Caleb True in conversation with Rivka Clifton — 'RAÑA' and 'Wrong Feast'
About this Event
Third Place Books welcomes authors Caleb True and Rivka Clifton to our Ravenna store to celebrate the release of their new books, (University of Tampa Press) and (Baobab Press).
For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book!
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This event is free to attend. Registration is recommended in advance.
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We are happy to accommodate any accessibility concerns. Please contact us at [email protected] or call our Ravenna store at (206) 525-2347.
About RAÑA . . .
RAÑA spirals outward from the blood, sweat, and heat of the boxing ring where Eugenio Rafael Raña takes on any opponent in Villa Ocho. In every match, he is again a soldier in the Falklands (Malvinas) War, battling alongside his Argentinian countrymen and hell-bent on victory. Inside the ring, he envisions himself a heavyweight phenom punishing his British foes with haymakers. Outside the ring, Raña spends his days in the hinterlands of Argentina, drinking and looking for his next fight. Rewinding, pausing, fast-forwarding—he replays VHS tapes of professional boxing matches, as he does his memories of the war, searching for a win. RAÑA is a phantasmagoria of modern war, brutal defeat, and a lifelong anguish that endures.
Caleb True is a writer, editor, critic, musician, athlete, and podcaster. He holds an MA in history from the University of Massachusetts and an MFA in creative writing from Old Dominion University. He is the author of the critical essay On Ruben Slikk: A Manifesto on the Purpose of Art and the Value of Transgression (Dynamo Verlag 2024) and Chansons Russes (Quetzalcoatl 2016; Dynamo Verlag 2023), a historical triptych of stories set in Soviet Russia. He has published short stories and essays in Ploughshares, The Sonora Review, Faultline, Yemassee, Whiskey Island, and many others. He is the founder and managing editor of Dynamo Verlag (est. 2015), a boutique publishing house specializing in textual work demonstrating genius, eclecticism, and originality.
About Wrong Feast . . .
In Clifton's second full-length collection, the lyric image, in all its ambiguous potential, flexes the tensions between capitalism's mass-produced nightmares and the individually strange experiences of death, art, and queerness to depict a world both sumptuous and awry, engaging Charles Simic's surrealist question: "How to think without recourse to abstractions, logic, and categorical postulates." Clifton turns the sensory details in her poems until their most mundane aspects become uncanny — a fish becomes a purse, a dog's head is deified as it is impaled on a fence, a buzzing cellphone is birthed into a crib.
Page after page, Wrong Feast models close attention, while fully considering the ambiguities and the possibilities within Clifton's creations. These poems will not provide lessons or insights. They are not the prophecy garnered from entrails.
They are the entrails.
Rivka Clifton is the transfemme author of Muzzle (JackLeg Press, 2025) as well as the chapbooks MOT and Agape (Osmanthus Press). Clifton's work has appeared in Pleiades, Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, and other magazines. She lives in Seattle.
About Third Place Books
Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.
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