First Matter Press is a writers’ collective in Portland, Oregon intent on embodying community and self-ownership. Because the publishing industry imposes extensive barriers to publication of experimental and self-aware waves of literature, we have made it our mission to dissolve those obstacles while facilitating writer influence over the definition of quality writing.
Our collective prioritizes:
publishing first-time authors, especially those whose work stretches genre boundaries
amplifying LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC voices
collaboration with Portland-area artists for all of our book covers
We are:
Ash Good is a queer designer, curator, editor, priestess and author of several books of poetry including These Things Will Never Happen Quite Like That Again, Sounds in My Möbius Mind and We Are Not Ready for What We Are. Ash is a workshop facilitator for Portland Women Writers, co-founder of First Matter Press and the initiatrix of High Priestesses of Poetry. They live in Portland, Oregon.
Caroline Wilcox Reul is a translator, lexicographer and occasionally writes a poem. Her poetry translations can be found in the PEN Poetry Series, Lunch Ticket, The Los Angeles Review,, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Your Impossible Voice, Tupelo Quarterly, and others.
Kassandra (Andra) Lighthouse has served as a founding member of First Matter Press since its beginning and values the opportunity to bolster the writing community through creative edits, thoughtful feedback, and event planning. She served as the senior poetry director of enormous rooms for two years, writes as a member of the High Priestesses of Poetry, and space-holds writing workshops and generative writing circles. Her books include Time Counts Backward from Infinity, You Are an Ambiguous Pronoun, and The Observer Effect, and her other works appear in The Florida Review, Cauldron, and Toasted Cheese.
She’s a sucker for genre-breaking manuscripts and collections that play with formatting and punctuation as much as they play with words. Lauren Paredes is a storyteller across mediums with a soft spot for the unusual. She's currently very smitten with erasure poetry.
Lauren lives in Portland, Oregon where she is a founding member of First Matter Press and the Eastside Poetry Workshop.
