TJ Acena

TJ Acena is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. He studied creative writing at Western Washington University. His prose has been published most recently in Somnambulist, Pacifica Literary Journal, and Hello Mr. He fell into arts journalism by accident in 2015, becoming the theatre reviewer for PQ Monthly. In 2017 he was selected as a Rising Leader of Color in the field of arts journalism by Theatre Communications Group. He currently writes for American Theatre Magazine and The Oregonian in addition to his work here. You can find out more at his website. He also sporadically updates a burger-review blog for Portland as well. Twitter: @ihavequalities

Portland: Comics City, U.S.A.

October 5, 2022TJ Acena

Must be something in the water, or the creative talent pool: We talk with five of this year's seven Oregon winners of Eisner Awards, the Oscars of the comics industry.

Interview: Joamette Gil on MAÑANA: Latinx Comics From The 25th Century

January 10, 2022TJ Acena

A new all-Latinx comic anthology is the latest from the award-winning Portland independent comics publisher P&M Press.

Amid crises, creating art to heal

August 17, 2021TJ Acena

Portland's former Creative Laureate Subashini Ganesan-Forbes leads a city drive to nurture art for healing.

Chatting with the new laureates

July 26, 2021TJ Acena

Portland's new creative laureates, Leila Haile and Joaquin Lopez, talk about the state of the arts.

Rising Leaders & theater’s future

June 19, 2021TJ Acena

Rebecca Martinez and Zi Alikhan talk about life, theater, and becoming national Rising Leaders of Color.

Tales from the traumatic edge

March 24, 2021TJ Acena

As things fall apart, Keith Rosson's collection "Folk Tales for Trauma Surgeons" asks readers to hold out hope.

Graphic voices of Guantanamo

August 26, 2020TJ Acena

Portland writer Sarah Mirk's new illustrated book tells the tales of lives in limbo at the "War on Terror" prison.

Claudia: Love in the age of virus

July 3, 2020TJ Acena

Profile Theatre's audio play follows a globe-trotting pangolin as it spreads viral-like havoc across nine scenes.

A poet laureate for new times

April 29, 2020TJ Acena

On Monday, April 27, Governor Kate Brown named Anis Mojgani as Oregon’s 10th Poet Laureate. Mojgani, whose two-year appointment begins May 4, succeeds Kim Stafford, who has held the post…

Vision 2020: Joamette Gil

January 8, 2020TJ Acena

The Power & Magic of an indie comics universe that tells tales of adventure in a nonbinary culture of color.

Boom! Big changes as season ends

June 3, 2019TJ Acena

The end of a season is always a moment of transition for a company. But for Boom Arts this year the transition will be much bigger than normal. Company founder…

Dreaming about ‘Tomorrow’

May 7, 2019TJ Acena

The three members of the New York theater ensemble the TEAM don’t call Tomorrow Will Be…, which they'll present Friday and Saturday in Portland at Boom Arts, a show. “I…

Boom update: hold the choir

April 9, 2019TJ Acena

The last show in Boom Arts' season of "festive revolutions" was set to be New York-based the TEAM’s Primer for a Failed Super Power. But last week Boom announced in…

Boom goes fishing with puppets

January 31, 2019TJ Acena

Silencio Blanco understands that you can do a lot with a little. The Chilean theater group works with silent puppets, simple constructs of paper, chopsticks, and masking tape to tell…

Boom Arts: the halftime report

January 14, 2019TJ Acena

Boom Arts is halfway through its 2018-2019 season, and so far it’s been a season of growth. Kamla Hurst became the risk-taking Portland performance presenter’s very first executive director. The…

Boom Arts: the executive chair

January 8, 2019TJ Acena

Kamla Hurst’s first exposure to Boom Arts, the innovative Portland presenting company for which she is now the first executive director, was Adrienne Truscott’s show Asking For It: A One-Lady…