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Kerri Arsenault in Conversation With Megan Labrise

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working-class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years, the community orbited around a paper mill that employed most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, moral, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname “Cancer Valley.” In Mill Town (St. Martin’s), Arsenault undertakes an excavation of a collective past to present a portrait of a community that illuminates not only the ruin of her hometown and the collapse of the working-class of America, but also the hazards of both living in and leaving home, and the silences we are…

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Free

Zephyr Teachout & E. J. Dionne, Jr.

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Every facet of American life is being overtaken by big platform monopolists like Facebook, Google, and Bayer (which has merged with the former agricultural giant Monsanto), resulting in a greater concentration of wealth and power than we've seen since the Gilded Age. Anti-corruption scholar and activist Zephyr Teachout’s Break ‘em Up (All Points Books) is a clarion call for liberals and leftists looking to find a common cause. Teachout makes a compelling case that monopolies are the root cause of many of the issues that today's progressives care about; they drive economic inequality, harm the planet, limit the political power of average citizens, and historically disenfranchised groups bear the brunt of their shameful and irresponsible business practices. Will progressives and moderates feud while America burns?…

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Free

Fall 2020: Fragmentation and Joy: Writing for Resilience in Hard Times

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Following in the tradition of Ross Gay, we will focus on writing about joy in the midst of pandemic, protest, and looming election. We will explore the lyric essay as a celebration of the fragment and the collage. This is a generative writing class, where most of our time will be spent writing to prompts; at the end of our time together, we will offer feedback to each other on our work. September 23 - October 14, 2020 Wednesdays, 6:30-8:30 p.m. (4 class meetings) online via Zoom Perrin Kerns Perrin Kerns served as the Director of Writing at Marylhurst University for 15 years. She currently teaches literature and creative nonfiction for Prescott College and Portland State. This summer she will also be teaching at PNCA’s…

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$185

Lawrence Roberts in Conversation With Barry Johnson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

They surged into Washington by the tens of thousands in the spring of 1971. Fiery radicals, flower children, and militant vets gathered for the most audacious act in a years-long movement to end America’s war in Vietnam: a blockade of the nation’s capital. And the White House, headed by an increasingly paranoid Richard Nixon, was determined to stop it. Washington journalist Lawrence Roberts, drawing on dozens of interviews, unexplored archives, and newfound White House transcripts, recreates these largely forgotten events through the eyes of dueling characters. Woven into the story too are now-familiar names including John Kerry, Jane Fonda, and Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers. It began with a bombing inside the U.S. Capitol — a still-unsolved case to which Roberts brings new…

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Free

Telltale: Nothing Ever Goes Away

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Hey, champ! Thanks for checking out Telltale. This used to be a monthly curated storytelling event for people that like to get vulnerable and take no shit, and perhaps it will be again. We are into genuine connection, laughter, heartbreak, poignant moments, and community building. We, in theory, should be just kicking off our 4th season, but...things got real weird. So I can’t promise that Telltale is back, because the future feels pretty hard to predict or commit to. But we are at least going to have a September show. Yeah, it’s going to be on zoom and not in person. Yeah, it’s not the same. But it’s better than nothing. And I said I’d do the show until the government stopped making me angry…

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Free – $7

Elisa Gabbert in Conversation With Samantha Irby & Sarah Rose Etter

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

We stare at our phones. We keep multiple tabs open. Our chats and conversations are full of the phrase “Did you see?” The feeling that we’re living in the worst of times seems to be intensifying, alongside a desire to know precisely how bad things have gotten — and each new catastrophe distracts us from the last. The Unreality of Memory (FSG) collects provocative, searching essays on disaster culture, climate anxiety, and our mounting collective sense of doom. In her new collection, acclaimed poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert explores our obsessions with disasters past and future, from the sinking of the Titanic to Chernobyl, from witch hunts to the plague. These deeply researched, prophetic meditations question how the world will end — if indeed it…

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Free

Allie Brosh Ticketed Event

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

For the first time in seven years, Allie Brosh — beloved author and artist of the extraordinary #1 New York Times bestseller Hyperbole and a Half — returns with a new collection of comedic, autobiographical, and illustrated essays. Solutions and Other Problems (Gallery Books) includes humorous stories from Brosh’s childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; as well as reflections on the absurdity of modern life. Solutions and Other Problems, featuring all-new material, marks the return of a beloved American humorist who has “the observational skills of a scientist, the creativity of an artist, and the wit of a comedian” (Bill Gates). Brosh will be joined in conversation by a…

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$30

Dan Mathews in Conversation With Alex Ebert

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Dan Mathews knew that his witty, bawdy, unhinged mother, Perry, was unable to maintain her fierce independence at 78 — so he flew her across the country to Virginia to live with him in an 1870 townhouse badly in need of repairs. But to Dan, a screwdriver is a cocktail not a tool, and he was soon overwhelmed with two fixer-uppers: the house and his mother. Unbowed, Dan and Perry built a rollicking life together fueled by costume parties, road trips, after-hours gatherings, and an unshakable sense of humor as they faced down hurricanes, blizzards, and Perry’s steady decline. They got by with the help of an ever-expanding circle of sidekicks — Dan’s boyfriends (past and present), ex-cons, sailors, strippers, deaf hillbillies, evangelicals, and grumpy…

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Free

Fall 2020 Online: Writing the Non-Fiction Book Proposal: Second Section

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writing a book proposal is the best first step to writing a nonfiction book for both adults and young readers. An excellent proposal helps you organize your ideas, understand the competition, and can help you land a publishing contract even before you write the book. This six-week class will take you step-by-step through the major parts of the nonfiction book proposal: the query letter, overview, competitive analysis, marketing and promotion, author background, outline and sample chapter. Bring an idea, and be ready to write. The class includes extensive handouts and questionnaires to guide your work. Class outcomes: By the end of this six week workshop, students will leave with a rough draft of a nonfiction book proposal. More information: Download 10 Reasons to Write a…

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$285

Colin Quinn

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In Colin Quinn's new book, Overstated: A Coast-to-Coast Roast of the 50 States (St. Martin’s), the comedian, social commentator, and creator and star of the one-man Broadway show, Red State Blue State, and the Netflix special, Unconstitutional, tackles the condition of our union today. The United States is in a 50-states-wide couples’ counseling session, thinking about filing for divorce. But is that really what we want? Can a nation composed of states that are so different possibly hang together? Quinn identifies the hypocrisies inherent in what we claim to believe and what we actually do. Within a framework of big-picture thinking about systems of government — after all, how would you put this country together if you started from scratch today? — to dead-on observations…

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Free
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