Character Work
- Jan 21
- 1 min read
a PACIFIC READS selection
By: Paul Susi
Category: Nonfiction
Published: 2025
Recommended by:
Ellen Margolis, Distinguished Professor of Theatre. She is a playwright and director whose next project may be set at Niagara Falls.
Before I’d even finished reading Paul Susi’s Character Work, I found myself buying copies to give to friends and family. It’s a story of acting, activism, ancestry, and identity that feels essential for our current moment.
A Portlander from birth, Paul has been seen onstage at many of our local theatres and in non-traditional performance spaces; he’s also worked as an EMT, managed multiple shelters, and founded a non-profit organization--PDX ID Assistance--to bridge a critical gap in public services. This memoir moves among these disparate worlds, through Oregon history, and across hemispheres, sounding the depths of encounters both ordinary and otherworldly.
A short book I’ll be thinking about for a long time, Character Work left me unsettled and hopeful, with an urgent sense of community.
PACIFIC READS are recommended by the faculty and staff at Pacific University
