AMY RUHL & MADELINE LANE-MCKINLEY // Friday, November 13 at 8 p.m.

Moderated by Lauren Hough, Madeline Lane-McKinley and Amy Ruhl discuss intersections in their respective writing and artistic practices through the critical utopian framework of Ursula K. Le Guin's fiction.

Amy Ruhl is a multidisciplinary artist living in Brooklyn, New York. Her recent play and installation project, Other Spaces, was commissioned for Portland's Converge 45 Triennial at Oregon Contemporary and performed with Sophia Cleary, Lu Yim and Gemma Fischer. Adopting the worldbuilding strategies of the fantasy and science fiction genres, Ruhl's twelve year project, Between Tin Men will culminate in a solo exhibition at Smack Mellon in New York this coming March. 

Madeline Lane-McKinley is a local author whose latest book, Solidarity with Children: An Essay Against Adult Supremacy, was recently shortlisted for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Awards. Her other books include Comedy Against Work: Utopian Longing in Dystopian Times, Fag/Hag, and The Return of the '90s: A Cultural History of the Present. Lane-McKinley is one of the founding editors of Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry and a contributor to the Museum of Capitalism. 

Lauren Hough is a writer living in Portland, OR, who holds an MA in Critical Studies from Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA). She was recently a Publishing Fellow at the Los Angeles Review of Books and served as the 2025 Curatorial Fellow at PNCA. She is an Editorial Assistant for FONOGRAF Editions and has published art reviews and criticism in Willamette Week and Protean Magazine.