BACKWORDS blog explores the intersection between presence and history. The blog is a platform that honors the moment of encounter that any one person experiences—with art, literature, music, performance, or place. Often, reflections fit multiple categories—the opposite of a news program or style blog, BACKWORDS is not preoccupied with immediacy. An event does not need to be current to be relevant, nor does a memory need to be close to its origins to hold its potency.
Started in Portland, Oregon
BACKWORDS Blog contributors are located in Portland, Oregon, and now Los Angeles, California. If you feel like writing for us would be a good fit, please email us at backwordsblog@gmail.com. Guest curators are a welcome change in pace and voice. Location is irrelevant, the intention is not.
Contributors
Ginger Duncan is a native Oregonian and writer of short fiction and creative non-fiction. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing from Marylhurst University, and her work can be found in VoiceCatcher, Off the Coast, and NANO Fiction. An avid traveller, Ginger has wandered, hiked, backpacked, and eaten her way through twenty countries. When she’s not traveling, you’ll find her outside (preferably out of cell phone range), in a dance studio, or occasionally forcing herself to sit down and write something. She lives and works in Portland, but always has her eye out for a new adventure.
Phillip Trey Coates is a Portland transplant, by way of Idaho, after completing his Bachelor's in English at Idaho State University. In his free time, when not traveling, he works as a curator for BACKWORDS Blog. You'll see him on the blog as Phillip Trey, because he thinks that's cooler for some reason – like a pen name no one asked him to create. For money, he works in marketing and freelance editing. Everything he loves most he's allergic to: ie cats, dogs, and people. Will listen to strangers whine for wine.
BACKWORDS Press aimed to increase the exposure of poetry & prose by taking it off the page and printing it on the backs of t-shirts. Medium changes the conversation. BACKWORDS Press encouraged the belief that art should be valued, supported, and experienced in a life well lived. To foster a creative economy that thrives, people should support poets and writers in a conscientious way while also possessing a material object (distinct from a book or traditional journal) that can have a life of its own. This was writing you wear.