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Submission Deadline: Shirley Magazine #14

The Internet 001 SE Cyberspace Lane, Portland, OR, United States

Accepting short stories of 3,000 words max and flash pieces up to 1,000 words for their 14th issue, Shirley Magazine looks for “prose first, plot second, but we need both. Give us a slice of the sublimely strange. We want the eerie, the weird, the beautiful. We’re interested in the body and its grotesqueries, the brain and its tricks. We want stories that don’t clearly belong to any one genre, stories that will get our hands dirty, stories that expose the worms crawling under the rock.” Simultaneous submissions welcome, but no previously published works. Women, nonbinary, and writers of color are especially encouraged to submit work. Shirley Magazine‘s next reading period (after this one ending in August) will not accept work by cis men (see…

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Free

Mystery/Thrillers Book Club

Books Around the Corner 40 NW 2nd Street, Gresham, OR, United States

We will discuss The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld. Three years ago, Madison Culver disappeared when her family was choosing a Christmas tree in Oregon's Skookum National Forest. She would be eight-years-old now--if she has survived. Desperate to find their beloved daughter, certain someone took her, the Culvers turn to Naomi, a private investigator with an uncanny talent for locating the lost and missing. Available at a 15% discount to order if you plan on attending the book club. Email us to order it or come in!

Free

Kimberly King Parsons in Conversation With Claire Vaye Watkins

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

Kimberly King Parsons’s debut story collection, Black Light (Vintage), is a love letter to Texas’s most scrappy, beastly, and strange – and a paean to characters who dare furiously to dream despite being trapped in places devoid of hope. With raw, poetic ferocity, Parsons exposes desire’s darkest hollows – those hidden places where most of us are afraid to look. In her debut collection of enormously perceptive and brutally unsentimental short stories, Parsons illuminates the ache of first love, the banality of self-loathing, the scourge of addiction, the myth of marriage, and the magic and inevitable disillusionment of childhood. Taking us from hot Texas highways to cold family kitchens, from the freedom of pay-by-the-hour motels to the claustrophobia of private school dorms, these stories erupt…

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Free

Bookstore Romance Day!

Vintage Books 6613 E Mill Plain Blvd, Vancouver, WA, United States

Join us August 17th (all day!) for Bookstore Romance Day! We'll have fun activities and a Book Club at 2 pm. We'll have a place to share a beautiful moment for our pin-board and we'll have some lovely specials on some items in the store. Write a romance novel! This is a continuous novel writing experience- where each person takes off from where the previous person ended. This continues the story in a fun and entertaining way and with no pressure (it's anonymous!). At 2 pm join us to discuss The Little Bookshop of Lonely Hearts by Annie Darling for a Book Club (all welcome!). This adorable romance takes place in a bookshop in London! So much fun and highly recommended by Candace. In addition…

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Free

Sexy Leper – Chad Stroup

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

Reading, Signing, & Q&A for Chad Stroup's latest novel Sexy Leper. It’s Halloween in the Hollywood Hills, and Kat Dyer’s going to have the sexiest costume for a night of shameless debauchery. However, Kat’s plan is derailed when the costume shop screws up her order and gives her a costume that is the polar-opposite of sexy. Deciding it’s better to be temporarily ugly and seen than beautiful and quickly forgotten, Kat attends the biggest party of the year, only to awaken with the strangest post-Halloween hangover ever: partygoers are transforming into the likenesses of the costumes they wore the night before. Meanwhile, a mysterious force begins to stalk and pick them off on by one. Kat and her friends must discover the cause of the…

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Free

John Marble Bids Farewell to his Youth

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

Help John celebrate this bittersweet time in his life at The Rose City Book Pub, 1329 NE Fremont St., on Monday, August 19, beginning at 6:45 p.m. with a Meet and Greet. FEATURING SPECIAL MUSIC GUESTS THE CLOWNS WITHOUT PITY! Mr. Marble will read selections from his second unpublished novel, The Good News, as well as his new play, Horror on Scaphoid Island. The readings will be interspersed with performances by The Clowns without Pity. Mr. Marble is aspiring for an ambience of surreal eccentricity for the party, so costumes and accessories are welcome. Suggested cosplay may include: Viking, Jehovah’s Witness, Hipster, Clown, Alice Cooper, Gorilla, Alcoholic Sea Captain, Precocious Japanese Child, Giant Spider, Mysterious Stranger, Private Detective, Jehovah’s Witness Zombie, Cthulu Cult Worshipper, Military…

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Free

Téa Obreht

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

Téa Obreht, bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife, returns with a stunning tale of perseverance that follows an epic journey across an unforgettable landscape of magic and myth. In the lawless, drought-ridden lands of the Arizona Territory in 1893, two extraordinary lives collide. Nora is an unflinching frontierswoman awaiting the return of the men in her life – her husband, a newspaperman, who has gone in search of water for the parched household, and her elder sons who have vanished after an explosive argument. Nora is biding her time with her youngest son, who is convinced that a mysterious beast is stalking the land around their home, and her husband’s 17-year-old cousin, who communes with spirits. Lurie is a former outlaw and a man haunted…

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Free

Horror Book Club

Books Around the Corner 40 NW 2nd Street, Gresham, OR, United States

We will discuss House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. A blind old man, a young apprentice working in a tattoo shop, and a mad woman haunting an Ohio institute narrate this story of a family that encounters an endlessly shifting series of hallways in their new home, eventually coming face to face with the awful darkness lying at its heart. Available at a 15% discount to order if you plan on attending the book club.

Free

Reading: Cody Luff: Ration

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Portland author Cody Luff to read from his new novel, Ration, which combines the darkness and despair of The Road and The Handmaid's Tale with the charm of Lauren Oliver's Replica. All the girls who live in the Apartments are forced to weigh their own hunger against the lives of their neighbors. When Cynthia is wrongly accused of ordering an “A” ration, a high-calorie meal made from the body of one of her friends, she is punished with brutality at the hands of the other girls and exile from the only home she’s ever known. It’s a death sentence—one that Elisabet Tuttle, the girls’ headmistress, hopes will encourage the others to stay in line. But as she loses her grip on the Apartments, Elisabet grapples with an…

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Free

A Raven Lost – M.W. Horses

Another Read Through 3932 N Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for a reading from A Raven Lost: Reclaiming Magic Book 2, by M.W. Horses! In book one, Raven Rayne, Native American Spirit Mage and Archaeologist, returned home to Portland from a life on the road as a vampire hunter. All she wants is to settle into her new life as a professor while keeping her family safe. But home is not the sanctuary she expected. The skills gained during her years as a hunter may not be enough. An alliance that goes against Raven’s very nature might be the only option to shield them from the brewing storm. Now, in A Raven Lost: Raven Rayne’s recent alliance with Araceli, an ancient vampire, is on shaky ground and comes at an unknown cost. The vampire is pushing…

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Free
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