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Lisa Dodson in Conversation With Andrea Paluso

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

Many Americans take comfort and convenience for granted. We eat at nice restaurants, order groceries online, and hire nannies to care for kids. Getting Me Cheap (The New Press) is a riveting portrait of the lives of the low-wage workers — primarily women — who make this lifestyle possible. Sociologists Lisa Dodson and Amanda Freeman follow women in the food, health care, home care, and other low-wage industries as they struggle to balance mothering with bad jobs and without public aid. While these women tend to the needs of well-off families, their own children frequently step into premature adult roles, providing care for siblings and aging family members. Based on years of in-depth field work and hundreds of eye-opening interviews, Getting Me Cheap explores how…

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Free

Springfield Celebrates Authors: Leah Sottile and Deb Vanasse

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join two of this year’s Oregon Book Awards finalists in General Nonfiction for a talk and reading at the Springfield Public Library. When the Moon Turns to Blood by Leah Sottile is a modern-day survivalism and end-times extremism tale told through the story of Lori Vallow, and her husband, Chad Daybell. A swashbuckling narrative of treachery and obsession, Roar of the Sea by Deb Vanasse is a tale of pirates, fur seals, competing governments, and near war. Nonfiction that reads like a novel, Roar of the Sea tells how a lone activist existing in the margins prevailed against the odds to save a species. Leah SottileDeb Vanesse Leah Sottile is a journalist, podcast host and the author of the book When the Moon Turns to…

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Free

Smallpresspalooza

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

After a four-year absence, Smallpresspalooza is back! Powell's presents this marathon reading of authors published by local and national small presses for the twelfth time. This year's lineup features Marcelle Heath, Sam Rose Preminger, Nicholas Yandell & Timothy Arliss O'Brien, Craig Buchner, Benjamin Kessler, Marialicia González, Eric Tran, Alyssa Giannini, Ashley Yang-Thompson, Quinn Gancedo, X.C. Atkins, and April Alexis Hernandez. Hosted by Powell's small-press champion and publisher of Future Tense Books, Kevin Sampsell. A full Smallpresspalooza schedule is available here. Preorder a Signed Edition (Heath) Preorder a Signed Edition (Preminger) Preorder a Signed Edition (Yandell & O’Brien) Preorder a Signed Edition (Buchner) Preorder a Signed Edition (Kessler) Preorder a Signed Edition (González) Preorder a Signed Edition (Tran) Preorder a Signed Edition (Giannini) Preorder a Signed…

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Free

Katherine Corcoran in Conversation with Tim DuRoche

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

We are pleased to welcome journalist Katherine Corcoran in conversation with Tim DuRoche, Director of Programs at WorldOregon, discussing her book In the Mouth of the Wolf: A Murder, A Cover-Up, and the True Cost of Silencing the Press, published by Bloomsbury. In the Mouth of the Wolf is a true crime story that examines the ongoing epidemic of journalist killings through the story of one legendary reporter, Regina Martinez, and her untimely death in 2012. A fearless journalist out of Mexico’s Gulf Coast state of Veracruz who wrote for the magazine Proceso, Martinez spent decades laying out the corruption and abuse underlying Mexican politics, and constantly fought to report the truth and give a voice to those without one in the country. A behind-the-scenes…

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Free

BIPOC Reading Series- April

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This bimonthly reading series is intended to prioritize the safety, creativity, and stories of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color. Come listen to our featured readers, or sign up to share your work in our open mic. Readings will be followed by a short community discussion. The theme for April is “Transformation.” Our featured reader is Brandt Maina. Brandt Maina (he/they) – RIOA wa RIOE —is an abstRact and absuRdist artist, performer and writer from Nairobi, Kenya. In the month of the year of our Lard, May 2020, they graduated with a BFA in Acting and Vocal Performance from Taylor University, a small conservative Christian University in rural Indiana. Simply stated, with a background in the arts, and fresh memories of being homeless…

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Free

Nicole Chung in Conversation With Lydia Kiesling

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

From the bestselling author of All You Can Ever Know comes a searing memoir of class, inequality, and grief — a daughter’s search to understand the lives her adoptive parents led, the life she forged as an adult, and the lives she’s lost. When Nicole Chung graduated from high school, she couldn’t hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast and no longer the only Korean she knew, she found a sense of community she had always craved as an Asian American adoptee — and a path to the life she’d long wanted. But the middle-class world she begins to raise a family in — where there are big homes…

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Free

Jessica Machado Reading

PSU - Lincoln Hall 1620 SW Park Ave, Portland, OR, United States

The PSU Program in Creative Writing is pleased to host a reading by Jessica Machado. The event is cosponsored by the School of Music, and is free and open to the public. Jessica Machado is a graduate of Portland State University's MFA in creative writing program. She is currently an editor at NBC News and was previously a staff editor at Vox, the Daily Dot, and Rolling Stone. Local, a memoir woven with Hawaiian history, is her first book.

Free

Chloé Cooper Jones in Conversation With Lydia Kiesling, Kimberly King Parsons & Casey Parks

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

From Chloé Cooper Jones — Pulitzer Prize finalist, philosophy professor, and Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient — comes an “exquisite” (Oprah Daily) and groundbreaking memoir about disability, motherhood, and the search for a new way of seeing and being seen. “I am in a bar in Brooklyn, listening to two men, my friends, discuss whether my life is worth living.” So begins Easy Beauty (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster), Jones’s bold, revealing account of moving through the world in a body that looks different than most. Jones learned early on to factor “pain calculations” into every plan, every situation. Born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis which affects both her stature and gait, her pain is physical. But there is also the pain…

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Free

Kids’ Storytime With Elizabeth Rusch & Elizabeth Goss

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

Nothing is really something! What might be hidden in the space around things, and how is that space important? In art, this is known as negative space, but “nothing” can be thought of more broadly — as free time during the day or the space between people. When we allow ourselves a moment of nothingness, we make room for creativity and so much more. All about Nothing (Charlesbridge) – written by Elizabeth Rusch and illustrated by Elizabeth Goss — is an artful picture-book exploration of negative space and the beauty of nothingness. This mindful meditation encourages children to see the world differently. Preorder a Signed Edition

Free

Matt Kracht

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

Guess what: bees are incredible. If you don't think so, you're wrong; but you're also in luck! Extreme bee enthusiast Matt Kracht — author of The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America and its sequel, The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of the Whole Stupid World — is here to set the record straight with his helpful guidebook to all things bees. With lighthearted watercolor and ink drawings, humorous quips, lists, and musings, OMFG, BEES! (Chronicle) will show you just how important these esteemed bee-list celebrities really are. (Hint: We can't live without them.) Delving into various bee topics, from distinguishing between bees and not bees (very crucial), to exploring the absolute wonder that is bee behavior (they do a coded dance directing…

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