To buy Planet Grim: Stories (7.13 Books)
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What she learned from her mom: always carry a pack of cards
Alex Behr is a writer, performer, and musician in Portland, OR. Her debut story collection, Planet Grim, is a vivid, unsettling portrait of the gritty fringes of San Francisco and Portland, where complicated characters long for connection just out of reach.
Alex holds an MFA in creative writing from Portland State.
Awards and honors:
Winner, The Tom Doulis Graduate Fiction Writing Award, 2010
Finalist, The Tom and Phyllis Burnam Award in Graduate Fiction, 2010
Winner, Tom Bates Essay Award, 2009
Finalist, Tom Bates Award for Reporting, 2009
Finalist, Tom Doulis Graduate Fiction Award, 2009
Winner, Tom Bates Award for Reporting, 2008
She has taught fiction at the college level and creative writing labs through Corporeal Writing. For more than a decade she led multi-genre workshops at Portland high schools through the Writers in the School program, as well as led elementary and teen workshops at the Portland Book Fest.
Her interviews, essays, poems, and short fiction have appeared widely, including in Bitch, Salon, Tin House, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Cleaver, X-R-A-Y, Portland Review, and Gravity of the Thing.
In 2022 she received a generous RACC grant to support Altar/Altered — sacred objects + adoption stories. Her poem “I and I” is part of Stranged Writing, a 2022 INDIES Award Finalist.
In 2023 she received a second RACC grant to support a short experimental film with writer/director Brian Padian called Grief Stick.
More poetry is in issue #4 of Kithe, print only. Features a “Spectacle” about her sweet Chris (RIP).
She wrote “Cold Plum Wine” for Picture Frame Press’s chapbook project (two writers use the same title to write stories).
NEW WORKSHOP: ANTLERS AND BEEHIVES — Writing in Patterns — zoom through Corporeal Writing, JAN 2024. Using fractals and cells to structure writing: inspiration to intention. SOLD OUT.
She is the founder of HOT POCKETS, a reading series from debauched rock bios.
and blah-de-blah. gimme some cookie dough.