Tonight you've got a choice to make. Two roomfuls of excellent writers will be presenting work to celebrate the small presses they work with. (Note: To make this more exciting than it is, I will be using the phrase "in this corner..." twice. You have been warned.)

In this corner (I warned you), weighing in at a staggering whatever nine poets weigh, we have the Chax Press Benefit and Book Party! This one is in conjunction with the Spare Room reading series and will be held at Blackfish Gallery tonight at 6.30pm. In attendance: Maryrose Larkin, Standard Schaefer, Beverly Dahlen, David Abel, Joel Bettridge, Robert Mittenthal, Allison Cobb, Linda Russo, and Chax founder Charles Alexander. The event is in support of the Portland poets Larkin and Chaefer, who have new books out via Chax.

In this other corner (I hate it, too, I'm sorry), weighing in at pretty heavy but in like, "wow, man, that's a heavy subject for a documentary" kind of way, we have the release party for Getrude Issue 20! The famed LGBTQ press is taking over IPRC for the night (starting, again, at 6:30pm). They'll be saying goodbye to current fiction editor Tammy Lynne Stoner and hello to Guest Fiction Editor Carter Sickels. Both will read, and then there will be a showing of a "harrowing" documentary about LGBTQ rights and immigration.

Kind of sounds like Gertrude might be more of a downer than the poets. But then, you know, they're poets, so they'll probably bring the heaviness, too. Sickels' heartache of a novel The Evening Hour received a pretty good review from the Mercury's own... well, me, so I obviously endorse the Gertrude reading.

Who will take the title... of Best Reading Option of Friday, September 27th, 2013? What's this? We have a tie? This is unprecedented, this is a real upset. Unfortunately, the readings are at the exact same time, so you have to run back and forth really fast in the rain if you want to see both.