Reading: A. Molotkov with Chrys Buckley

About this event

Annie Bloom's Books welcomes back Portland author A. Molotkov for a reading from his memoir, A Broken Russia Inside Me. He will be in conversation with fellow local memoirist Chrys Buckley, author of Invisible Violets. About A Broken Russia Inside Me: Do we shape circumstances or are we shaped by them? A Broken Russia inside Me is a story of a writer born in a totalitarian world and a tale of forging an identity outside what was given. At age 22, Molotkov makes the decision to emigrate and, with $343 in cash, must build a new life in the United States while the Soviet Union collapses and Russia is claimed by increasingly ominous leaders. Molotkov deals with what it means to be from a place he is ashamed of and must eradicate within himself, while exploring the relationships that influenced his life and pondering how his choices affect his attitudes and social responsibilities. A. Molotkov is an immigrant writer and the author of the novels A Bag Full of Stones and A Slight Curve. His poetry collections are The Catalog of Broken Things, Application of Shadows, Synonyms for Silence, and Future Symptoms. Molotkov co-edits The Inflectionist Review. His debut solo CD, Can You Stay Forever, was released in 2005, following collaborative work with the San Francisco multidisciplinary group Discord Aggregate. When not writing, Molotkov takes photos with dogs and mirrors and tries to read at least 200 books a year. He plays percussion and the Armenian duduk and can be found at AMolotkov.com. About Invisible Violets: Winner of the Wandering Aengus Press Book Award in Nonfiction. Chrys Buckley was born with albinism, which means she has no pigment and she is legally blind. From an early age, she realized that while she was the blind one, it was hard for other people to see her as a real person. Chrys often felt like a blank white canvas that everyone painted their assumptions about disability and paleness onto, rendering her invisible. With warmth, compassion, wit, and lyricism, Chrys examines albinism, disability, blindness, synesthesia, dysfunctional relationships, self-betrayal, family discord, true-crime pop culture and true crimes on the smaller stage of our real lives, discrimination in medical education, and the power of words and writing. This literary mixtape is an exploration of seeing, not seeing, being seen, and not being seen. It's a reclaiming of the real, particular self that too often gets overlooked and obscured by tropes and projections. Each essay is a love song: to place, to memory, to music across decades, to books, to science and medicine, to the land and the sea and the sky. Underscoring all the stories and contemplations is the steel will of a writer screaming in vivid color to make her flawed individual heart visible. Chrys Buckley's work has appeared in The Sun, Shark Reef, and Aerial. She was a finalist (twice) in MTV's I'm from Rolling Stone writing contest. Chrys won the R.L. Gilette Scholarship and the Sophie Kerr Gift in English Literature for her writing. Chrys has bachelor's degrees in Arts & Letters, Micro/Molecular Biology, and Biochemistry. She endured approximately 3/4 of medical school before breaking free to focus on writing and disability advocacy. She is currently the manager of the Digital and Audio departments at Ooligan Press, creating accessible ebooks and audiobooks. Chrys lives, works, walks, and writes in Portland, where she orders way too much DoorDash and has exactly zero cats (so far).

Who

• A. Molotkov with Chrys BuckleyAuthor

Venue

Annie Bloom's Books

7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR

Venue website

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