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Book Launch: “The Butter House,” by Sarah Gerard

Keys Lounge 533 NE Killingsworth Street, Portland, OR, United States

Celebrate the release of The Butter House, a new book from Lambda award-winning author Sarah Gerard. The Butter House follows a woman who moves to Florida and becomes a caretaker for a feral cat colony. Publishers Weekly says, "With precise and lush details, Gerard captures a sense of life's fragility amid new possibilities." Hosted by Portland-based publisher, Conium Press, this event will feature an author discussion between Sarah Gerard and James R. Gapinski. Paperback and limited-edition hardcover copies will be available, and there will be a book signing after the event. Keys Lounge is a 21+ venue with a full food and drink menu, including vegan, vegetarian, and gluten free options. Learn more about this event on the Conium Press website or find this event on Facebook.

Free

Constellation #3: Correa, Smith, Keil

Tin House 2617 NW Thurman Street, Portland, OR, United States

After a memorable gathering last month, we invite you to join us at a new Constellation. In March we're hosting local writer Michelle Ruiz Keil and two writers from the Carolyn Moore Writers House residency: Cristina Correa and Kira Brooke Smith. Doors open at 6:45 and the reading starts around 7:15. Cristina Correa (she/her) is from Chicago and is the recipient of awards from CantoMundo, VONA/Voices, Hedgebrook Foundation, and more. Her writing has been featured in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, Missouri Review, Obsidian, NPR’s Latino USA, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Her poem “Reflection from a Bridge” was selected by former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith in the Best New Poets series. Kira Brooke Smith (she/her) is a nonfiction…

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Free

Everybody Reads 2023 celebrates Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being

Keller Auditorium 222 SW Clay St, Portland, OR, United States

Let’s read, reflect and learn together. Everybody Reads is a community-wide project that promotes shared reading and discussion around a single book. About the book Ruth Ozeki’s award-winning novel A Tale for the Time Being tells the story of two strangers whose lives become connected across time and an ocean. Ruth is a novelist living on an island off the coast of British Columbia. While beachcombing, she comes upon a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed ashore, detritus from a tsunami in Japan. Inside, she discovers the diary of 16-year-old Nao Yasutani of Tokyo. Ruth becomes absorbed by the drama of Nao’s life and her unknown fate. In Tokyo, Nao is the target of her classmates’ bullying, and she struggles with a pervasive sense of loneliness. Increasingly,…

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$21 – $65

Application Deadline: Environmental Writing Fellowship and Residency

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The forests of the Oregon Coast Range are part of a vast ecosystem spanning from Northern California to the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. The Pacific temperate rainforest is, acre for acre, better than the Amazon Rainforest at absorbing and storing carbon. If left to grow, the majestic cedars, spruces, hemlocks, and firs can hold carbon for an astonishing 800 years or more. These forests are climate forests. As we work toward stabilizing the climate, there is no technology that can sequester carbon at the scale of maturing and ancient forests. Yet less than 10% of Oregon’s old-growth forest remains. Throughout the Oregon Coast Range, the patchwork scars of ongoing industrial clearcuts and wide-scale liquidation of ancient forests are visible reminders of our limited imaginations…

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Free

2023 Oregon Book Awards

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for an evening honoring our state’s most accomplished writers in the categories of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, young readers, and drama. Finalists in all categories will be announced in January, 2023.  Luke Burbank Luke Burbank is the host of Live Wire, a public radio variety show taped monthly in front of a live audience in Portland. He grew up as one of seven kids, learning early on how to vie for attention. Those profound childhood issues have propelled him to various media projects including “This American Life,” “Wait Wait Don't Tell Me,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” and the daily podcast “Too Beautiful To Live.” Luke’s uniquely charming, quick-witted, and refreshingly vulnerable interview style is a winner with Live Wire guests and listeners alike.

$65

Storytime Reading: Bugs!

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

Annie Bloom's Books presents a storytime reading featuring books about bugs! Lindsey, a Speech and Language Pathologist at Parkwood Clinic, will be leading the event, which will include activities and songs.  

Free

Kesha Ajọsẹ-Fisher in Conversation With Omar El Akkad

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

Winner of the Oregon Book Award for Fiction, Kesha Ajọsẹ-Fisher's No God Like the Mother (Forest Avenue Press) follows characters in transition, through tribulation and hope. Set around the world — the bustling streets of Lagos, the arid gardens beside the Red Sea, an apartment in Paris, and the rain-washed suburbs of the Pacific Northwest — this collection of nine stories is a masterful exploration of life's uncertainty. Ajọsẹ-Fisher will be joined in conversation by Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise. Preorder a Signed Edition

Free

Ling Ling Huang

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

Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Ling Ling Huang’s Natural Beauty (Dutton) follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost. Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents — also talented musicians — who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City. Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures — from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk — and her new job affords her entry into a…

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Free

One Page Wednesday – April

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

Here is an opportunity to share or listen to one page of work in progress from talented writers from everywhere. Come with a single page of work and sign up to read – or come to listen and prepare to be inspired. Our host is the one and only, Emme Lund. Our featured reader is JZL JMZ.  Please review our Covid-19 guidelines.  Masks are not required but encouraged. If you have any questions, contact Jessica at jessica@literary-arts.org. Emme LundJZL JMZ (FKA JAYY DODD) Emme Lund is an author living and writing in Portland, Oregon. She has an MFA from Mills College. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Time, The Rumpus, Autostraddle, and many more. In 2019, she was awarded an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship in Fiction. The Boy with a…

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Free

Ben Nickol in Conversation with Margaret Malone

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

We are thrilled to welcome novelist Ben Nickol in conversation with Margaret Malone, discussing his newly published novel, The Sea Lanterns The book tells the story of Scott Darrow, marooned as athletic director at a backwater college and hungry for more, plotting his ascent to a better job at a better school. Darrow has the talent, charm, and Machiavellian nerve to go far, but when he hires a famous coach to run his basketball program, the coach proves to be unstable and possibly insane.Now, to escape professional oblivion, Darrow must maneuver and manipulate this coach, and manage the town's intensifying suspicions. Ben Nickol is also the author of Sun River: Stories, which was named a Quivering Pen Best Book of 2019. His stories and essays…

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Free
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