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Ed Levine in Conversation With J. Kenji López-Alt

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

In 2005, Ed Levine was a freelance food writer with an unlikely dream: to control his own fate and create a different kind of food publication. He wanted to unearth the world’s best bagels, the best burgers, the best hot dogs – the best of everything edible. Against all sane advice, he created a blog for $100 and called it… Serious Eats. The site quickly became a home for obsessives who didn’t take themselves too seriously. In Serious Eater (Portfolio), the James Beard Award winner finally tells the moving, mouthwatering, heart-stopping story of building – and almost losing – one of the most acclaimed and beloved food sites in the world. Levine will be joined in conversation by J. Kenji López-Alt, James Beard Award-winning author…

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Free

Shawn Levy

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

We welcome Portland author Shawn Levy to the store, reading from his newest book, The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont. For ninety years, Hollywood's brightest stars have favored the Chateau Marmont as a home away from home. Perched above the Sunset Strip like a fairytale castle, the Chateau seems to come from another world entirely. Its singular appearance houses an equally singular history. An apartment house-turned-hotel, it has been the backdrop for generations of gossip and folklore. Much of what's happened inside the Chateau's walls has eluded the public eye. Until now. With wit and insight, Levy recounts the wild revelries and scandalous liaisons, the creative breakthroughs and marital breakdowns, the births and deaths that the Chateau…

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Free

Chelsea Biondolillo in Conversation With Rene Denfeld

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

From award-winning essayist Chelsea Biondolillo, The Skinned Bird (Kernpunkt) is about all the ways we break our own hearts. In lyric, fragmented essays – full of geological, ornithological, and photographic interventions, with landscapes, loss, and longing – Biondolillo travels the terrain of leaving and finding home, while keeping her sights fixed firm on the natural world around her. Biondolillo will be joined in conversation by Rene Denfeld, author of The Child Finder.

Free

Stories My Mother & Father Told Me: Dmae Roberts

Portland Chinatown Museum 127 NW Third Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Renowned writer, producer, media and theater artist, and founder of Portland's Theater Diaspora, Dmae Roberts will screen her 2015 documentary film Mei Mei: A Daughter's Song and read from her recent book Letting Go Trilogies: Stories of a Mixed Race Family (2016).

$10 – $12

Sarah Townsend and Liz Scott Reading and in Conversation about their Memoirs

Mother Foucault's Bookshop 523 SE Morrison St, Portland, OR, United States

Authors Sarah Townsend and Liz Scott in conversation about their memoirs. Setting the Wire by Sarah Townsend is a memoir of postpartum psychosis and a meditation on containment: what we hold and what holds us together. A lyric exploration of motherhood, mental illness, and familial ties, Sarah Townsend’s debut work weaves together personal anecdote, film, music, visual art, and psychology. Setting the Wire is a visceral reflection on the experience of fragmentation as a young psychotherapist and new mother. Liz Scott’s memoir, This Never Happened, goes in search of the answers to the mysteries of her family. In her relentless quest to uncover the truth, she mines photographs and letters, leaving no one, including herself, unexamined. This is a spare work, alternately heartbreaking and darkly…

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Free

Sarah Townsend and Liz Scott Reading in Conversation about their Memoirs

Mother Foucault's Bookshop 523 SE Morrison St, Portland, OR, United States

Authors Sarah Townsend and Liz Scott in conversation about their memoirs. Thursday, June 27,  2019 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm Setting the Wire by Sarah Townsend is a memoir of postpartum psychosis and a meditation on containment: what we hold and what holds us together. A lyric exploration of motherhood, mental illness, and familial ties, Sarah Townsend’s debut work weaves together personal anecdote, film, music, visual art, and psychology. Setting the Wire is a visceral reflection on the experience of fragmentation as a young psychotherapist and new mother. Liz Scott’s memoir, This Never Happened, goes in search of the answers to the mysteries of her family. In her relentless quest to uncover the truth, she mines photographs and letters, leaving no one, including herself, unexamined. This is a spare work, alternately…

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Free

Bruce Berger

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

Occupying a space between traditional nature writing, memoir, journalism, and prose poetry, Bruce Berger’s essays are beautiful, subtle, and haunting meditations on the landscape and culture of the American Southwest. Combining new essays with selections from his acclaimed trilogy of “desert books” – The Telling Distance, There Was a River, and Almost an Island – A Desert Harvest (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a career-spanning selection of the best work by this unique and undervalued voice. Wasteland architecture, mountaintop astronomy, Bach in the wilderness, the mind of the wood rat, the canals of Phoenix, and the numerous eccentric personalities who call the desert their home all come to life in these fascinating portraits of America’s seemingly desolate terrains.

Free

Joshua A. Douglas

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

In contrast to the anxiety surrounding our voting system, with stories about voter suppression and manipulation, there are actually quite a few positive initiatives toward voting rights reform. Professor Joshua A. Douglas, an expert on our electoral system, examines these encouraging developments in his inspiring new book about how regular Americans are working to take back their democracy, one community at a time. Told through the narratives of those working on positive voting rights reforms, Vote for US (Prometheus) includes chapters on expanding voter eligibility, easing voter registration rules, making voting more convenient, enhancing accessibility at the polls, providing voters with more choices, finding ways to comply with voter ID rules, giving redistricting back to the voters, pushing back on big money through local and…

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Free

Juggalo Country

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

The Insane Clown Posse calls itself "the most hated band in the world," but with 11 million albums sold, the horrorcore hip hop duo from Detroit is a widespread music phenomenon with a cult following. Juggalo Country (Microcosm) is the story of Craven Rock's journey to their annual festival, the Gathering of the Juggalos, where legions of fans in clown makeup come together to attend this family reunion-like event and enjoy musical celebrities, feats of wrestling, debauchery, and most of all, a supportive, tight-knit community. Rock's reporting casts a light on the many contradictions and perils of Juggalodom, sensitively handling questions of gender, health, religion, and what it means to be part of something. Part festival-goer's journal, part music history, part investigative report, part social…

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Free

Oregon Wine: A Deep-Rooted History

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

The history of winemaking in Oregon is steeped in legends so well-known they've become gospel, but reality is even more fascinating. In Scott Stursa’s Oregon Wine: A Deep-Rooted History (History Press), discover the truth about who opened the state's first commercial winery and the real origin of Willamette Valley's famed Pinot Noir. Learn about Portland's daring Italian Americans, who kept home wineries during Prohibition, and the flourishing agriculture that contributed to the popularity of fruit wine. From the 19th-century winemakers through the modern industry that now includes more than 700 wineries, places like HillCrest and The Eyrie have been serving Oregonians for a half century. Uncover the forgotten roots of Oregon wine and raise a glass to its prosperous future.

Free
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