Moira McAuliffe
Personal Recommendations, in Person
Moira McAuliffe is a matchmaker. She matches people with books. As a Library Assistant at Fairview- Columbia Library, “Can you help me find something to read?” is the question that McAuliffe is asked the most. In this day and age of personalized recommendations from a plethora of websites (including the Library), people still want to talk to a live human being about books. The 13-year veteran of Multnomah County Library is also a poet, writer, and editor, and publishes the literary journal Gobshite Quarterly: The Rosetta Stone for the New World Order.
Self-publishing on the Web
The relationship between computers and reading is very important to McAuliffe, not only for the future of the library, but also because her next works will be coming out in alternate formats as well as print. She likes ebooks and self-publishing via the web, which she sees as an “outlet for small publishers” leading to the democratization of publishing. Everyone has a voice now. After decades of small presses going out of business because of high overhead costs, authors can now reach broader audiences through ebooks and self-publishing.
A Web Journal Featuring Diverse Voices
Enter Gobshite Quarterly, started by McAuliffe and her husband in 2003. “Gobshite” is a term from McAuliffe’s native Australia. It means someone who talks nonsense, “gob” meaning “mouth” and “shite” meaning, well, you can figure it out. McAuliffe and Co. use the word to mean “not official speech” and “multilingual” and to represent everyone’s voice being heard, including outsiders.
The journal features the work of authors as diverse and well-known as Steve Almond and Ursula K. LeGuin, and as obscure as Croatian author Edo Popovic. Many international works are printed in both their native language and English, side-by-side, allowing the reader to experience the full work. Issue 7 features work from and/or about the US, Greece, Switzerland, Croatia, Rwanda, Cuba, Spain, Australia; a mix of culture, history, poetry, memoir, and politics.
Other Works by Moira
She has written a novella, a libretto, and, most recently, the text for Golems Waiting, a book of essays, poetry and photographs about the destruction of Daniel Duford’s sculptures at SW Taylor & 3rd, in 2002. Golems Waiting was published in September by Portland’s Publication Studio.
Find more of McAuliffe’s work. An omnibus of Gobshite Quarterly journals is scheduled to be released next year. Back issues can be found at the library.
