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 HouseThe Los Angeles ReviewNorthwest Review, BOULEVARDThe 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