Third Place Books welcomes Joshua James Amberson to our Ravenna store. Amberson will be presenting his new essay collection, Staring Contest: Essays About Eyes, a relentlessly curious series of detours through oft-ignored aspects of vision and vision loss. He will be joined in conversation by Danny Noonan. This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required 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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As a child, Joshua James Amberson was diagnosed with pseudoxanthoma elasticum, a rare genetic condition that may eventually lead to sightlessness. “In my own mild way,” his book opens, “I like to obsess,” and what follows is a relentlessly curious series of detours through oft-ignored aspects of vision and vision loss. Deftly weaving together such disparate subjects as Bette Davis’s career, the daily challenges of eye contact, and his own decade-long saga of periodic eye injections, Amberson digs deeply into the physical and existential consequences of living with such uncertainty. Staring Contest is wise, generous, and—given the subject matter—surprisingly funny.
“Staring Contest is a jewel box of an essay collection: It takes a quotidian facet of experience—the human gaze—and considers it at length, revealing an overlooked world of ideas and resonances. Amberson approaches this subject from playful, sometimes unexpected angles, with agile, elegant meditations on the eye patch, Mr. Magoo, staring, looking directly at the sun, Stevie Wonder, photography, and more. The prose is lush and precise, and the gaze (ha) feels singularly tender. A delight.”
—Jordan Kisner, author of Thin Places: Essays from In Between
“These essays are at once inquisitive, vulnerable, humorous, and deeply humane. While sharing his experience with a chronic illness that threatens his vision, Amberson also interrogates the way we as a culture privilege the sense of sight. Especially in our image-saturated present moment, Staring Contest is a revelation—readers will never again experience the world in quite the same way.”
—Justin Hocking, author of The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld: A Memoir
“Staring Contest is a lovely example of one of my favorite approaches to the essay collection form. On the surface, it addresses one multifaceted topic through several nimble and unexpected inquiries. But as Joshua James Amberson employs personal narrative, research, or pop culture criticism in each unique essay about the eyes and vision, he not only adds depth and nuance to his study of sight; underneath that, he builds an eclectic and telling map of an individual consciousness, a well-examined life.”
—Elena Passarello, author of Animals Strike Curious Poses
Joshua James Amberson is a Portland, Oregon-based writer and creative writing instructor. He's the author of Staring Contest: Essays About Eyes (Perfect Day Publishing), How to Forget Almost Everything: A Novel (Korza Books), a series of chapbooks on Two Plum Press, as well as the long-running Basic Paper Airplane zine series. A former regular contributor to The Portland Mercury, his work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, The Seattle Times, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Electric Literature, and Tin House, among others.
Danny Noonan began publishing fanzines in the mid 1990s. After graduating high school, he lived at Speak in Tongues, a collectively run art space in Cleveland, Ohio, for four years. After moving to Seattle in 2005, he worked at several record stores, booked live music events, and hosted a podcast interviewing people in the Pacific Northwest DIY scene. For five years he managed Particles on the Wall, a traveling art and science exhibit that used poetry and visual art to explore atomic weapons, power, and waste. Danny currently lives in Greenwood, Seattle and continues to publish fanzines under the name Clocktower 9.
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