3827 SE Division St · Portland, Oregon · Est. 2017
We opened in the fall of 2017 in a narrow storefront on Division Street with eight hundred books, a single shelf of poetry, and no espresso machine. Seven years later we have roughly four thousand titles in stock, still no espresso machine, and a reputation for carrying translated fiction that you won't find at the chains — work from Fitzcarraldo, Charco, New Directions, Dalkey Archive, Archipelago, and two dozen smaller houses whose catalogs we read cover to cover. We order on Tuesdays. We shelve on Wednesdays. The door is open Thursday through Monday, 11 to 7, and on Saturday nights we host readings.
Hours
Thursday – Monday
11 am – 7 pm
Saturday readings from 8 pm
Closed Tue & Wed
Contact
hello@understorybooks.com
(503) 894-2281
Staff Picks
January 2025
A novel about three children of Pinochet-era collaborators, set in a car driving the length of Chile to repatriate a body. Trabucco Zerán's sentences coil and tighten without ever raising their voice. Sophie Hughes's translation keeps the restraint intact. — picked by Maren
We've carried this since 2018 and it still moves two or three copies a month. Keiko Furukura is 36 and works at a convenience store. That's it. That's the plot. It is somehow the funniest and saddest book we stock. — picked by Jun
Not gentle. Not easy. A single-paragraph torrent about a body found in a canal in rural Veracruz. Melchor writes prose the way floodwater moves — it doesn't stop and it doesn't care about your furniture. — picked by Maren
Objects disappear from an unnamed island — birds, then photographs, then novels. The residents forget them willingly. A quiet, devastating fable about erasure, and one of those books that rewires the way you look at your kitchen table. — picked by Jun
Saturday Nights at Understory
Doors at 7:30. Readings start at 8. We clear the center shelves, set out forty folding chairs, and pour wine from Tabor Hill — $6 a glass, cash or card. No cover, no signup, no microphone needed. The room is small enough.
We've hosted 247 events since March 2019. We cancelled once, for ice.
Upcoming
Reading from Animals Strike Curious Poses. Nonfiction — essays on famous animals across history. Goat the lamb will not be present.
A rare Portland appearance. Khuê reads from The Stars, the Earth, the River, her 1997 short story collection, in Vietnamese; passages in English read by translator Bac Hoai Tran.
Portland's own Colophon Press brings their Riso printer and prints live broadsides of audience-submitted poems. Two colors, chosen at random. $5 per print, limit three.
Miel reads new translations of Alejandra Pizarnik, accompanied by Rafa Delgado on nylon-string guitar. Quiet, unhurried, occasionally devastating. The kind of Saturday we opened the shop for.
Bring a passage you love in translation. Five minutes, any language, any era. Last time someone read Sappho in Anne Carson's English and the room went very still for about nine seconds.
What We Carry
This is most of the shop. We carry roughly 2,400 titles in translation from 38 languages. Spanish and Japanese are our deepest sections. We have a small but stubborn Icelandic shelf.
One shelf, carefully maintained. Bilingual editions where they exist. We reorder Celan, Szymborska, and Bei Dao more than anything else. The Pizarnik usually sells within a week.
A rotating selection near the register — chapbooks, Riso-printed pamphlets, and short-run editions from Pacific Northwest makers. We accept submissions. Email us a PDF and a price.
We don't do bestseller tables. We don't run algorithms. Every book on these shelves was read, or partly read, or argued about, by someone who works here. If you ask us what to read next we will ask you three questions first and then hand you something you've never heard of. That's the service.
— Jun & Maren, owners
Find Us
Between 38th and 39th, south side of the street. Look for the dark green awning and the window display that changes every two weeks. Street parking or the 4 bus, which stops at the corner.
The shop is step-free at the entrance. The aisles are narrow — we're working on it — but the front room and the reading space are wheelchair-accessible.
Mailing List
Staff picks, event announcements, the occasional short essay about a book we can't stop thinking about. No discount codes, no affiliate links, no sponsored content. We've sent 319 issues so far.