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2019/2020 Portland Arts & Lectures: Min Jin Lee (Sold Out)

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 1037 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Min Jin Lee’s novel Pachinko was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction and a New York Times 10 Best Books of 2017. The San Francisco Chronicle lauds it as “beautiful. . . Lee’s sweeping four-generation saga of a Korean family is an extraordinary epic.” It was on over 75 best books of the year lists, and will be translated into 27 languages. Her debut novel, 2007’s Free Food for Millionaires, was also a national best seller as well as a Top 10 Books of the Year for The Times of London, NPR’s Fresh Air, and USA Today. Lee is a recipient of fellowships in fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard. The 35th season of Portland Arts & Lectures features some of the most engaging…

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SOLD OUT

Vancouver: Write and Publish Fierce with Sage Cohen

The Quarry Senior Living 415 SE 177th Avenue, Vancouver, WA, United States

Sage Cohen is back, kicking off our 2020 year in Vancouver! Want to meet your most important writing goal in 2020? Join author, coach, and instructor Sage Cohen to create a one-page strategic plan for making the most of your writing life. Through a mix of lecture and workshop, you’ll gain solid tools and strategies that can make you more effective, energized, and satisfied with every dimension of your writing life. You’ll leave with a solid plan for managing time, energy, fear, failure, deadlines, and your inner editor. So you can write and publish fierce in 2020 and beyond! The Vancouver Willamette Writers meet at The Quarry Senior Living Center at 415 SE 177th Ave, Vancouver, WA 98683. Meeting is in theater on the second…

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Free

15th Annual Gus and Libby Solomon Memorial Lecture

PSU - Smith Memorial Student Union 1825 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for the 15th Annual Solomon Memorial Lecture with guest speaker Eddy Portnoy, author of Bad Rabbi: And Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press. Eddy Portnoy has an MA in Yiddish from Columbia University and received his Ph.D from the Jewish Theological Seminary. A specialist in Jewish popular culture, he has published in numerous academic journals and also in The Forward and in Tablet Magazine. He currently serves as Senior Researcher and Director of Exhibitions at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. An underground history of downwardly mobile Jews, Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press mines century-old Yiddish newspapers to expose the seamy underbelly of pre-WWII New York and Warsaw, the two major centers of…

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Free

The History of African Storytelling

Central Library - U.S. Bank Room 801 SW 10th Avenue, Portland, OR, United States

Explore the history of traditional African storytelling and explore the moral lessons behind the stories. Come together with other African American children, families. and elders to share the history of your families. This event will include an open mic for families to share their stories, history, songs and poetry and a kids craft table. Participants are encouraged to bring a photo of their family and those who identify as part of the African diaspora are encouraged to wear African attire.

Free

Powell’s Books Presents NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF & SHERYL WUDUNN

Newmark Theatre 1111 SW Broadway Ave., Portland, OR, United States

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, bestselling authors of Half the Sky, return with a deeply personal new book, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope. Looking with clear eyes at our nation’s governmental failures over the past half-century, Kristof and WuDunn examine the contemporary crisis in working-class America through the lens of the families Kristof grew up with in the rural, working-class town of Yamhill, Oregon. Yamhill prospered for much of the 20th century, but, like many working class towns, has been devastated as blue-collar jobs disappeared. About one-quarter of the kids Kristof grew up with have died in adulthood from drugs, alcohol, suicide, or reckless accidents. “We wanted to understand more deeply what had happened to Nick’s friends on the school bus,” they write, and “how our…

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$37.95

2019/2020 Portland Arts & Lectures: Susan Orlean (Sold Out)

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 1037 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Susan Orlean is an author and journalist, and has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992. She has written eight books, including, most recently, The Library Book, a New York Times best seller and a Washington Post Top 10 Book of the Year for 2018. Her other books include Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. Orlean has been called “a national treasure” by the Washington Post, and the New York Times has said that her work “has that elusive quality to it: exquisitely written, consistently entertaining and irreducible to anything so obvious and pedestrian as a theme.” The 35th season of Portland Arts & Lectures features some of the most engaging writers at work today. Our 2019/2020 season features George Packer, Amor Towles, Min Jin Lee, Susan Orlean, and Colson…

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SOLD OUT

A Black History Month Tribute to Toni Morrison

Multnomah County Library - North Portland Meeting Room 512 N Killingsworth Street, Portland, OR, United States

A prolific writer of novels, essays and song lyrics who first came to prominence in the early 1970s, Morrison focused particularly on the experience of women within the black community. Her work earned her numerous awards, most notably the Nobel Prize for Literature, for which she broke new ground as the first African American winner. Join us for a celebration of the life and achievements of Toni Morrison.

Free

Everybody Reads 2020: Tommy Orange

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall 1037 SW Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

Celebrate the power of books to create a stronger community by attending the 2020 Everybody Reads author event with Tommy Orange. Literary Arts is proud to host an evening with award-winning author Tommy Orange as the culminating event of Multnomah County Library’s Everybody Reads program. This year’s programming will center on Orange’s debut novel, There There. Tickets start at $15, available at Portland5.com With the selection of There There, Everybody Reads 2020 centers around the experience of urban Native Americans in Oakland, California. Through a shared reading experience, we will explore a multitude of themes in the book, from identity and ownership to the urban-rural divide. About There There: Orange’s shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow,…

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$15

Planning and Writing Your Book with Kristen James

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

THIS MEETING IS ONLINE and FREE to all. (Details below the talk decription.) Planning and Writing Your Book: How to Apply Methods and Tips from Bestselling Writers Kristen Chaney James, author of Blockbuster Books, Broken Down and other writing books will share the methods and tips she’s picked up during her writing career to plan and write an engaging novel. You don’t have to choose to “write from the middle” or only use the “three legged outline” because you can use a combination of methods to ensure your story is solid and hits all the plot points readers look for. **You can join us on your phone or on your computer. You do not need to have video, but it is helpful if you can.…

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Free

The Art of Marketing Your Book

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This meeting will be ONLINE ONLY. We will post a link for you to watch on your computer as well as a phone number where you can call in to listen. We are determined to make the online experience as seamless as possible. “Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” Lao Tzu Dami will present steps for marketing your first book and guide you through the planning of a marketing journey that can start small and lead to great and unexpected places. She will share the lessons learned from her mistakes and share the unexpected successes and new worlds that have opened up…

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Free
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