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Tess Gallagher in Conversation With Greg Simon & Danielle Vermette

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

Tess Gallagher’s new poems are suspended between contradiction and beauty. Is, Is Not (Graywolf) upends our notions of linear time, evokes the spirit and sanctity of place, and hovers daringly at the threshold of what language can nearly deliver while offering alternative corollaries as gifts of its failures. Gallagher will be joined in conversation by poet Greg Simon and writer Danielle Vermette.

Free

Choose Your Own Adventure SPIES Mata Hari Book Release Party

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for a special, spy-themed Book Release Party with Rose City Book Pub "faculty member" author Katherine Factor. WW1-the Belle Epoque food & drinks for all ages will be served. Spy gear and dress-up encouraged! WARNING!!! This author event is different from other author events…. Join us for a very special reading of CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE SPIES: MATA HARI by Katherine Factor— an interactive middle grade story from the perspective of the young Margaretha Zelle, an icon of the glamorous Belle Epoque a century ago. Katherine will read from the beginning until YOU decide what happens next in the story. There will be a Q&A after the reading and book-signing. Books will be available for sale there.

Free

Lilla Lit Launches on May 19!

Leach Botanical Garden 6704 SE 122nd Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Join Lilla Lit for our inaugural event on May 19, 4-6pm, and enjoy food, drink, books, nature, culture, community and readings from Portland writers.

Free – $10

WTAW Portland Presents Exile and Return

Portland Northwest Hostel Cafe 1810 NW Glisan St, Portland, OR, United States

Join Why There Are Words – Portland (WTAW-PDX) for “Exile and Return” May 19, from 4 to 6 pm at the Portland Northwest Hostel Cafe, our fabulous new venue. We’ll have an amazing afternoon with the following amazing feature. Kate Gray’s passion stems from teaching, coaching writers, and volunteering as a writing facilitator with women inmates. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, one full-length collection, Another Sunset We Survive, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and a newly-released collection, For Every Girl: New & Selected Poems published by Widow & Orphan House. Her first novel, Carry the Sky stares at bullying without blinking. Now she is writing through Sylvia Plath in a novel-in-progress, narrating what led to The Bell Jar and her suicide…

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Free

Reading with Jason Christie and jayy dodd

The Stacks Coffeehouse 1831 N. Killingsworth St, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for an evening of poetry with Jason Christie and jayy dodd. What happens to identity when we're obsessed with self-surveillance and devalued words? Now that we've sold ourselves to ourselves, shuffling letters and sounds around to hide the pain, how do we represent the uncanny valley in which we've set up shop? In lèse-majesté, Jason Christie recoils in horror at the thoroughness of his self, then begins to write toward a new understanding brokered between all the things that define him and who he thinks he should be and interrogates how we reduce people to words, especially online, turning them into objects. Jason Christie is the author of Canada Post, i-ROBOT, Unknown Actor, and a coeditor of Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry.…

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Free

Jill Biden

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR, United States

Growing up, Jill Biden had wanted two things: a marriage like her parents' – strong, loving, and full of laughter – and a career. An early heartbreak had left her uncertain about love, until she met Joe. She soon found herself falling in love, learning to balance life as a mother, wife, educator, and political spouse. Through the challenges of public scrutiny, complicated family dynamics, and personal losses, she grew alongside her family, and she extended the family circle at every turn: with her students, military families, friends and staff at the White House, and more. The former Second Lady’s new memoir, Where the Light Enters (Flatiron), is a candid, heartwarming glimpse into the creation of a beloved American family, and the life of a…

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Free

Less of More: Pursuing Spiritual Abundance in a World of Never Enough

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

The Constitution guarantees the right to the pursuit of happiness. But for most Americans, what this means is the pursuit of more – more money, more prestige, more stuff. Far from offering happiness and satisfaction, this relentless pursuit has only left us exhausted, isolated, miserable, and wondering if there is a better way. Pastor Chris Nye’s Less of More (Baker) exposes the American pursuit of more for what it truly is: an attempt to satisfy our souls with the temporary instead of the eternal.

Free

Sunnyside Streetcars: The Streetcars of Southeast Portland

Powell's Books on Hawthorne 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR, United States

Streetcars played a key role in the frenzy of development that followed the completion of the first bridges across the Willamette River in Portland in 1887. In 1889, Southeast Portland residents raised their own money to fund one of the first electric street railways in the country. By 1891, rival companies had merged to form the largest streetcar system in the West. Richard Thompson’s Sunnyside Streetcars (America Through Time) traces the history of streetcars in Southeast Portland.

Free

Orpheus 2019 Night Three

Fort Vancouver High School 5700 East 18th Street, Vancouver, WA, United States

Featured Writers: Shannon Brazil, Daria Eckhardt Eliuk, Aaron Gilbreath, Sophia Shalmiyev, Kristi Straight

Free

Poetry Reading: Tess Gallagher and Paulann Petersen

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes two wonderful poets, Tess Gallagher and Paulann Petersen, for a joint reading from their latest collections. Tess Gallagher's new collection, Is, Is Not, upends our notions of linear time, evokes the spirit and sanctity of place, and hovers daringly at the threshold of what language can nearly deliver while offering alternative corollaries as gifts of its failures. Tess Gallagher’s poems reverberate with the inward clarity of a bell struck on a mountaintop. Guided by humor, grace, and a deep inquiry into the natural world, every poem nudges us toward moments of awe. How else except by delight and velocity would we discover the miracle within the ordinary? Gallagher claims many Wests—the Northwest of America, the Northwest of Ireland, and a West even…

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Free
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