The olive is among the oldest known cultivated trees in the world, grown before the written language was invented. In California, there are many isolated trees or fragments of old groves, such as the trees that still stand on the Woodbury campus. Traditionally, after harvest, oil was pressed in screw or hydraulic presses. The paste was subjected to increasingly high pressures with subsequent degradation in the flavor of the oil. Thus, the “first press” of oil was considered the most flavorful and desirable. ~ the Olive Oil Source, 2018
The FIRST PRESS READING SERIES ran as part of the extended programming of MORIA Literary Magazine on campus at Woodbury University for seven years, from 2017 to 2024. In the fall of 2024, it began being offered as an online reading. This spring, 2025, we are thrilled to welcome Lory Bedikian, author of the recently released book Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body and a returning First Press reader, to our digital stage.
Event Details:
Date: Monday, April 21st
Time: 4:00-5:30 PM (PST)
About Lory Bedikian:Lory Bedikian’s collection The Book of Lamenting won the Philip Levine Prize in Poetry and her forthcoming book Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body won the 2023 Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, forthcoming September, 2024 from the University of Nebraska Press.
Several of Bedikian’s poems received the First Prize Award in the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry as part of the 2022 Nimrod Literary Awards.
Her work is published in Gulf Coast, Tin House, The Los Angeles Review, Northwest Review, BOULEVARD, The Adroit Journal, Literary Matters, Orion, wildness, and was featured on Pádraig Ó Tuama’s Poetry Unbound podcast. Her poem “The Mechanic,” is included in the anthology Border Lines: Poems of Migration, KNOPF, 2020. Her poems have the honor of appearing in Massachusetts Review’s “Revisiting WOMAN: An Issue, 50 Years Later.”
Bedikian’s manuscript-in-progress received a 2021 grant from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund from which she has twice been awarded a grant, the first being in 2006.
Bedikian earned a BA from UCLA, with an emphasis in Creative Writing, Poetry and an MFA from the University of Oregon. She teaches poetry workshops.
ARCHIVE :: PAST FEATURES IN THE FIRST PRESS READING SERIES, 2017-2024
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, November 2024 - https://youtube.com/live/0AN068nAyiw?feature=share
Susan Rich and Brynn Saito, April 2024
Margaret Elysia Garcia and Tricia Lopez, November 2023
multiple poets at Giovanni’s Room, DTLA, April 2023
Toni Ann Johnson, February 2023 (WORDSHOP)
Chloe Martinez, November 2022
Chekwube Danladi, September 2022
Eliza Smith, May 2022
traci kato-kiriyama, March 2022
José Hernandez Diaz, November 2021
Scott Broker, September 2021
Darnell L. Moore, April 2021
Nikia Chaney and Shareen K. Murayama, February 2021
Genevieve Kaplan, November 2020
F. Douglas Brown and Geffrey Davis, September 2020
Lynne Thompson, April 2020
Richard Garcia, February 2020 (WORDSHOP)
Lory Bedikian, November 2019 (WORDSHOP)
Douglas Manuel, September 2019 (WORDSHOP)
Heidi Seaborn and Reuben Ellis, April 2019
Suzanne Lummis, February 2019 (WORDSHOP)
Désirée Zamorano, November 2018
Brendan Constantine, October 2018 (WORDSHOP)
Naoko Fujimoto and Angela Narciso Torres, April 2018 (WORDSHOP)
Chiwan Choi, April 2018
Linda Dove, February 2018
Neil Aitken and Mike Sonksen, November 2017