Media coverage for Perfect Day Publishing

PRAISE FOR STARING CONTEST: ESSAYS ABOUT EYES

Listen to an interview about Staring Contest on the Jonesy radio show through KBOO Portland.

Listen to another interview with Joshua on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud.

Listen to and read the book's annotated playlist through Largehearted Boy's Book Notes series.

Read a long-form interview about the book with Lillie Gardner for Hippocampus Magazine.

Watch a virtual reading through the Quimby's Bookstore YouTube channel.

Read reviews of the book in the Willamette Week and Chicago Reader

PRAISE FOR LOANERS: THE MAKING OF A STREET LIBRARY

Oregon Public Broadcasting, 2022: “Right now, Street Books provides so much in Portland: Books with no strings attached. Requests sought and filled. Personal connection and friendly conversation for patrons who may not have been spoken to once that day. Stories read, and stories shared. Literary mental health support.”

Quaci Press, 2022: “Stories and musings alternate between Ben and Laura, at times almost becoming a dialogue in which one vignette is enhanced, or humorously refuted, by the other. These conversations are often provoked by Ben's witty irreverence … [the stories] leap from chuckle-inducing whimsy to sobering insights, from truly scary encounters to examples of heart-warming generosity of spirit.”

PRAISE FOR MOHAMED ASEM’S STRANGER IN THE PEN

Eleven PDX magazine, 2019: “A compelling study on racial profiling from a unique perspective, a writer’s view of his own existential mess.”

Largehearted Boy, 2018: “…much more than the story of his airport detention, this important book is a treatise on identity and culture.”

Oregon Arts Watch, 2018: “A timely, real human story in the face of headlines everywhere…..One of the quiet pleasures of this book, something that isn’t about plot or structure or anything that moves along the story to the next destination, is the opportunity to learn about Asem’s own family in Kuwait; to recognize that just like my family, they drink tea and play cards, chide each other, and marvel at sea shells. And, like people everywhere, they worry about having a safe haven.”

The Stranger, 2018: “Asem's reflections on the differences between how he sees himself and how the state sees him are fascinating, and his writing about the social life and culture in Kuwait make for some strikingly gorgeous passages.”

The Oregonian, 2018: “A pensive reflection on identity and belonging.”

PRAISE FOR SUNG’S WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF YOUR LIFE

Maudlin House, 2018: “An engaging and deeply honest examination of identity, trauma, family and the messy ways in which we are bound to other people. Refreshing in its openness and honesty about the difficulties and limits of overcoming trauma, What About The Rest Of Your Life is a must read contemporary memoir.”

Portland Mercury, 2018: “At one point, sung directly addresses this quality in correspondence with their publisher included within the text: ‘I feel like people want everybody to RECOVER and the story of long term coping doesn’t look like any kind of valuable revelation.’ Maybe it doesn’t look like one, but What About the Rest of Your Life is one. This messy, challenging book is itself a testament to the value of capturing recovery as it really is, rather than the way we would like to imagine it.”

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore in BOMB magazine, 2017: “To say that What About the Rest of Your Life is unflinching would be an understatement. But unflinching implies a stoicism. This is a text that resists indifference. “There’s little to say when there are a million things you’re trying to not talk about,” writes sung. This book is those million things.”

PRAISE FOR MARTHA GROVER'S THE END OF MY CAREER

Cheryl Strayed (in the NY Times Book Review, 2020), on her favorite book “no one else has heard of”: Grover lives near Portland, Ore., where I live, though I’ve never met her. With immense vulnerability, wit and insight, she writes about so much — money, sex, chronic illness, gentrification and her jobs cleaning houses, investigating insurance claims and working in a cheese shop, among other things.”

Jeff Vandermeer at The Millions, 2017: “An utterly enthralling and sobering tragicomic memoir of job and life experience that showcases Grover’s perfect sense of pacing and her eye for the absurdities of life and of the institutions of the modern world. Highlights include the essay “Women’s Studies Major” and the title essay. Out from a press in Portland, Ore., this collection deserves a much wider audience.”

Los Angeles Review of Books, 2018: “Such windows into souls — both the slobs’ and the writer’s — are what I’ve come to expect from novels, and what turned me on to reading in the first place. That a memoir gets me there instead is fine with me.”

Portland Mercury fall arts guide, 2016: "The voice of Portland right now."

Willamette Week, 2016: “If Martha Grover were to take a normal shit she would tell you. And it would be cause for celebration.”

PRAISE FOR NICK JAINA'S GET IT WHILE YOU CAN

Los Angeles Review of Books, 2015: "Wry humor and pained yearning at its best."

Willamette Week, 2015: "Part memoir, part music criticism, part cathartic exorcism, it's a meditation on suffering and the things we put ourselves through in the name of discovering the best version of ourselves."

The Georgia Straight (Vancouver, BC), 2015: "Jaina's love letters are so gorgeously frank you’ll be tempted to steal from them for your own."

PRAISE FOR MICHAEL HEALD'S GOODBYE TO THE NERVOUS APPREHENSION

Baltimore City Paper, 2013:
“Truly brilliant … It is unfair to compare anyone to Janet Malcolm, perhaps, but in this one essay, Heald comes damn close. It’s clear, he has put himself out there and is absolutely all in.”

Genevieve Hudson in The Portland Review, 2013:
“Fiercely observant … Heald does something few writers can and many hope to do: he writes about what he knows, what we all know, in a way that helps us know it deeper, realer, and more importantly. He tells us what it means to be him, and in doing so, what it means to be human.”

