Book cover for "The Last Dinosaurs of Portland"

The Last Dinosaurs of Portland

Bottlecap Press

ISBN 978-1-946340-37-5

36 pages

Published May 23rd, 2021

New bridges sprout across Portland; a sabertooth cat roars atop the Moda Center; a cavalcade of matching bicycles pour into the Willamette River. The Last Dinosaurs of Portland contains ten stories set within cascading surrealist versions of Portland, Oregon. With innovative narrative structures and deadpan humor, this collection interrogates themes of migration, transformation, and gentrification.

Sample stories from The Last Dinosaurs of Portland

Advance Praise for The Last Dinosaurs of Portland

“Within these pages is a surreal menagerie of animals, human and non-human, dead and alive, crossing the same bridges toward and away from each other. Ask what their relationship is to the city they traverse. It’s complex, tender, and alive, just like these stories.”

—Sarah Gerard, author of True Love

“From the beginning of this thoughtful and deeply satisfying collection, we know we are in good hands. At turns, poetic and deeply grounded in details, James R. Gapinski both evokes the bridges and parks of Portland and a realm where anything can happen, where dinosaurs fighting for loose change can be broadcast on the dark web, and dense flocks of birds can conjure both Hitchcock and the possibility of love. Although not a word is wasted, we learn about hidden pasts, missed connections and lost futures. I inhaled this in one sitting, but I will return to it again.”

—Anita Goveas, author of Families and Other Natural Disasters

“These surreal flash fictions are like a field guide to contemporary urban life, a field guide we’re trying to read by lightning flashes during a rolling blackout. Flash: two dinosaurs in a tawdry back alley fight club long to connect but rip each other apart instead. Flash: a haunted attic reveals itself to be the place we’ve been longing for all along. Flash: the physical bridges of Portland are mirrored by dream bridges that reveal our hidden desires and insecurities. Ultimately these pieces speak to the broken emotional infrastructure of late stage capitalism, with its endless social media chatter and its bottomless sense of loss.”

—Emily Wortman-Wunder, author of Not a Thing to Comfort You

The Last Dinosaurs of Portland is a delectable short story collection that leaves us satiated and somehow imploring for more.”

—Shyanne Hamrick, reivew in Heavy Feather Review