Astoria community comes together to honor friend, poet found dead Friday<\/p>\n
Published 12:44 pm Saturday, May 2, 2026<\/p>\n
The Astoria community has quickly come together to honor one of their own.<\/p>\n
Grant Leslie, the 63-year-old man who was found deceased on Friday morning in Astoria, was a familiar face to many, frequenting Cambium Gallery + Coffee Bar and as a street poet, regularly read his poems at Ric\u2019s Mic, a monthly poetry reading.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Cambium Gallery + Coffee Bar posted a notice on social media that the coffee spot was closing early.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe received really difficult news in regards to the loss of one of our daily patrons and are closed early.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody tells you when you open a coffee shop how attached you\u2019ll get to your regulars. We\u2019ve spent every morning for the last two years with Grant. We\u2019ve shared a love of music and John Prine, shared stories of our lives and talked about the state of the world. We\u2019re so grateful for all the stories and can only hope he\u2019s found peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later on Friday, the establishment posted again.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday was hard and became very unmanageable very quickly. We lost a dear friend and an incredible, hilarious, kind human and our days will never be the same without the harmonica filled story hour to start with. \u2026 We are heartbroken.\u201d<\/p>\n
The poetry community will be toasting Leslie at this month\u2019s poetry gathering at Ric\u2019s at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, according to Jennifer Nightingale, who sent the information in an email.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrant was born on September 26, 1962 in Astoria in the Fern Hill neighborhood where his mother grew up,\u201d Nighingale wrote. \u201cGrant knew the backstory to so many places and people in town. I wish I had paid better attention and that I had asked him for copies of his work.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrant didn\u2019t have a chat book or a website. He struggled and was often as they say in today\u2019s parlance \u2013 unhoused. Yet he was cheerful and kind. He wrote his poetry on scraps of paper or in a notebook. Sometimes it shimmered. Sometimes it was funny. Sometimes he played his harmonica. Sometimes, he just listened to other poet\u2019s words.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s lift a glass to our poet friend this Tuesday \u2026 at WineKraft in Astoria at our Ric\u2019s Mic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leslie was found at 6:01 a.m. Friday morning. The Astoria Police Department received a call of a man slumped over in a chair at Astor and Seventh streets. They arrived at 6:08 a.m. and \u201clocated a deceased 63-year-old male.\u201d According to an APD press release, the man, later identified as Grant Frederick Leslie, was known to be unhoused and the medical examiner said the death appeared to be from natural causes. \u201cThere is no reason to believe that it was related to exposure, trauma or any other suspicious circumstances,\u201d said the press release. <\/p>\n
The APD is asking anyone who may have information regarding the incident to contact Detective Sergio Carrera at 503-325-4411 or by email at scarrera@astoria.gov.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astoria community comes together to honor friend, poet found dead Friday Published 12:44 pm Saturday, May 2, 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-620323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}