I started writing the stories in my new collection
Shine of the Ever over a decade ago. I was a student at Reed College, it was 2004, and I was falling in love with Portland for the very first time. Over the next 15 years, the Portland I knew changed dramatically. I wasn’t a newcomer to Oregon. It was the place I’d come every summer since I was born, the place my father’s family had called home since they came out in a covered wagon in 1842. As Portland transformed, so did I. The landscape in my fiction shifted, filling with programmers, microbreweries, and fanciful food. The people I knew grew up; most of them didn’t stay...