Nestucca Spit Press Presents
Choice Cuts
of Oregon Fiction
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 Old Crow
Book Club
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.
The Savage
of State Street
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.
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.
Special donation to Support Distribution of The Old Crow Book Club.
High Contrast
A Story of Basketball, Race and Politics in Oregon 1972
By Andrew Kaza
On March 25th, 1972, the largest crowd to ever witness a live indoor sporting event in the state of Oregon crammed into Portland’s Memorial Coliseum. The occasion? The Oregon High School Boys Basketball Championship for large (AAA) high schools.
But this was not just another championship. It was the first to feature a team comprised entirely of African-American players – Portland’s Jefferson High Democrats – versus an “all white” collection of rural teenagers from a small, Eastern Oregon city – the Baker Bulldogs.
Set amidst the backdrop of racist history plus the political tumult of 1972, this was much more than a game. It seemed to be a battle for the soul of Oregon.
Through the prism of a high school season culminating on an early spring night in 1972, author Andrew Kaza tells the story of Oregon’s urban and rural divide, its winners and losers and whether lofty athletic achievement can ultimately translate into something much bigger.
ALSO AVAILABLE AT THESE LOCAL BOOKSTORES:
- ANNIE BLOOM’S BOOKS (PORTLAND)
- BEACH BOOKS (SEASIDE)
- BETTY’S BOOKS (BAKER CITY)
- BROADWAY BOOKS (PORTLAND)
- CLOUD AND LEAF (MANZANITA)
- DUDLEY’S (BEND)
- HERRINGBONE (REDMOND)
- J MICHAELS BOOKS (EUGENE)
- MANZANITA NEWS & ESPRESSO (MANZANITA)
- PAULINA SPRINGS (SISTERS)
WANT TO STOCK HIGH CONTRAST IN YOUR BOOKSTORE? E-MAIL US AT HGPROJECT72@GMAIL.COM
Single Print: $22.99 plus $5 Shipping to US Addresses
Single Print: $22.99 + $17 shipping to UK/non-US addresses
Two Print Copies: $40 plus $5 Shipping to US addresses
Listen to Andrew’s interview on NPR: OPB Interview
EVERYDAY NORTHWEST INTERVIEW
KOIN CORRESPONDENT NICOLE DECOSTA TALKS HOOPS AND 1972 WITH HIGH CONTRAST AUTHOR ANDREW KAZA
KGW NEWS INTERVIEW
ART EDWARDS ASKS ANDREW KAZA ABOUT THE RELEASE OF HIGH CONTRAST AND 1972, WHEN PREP HOOPSTERS WERE KINGS
One Hundred Stingers
A Novel of the Air War Over The Ho Chi Minh Trail
by Peter Adams Young
Throughout most of the Vietnam War, a clandestine war raged in the flak-filled skies of neutral Laos as American airmen sought to cut off the flow of enemy combatants and war materiel headed for the battlefields of South Vietnam via the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail.
This debut novel by former US Navy bombardier Peter Adams Young relates untold stories of courage and sacrifice on both sides of this undisclosed conflict.
To read the full summary of the novel, click here.
To read an excerpt from One Hundred Stingers, click here.
To read the forward about the history of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, click here.
Click Here to Purchase
(You will be redirected to peteradamsyoung.com.)
Thank you for supporting an independent Oregon publisher and making literature more sustainable.