Bitch media, 2012:
“The collection of personal essays covers well-trod territory—unrequited love, sexual misadventures, Olympic careers, the success and self-loathing of writing for a living—but does so with tenderness, intelligence, and wit, exploring nostalgia and sentiment without being overly nostalgic or sentimental.”

Think Out Loud, 2012:
“Goodbye to the Nervous Apprehension is a kind of field guide to Heald’s twenties. In his telling, this is a decade of self-definition and self-discovery — a time that’s both painful and thrilling. Above all, Goodbye is about dealing with disappointment, and learning how to embrace a life that doesn’t fit the pattern you’d set for yourself.”

The Oregonian, 2012:
“Heald is a talented writer whose essays are funny and personal and sneaky-deep, in the style of Geoff Dyer or John Jeremiah Sullivan, only with a strong Northwest grounding.”

The Portland Mercury, 2012:
“Heald dials in the perfect amount of self-awareness—just enough to feel intimate and clear, but not so much that things get navel-gazey or indulgent.”

Lisa and Michael on the Late Night Library podcast, 2012:
“Michael had a ponytail and he played the trumpet. And he was working on a novel, which was really the final nail in the coffin.”

PRAISE FOR LOVE IS NOT CONSTANTLY WONDERING IF YOU ARE MAKING THE BIGGEST MISTAKE OF YOUR LIFE

Slate, 2012: "A small masterpiece of twentysomething romantic trauma – a book with real clarity of vision that reads, at times, like a horror story. Its formal inventiveness, its anonymous author, and its cheeky packaging all make for a richer reading experience." 

The Oregonian, 2012: “At almost any hour, there's a 12-step meeting going on somewhere, for something. Much of the literature at those meetings is earnest, dated and dull. Love Is Not Constantly is none of those things, and it's become a word-of-mouth hit.”

Kill Your Darlings (Australia!), 2012:
“Although there is something fun and nostalgic about the CYOA aesthetic as recaptured by Love is Not Constantly Wondering, it serves a serious function: the dissonance between the ‘choices’ and the narrative serve as a reminder that being in a destructive relationship is ultimately an irrational abandonment of agency.”

Portland Mercury, 2011: "Love's tremendous appeal is in the tension between its clear-eyed, serious account of a difficult relationship, and its fun, nostalgic Choose Your Own Adventure aesthetic."

PRAISE FOR MARTHA GROVER'S ONE MORE FOR THE PEOPLE

SF Weekly, 2012:
“One More for the People is an intimate, hilarious, affecting collection, one that stakes out new territory between talk, journal, memoir, and essay … “

Vol 1 Brooklyn, 2012:
“… Grover has made something more essential: a wrenching, frustrating, moving account of one very particular life — and its decidedly universal relevance.”

The Portland Mercury’s “Best Local” list of 2011:
"… these books would’ve made it onto this list on their own merits, but they also mark the debut of a noteworthy new Portland publisher."

Eugene Register Guard, 2011:
"… Grover pays the world a warm, thoughtful and funny sigh, even when it’s asking her to scream.”

The Oregonian, 2011:
“Grover has had brain operations and endured a terrible succession of hospitals and treatments — but her wry, observant take on what’s happening is often quite funny. She’s a natural storyteller with a smart sense of pacing who’s able to convey her experiences in a way that’s uplifting without getting all “movie of the week” on her readers.”

Bitch media, 2011:
“One More for the People is a beautiful, substantial book, both in content and design.”

The Portland Mercury, 2011:
" … there were several moments where I found myself putting down Portlander Martha Grover’s One More for the People to take deep, stabilizing breaths … it’s never self-pitying, and it provides a totally fascinating window into what it’s like to be young and sick.”

Paper Fort (Literary Arts), 2011:
“Though this is technically a compilation of Grover’s hilarious and heartbreaking zine Somnambulist, in my opinion it coheres into one of the freshest, most compelling memoirs I’ve ever read. Without the slightest trace of bathos but quite a lot of humor, Grover details her struggle with Cushing’s Disease, whose 81 symptoms include dramatic changes to her appearance, not to mention the dreaded possibility of moving back in with her eccentric family. Published by promising upstart Perfect Day Publishing, and featuring a letterpress-printed cover, this is also hands down the best-looking book of 2011.”

PRAISE FOR LISA WELLS' YEAH. NO. TOTALLY.

Vol 1 Brooklyn, 2011:
”As we head into the middle of November, I think it’s safe to say that Lisa Wells’s collection Yeah. No. Totally. (released by the Portland-based indie press Perfect Day Publishing) is a safe bet to be recorded as one of my favorite books of the year.”

Bitch magazine, 2011:
“At first glance this title seems to be aimed solely at the short-attention span generation. This slim volume of short non-fiction pieces does offer a quick read, yet the writing is dense and poetic and packs meaning into every sentence. Born out of this generation, Yeah. No. Totally offers a critical lens in which to view the experiences of our times, framing it in a way that is personal yet far reaching and universal.”

The Stranger, 2011:
“It's audacious—hell, it's practically painting a target on your ass and running through a firing range—for an author to come out of nowhere and try to speak for an entire generation.”

The Portland Mercury, 2011:
“Wells' ranging, largely nonfiction collection is many things: insightful, acerbic, frustrated, even wistful. But despite a cover that evokes an old J.D. Salinger paperback, precious it is not…”