland Mercury, and was included on lists in The Washington Post, USA Today, People Magazine, The Advocate, Cosmopolitan, and Shondaland.

Daniel Nieh is a writer and translator. He grew up in Portland, Oregon, and has also lived in China, Japan, Singapore, Mexico, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. He studied Chinese Literature at the University of Pennsylvania and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Daniel is the author of two novels, BEIJING PAYBACK and TAKE NO NAMES, of which both were Editor's Choice selections in the New York Times Book Review. Daniel's translation clients include publishers, universities, nonprofits, and museums around the world. He served as an interpreter at 2008 Beijing Olympics and also works as a contract linguist for the US Department of State. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Esquire.

Eric Tran is a queer Vietnamese poet and the author of Mouth, Sugar, and Smoke, winner of the Oregon Book Award and finalist for the Thom Gunn Award, and The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer. His poetry has been featured in All Things Considered, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily, and has received recognition from Best of the Net, Prairie Schooner, and New Delta Review, among other publications.  He is a psychiatrist in Portland, Oregon.