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Storytime: Arab Arab All Year Long!

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Celebrate the beauty and diversity of life in the Arab diaspora throughout the year. Wrapping grape leaves, playing doumbek, drawing henna tattoos, we’re Arab, Arab, Arab, the whole year through! Yallah! From January to December, join some busy kids as they partake in traditions old and new. There’s so much to do, whether it’s learning to write Arabic or looking at hijab fashion sites while planning costumes for a local comic convention. With details as vivid as the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle perfume (made to remind Mom of Morocco), children bond with friends, honor tradition, and spend loving time with family. Accompanied by buoyant and charming illustrations, this portrait of Arab life and childhood zeal is sure to bring joy all year round. Portland Book Festival…

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Free

Mean Baby: Selma Blair with Esmé Weijun Wang

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

Selma Blair has played many roles: Ingenue in Cruel Intentions. Preppy ice queen in Legally Blonde. Muse to Karl Lagerfeld. Advocate for the multiple sclerosis community. But before all of that, Selma was known best as … a mean baby. In a memoir that is as wildly funny as it is emotionally shattering, Blair’s Mean Baby tells the captivating story of growing up and finding her truth. Blair is in conversation with Esmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias. This is one of two Portland Book Festival events at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, and requires a ticket for entry, in addition to your festival pass. A limited number of tickets include priority seating and a signed copy of Mean Baby. Simplify your Portland Book Festival experience…

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$5 – $30

Portland Book Festival!

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

We're so excited that the Portland Book Festival is back in person this year! Please join us downtown for this marvelous event. We will be in the lobby of the Hatfield Hall (across Main Street from the Schnitz), selling books for authors in the Winningstad and Brunish theaters. Come say hi! Literary Arts will announce the authors appearing at this year’s Portland Book Festival, presented by Bank of America, on Wednesday, September 14, at 5 p.m. Passes to Portland Book Festival will also go on sale at this time.

Free

Storytime: Friends Are Friends, Forever

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A picture book based on the author’s own immigration story, the infinite impact of friendship, and passing on love and kindness around the world. On a snowy Lunar New Year’s Eve in Northeastern China, it’s Dandan’s last night with Yueyue. Tomorrow, she moves to America. The two best friends have a favorite wintertime tradition: crafting paper-cut snowflakes, freezing them outside, and hanging them as ornaments. As they say goodbye, Yueyue presses red paper and a spool of thread into Dandan’s hands so that she can carry on their tradition. But in her new home, Dandan has no one to enjoy the gift with—until a friend comes along. Portland Book Festival General Admission Passes are required for entry into all events. Passes are $15 in advance and…

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Free

Reality Bites: Rafael Agustin & Chuck Klosterman

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Reckoning with the nineties, a decade that is not only back in fashion in a big way but a political, social, and societal impact that still ripples through our culture today. We’ll look at the the nineties from two very different perspectives: intensely personal, with Rafael Agustin’s memoir Illegally Yours; and from the stance of cultural criticism, with Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties. Moderated by Eden Dawn (The Portland Book of Dates). When Rafael Agustin (Illegally Yours) tried to get his driver’s license during his junior year of high school, his parents were forced to reveal his immigration status. Suddenly, the kid who modeled his entire high school career after American TV shows had no idea what to do — there was no episode of Saved…

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Free

Life Story: Jon Mooallem & Casey Parks

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Narrative journalism at its very best, with acclaimed essayist Jon Mooallem and award-winning journalist Casey Parks. Moderated by Melissa Febos, author of Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. Jon Mooallem’s powers of perception have established him as one of the most distinctive, empathic, and clear-sighted narrative journalists working today. The Wall Street Journal has called his writing “as much art as it is journalism,” and Jia Tolentino has praised his “grace and command.” In Serious Face, Mooallem brings to life the desperate hopes and urgent fears of the people he meets, telling their stories with empathy, humor, insight, and kindness. These elegant, moving essays form an idiosyncratic tapestry of human experience: our audacity and fallibility, our bumbling and goodwill. In moments of calamity and within the extreme…

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Free

Animals with Freeman’s

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Three contributors from the new Freeman’s annual—Tess Gunty (The Rabbit Hutch), Debra Gwartney (I Am a Stranger Here Myself), and Sasha LaPointe (Red Paint)—discuss their work with editor John Freeman. More about Freeman’s: Animals Over a century ago, Rilke went to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where he watched a pair of flamingos. A flock of other birds screeched by, and, as he describes in a poem, the great red-pink birds sauntered on, unphased, then “stretched amazed and singly march into the imaginary.” This encounter—so strange, so typical of flamingos, with their fabulous posture—is also still typical of how we interact with animals. Even as our actions threaten their very survival, they are still symbolic, captivating and captive, caught in a drama of our framing This issue of Freeman’s tells…

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Free

Food Is a Weapon: Ghetto Gastro with Gregory Gourdet

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join Jon Gray, Pierre Serrao, and Lester Walker of Bronx-based culinary collective Ghetto Gastro, and authors of the new book Ghetto Gastro Presents Black Power Kitchen, for a conversation with acclaimed Portland-based chef Gregory Gourdet. Part cookbook. Part manifesto. Created with big Bronx energy, Black Power Kitchen combines 75 mostly plant-based, layered-with-flavor recipes with immersive storytelling, diverse voices, and striking images and photographs that celebrate Black food and Black culture, and inspire larger conversations about race, history, food inequality, and how eating well can be a pathway to personal freedom and self-empowerment. “Black Power Kitchen is as much a cooking manual as it is a manifesto of Ghetto Gastro’s decade-long mission: Seeing eating as simultaneously a form of survival and a source of luxury, Black Power Kitchen…

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Free

Writing Food

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

Explore the role of food in storytelling, and how it can shape, define, and give insight into our characters’ deeper desires. Particpants will examine the language of food, and talk about how hunger translates across unsaid emotions. Drawing upon sensory texts about snacking, groceries, and meals both extravagant and humble, we’ll learn new ways to think about food, how we use it in writing, and how it can add depth, texture, and humanity to our stories. Access Program We want our writing classes and Delves to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class and Delve tuitions at a reduced rate. The access program for writing…

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$80

Kick-Start Your Picture Book

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

This class will take you from idea to rough draft in four hours. Picture books are so much more than stories with short text for young readers. We’ll study the picture book form, then construct stories in picturebook form, playing with powerful tools such as repetition, suspenseful page turns, and the rule of threes. You can come with a picturebook draft you want to perfect – or bring an idea and leave with a draft. Join award-winning children’s book author Elizabeth Rusch in this condensed version of her popular and productive Picturebook Writing class. Access Program We want our writing classes and Delves to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people.…

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$145
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