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The Voice of Empathy: Laura Winter and John Witte – reading and Q&A

The Tiny Theater PDX 3306 SE 65th Ave, Portland, OR, United States

The Voice of Empathy is back for season 2 at thetinytheaterPDX, 3306 SE 65th Ave, Portland, OR. Please spread out the parking around the neighborhood to avoid congestion. The series showcases poets whose work investigates the human capacity for compassion and generosity and invites the reader/listener to care deeply for others and the world. This description is for the poets’ reference only and does not presume to impose any constraints on the work selected for presentation. There is room for 37-39 poetry lovers. Please come a few minutes in advance to reserve your seats. In case of snow, please monitor this event for possible rescheduling. Laura Winter lives in Portland Oregon. Author of 6 collections, broadsides and performance projects, her book Coming Here to be…

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Free

Jeff Alessandrelli & Dao Strom in Conversation With Danielle Frandina

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

Taking its inspiration from the work of Russian absurdist authors such as Alexander Vvedensky and Daniil Kharms, Jeff Alessandrelli’s Fur Not Light (Burnside Review) interrogates how deep senselessness runs in a post-truth and truthiness world. When Dao Strom’s The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys (Counterpoint) was first published in 2006, it was groundbreaking in its depiction of contemporary young Vietnamese women living in the United States, centering their ordinary lives as mothers, lovers, friends, and daughters against the backdrop of immigration and assimilation. Available now for the first time in paperback, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys is a beautifully written, psychologically astute foray into the rite of female passage. Alessandrelli and Strom will be joined in conversation by Danielle Frandina, Literary Arts…

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Free

Bards of Stumptown

Ford Food and Drink 2505 SE 11th Ave, Portland, OR, United States

You’ve read Leanne Grabel’s article (https://www.pdxmonthly.com/articles/2019/10/23/meet-the-poets-who-defined-a-portland-era-and-are-still-at-it) in November’s Portland Monthly about 8 Portland poets who’ve continued writing and performing their work while building and supporting the region’s literary network for 4 decades. Here’s a chance to hear, see and meet the writers Leanne Grabel Walt Curtis Douglas Spangle Barbara LaMorticella Tim Barnes Casey Bush dan raphael & hopefully Judith Barrington Leanne Grabel loves mixing genres and collaborating with musicians and a funky old casio. Her latest work is a collection of flash memoir about her long-ass marriage and co-conspirator in Cafe Lena and performance work, Steve Sander. Born on the 4th of July, Walt Curtis has long been's Portland unofficial poet laureate. Douglas Spangle tries out new pens and butters toast for absent friends. Barbara…

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Free

Ramesh Srinivasan

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

In his new book, Beyond the Valley: How Innovators Around the World Are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow (MIT), Ramesh Srinivasan describes the Internet as both an enabler of frictionless efficiency and a dirty tangle of politics, economics, and other inefficient, inharmonious human activities. To make a better Internet, Srinivasan says, we need a new ethic of diversity, openness, and inclusivity, empowering those now excluded from decisions about how technologies are designed, who profits from them, and who are surveilled and exploited by them.

Free

Story Time for Grown Ups with David Loftus

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

A Christmas Eve Rescue: Craig Johnson’s Spirit of Steamboat It’s Christmas Eve 1988, and the new sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming, Walt Longmire, gets a call that a wreck on I-90 has killed three adults. The only survivor is a 10-year-old girl, badly burned with inhalation injuries. Unless Walt can get her to Denver, she will die ... but a winter storm is rolling in, regional airports have closed, and the Life Flight heli-pilots who brought her in refuse to go up again. “Story Time for Grownups” offers a different kind of holiday tale: the desperate flight of a leaky 45-year-old World War II bomber through a blizzard to get a badly injured little girl to proper medical care. The pilot is crusty, profane, and…

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Free

Sarah Harian

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

A girl leads a band of magical outlaws on a deadly subterranean mission in Sarah Harian’s exhilarating YA fantasy standalone, Eight Will Fall (Henry Holt). In a world where magic is illegal, eight criminals led by rebellious Larkin are sent on a mission to rid their kingdom of monsters. Descending into an underground world full of unspeakable horrors, Larkin and her crew must use their forbidden magic to survive. As they fight in the shadows, Larkin finds a light in Amias, a fellow outlaw with a notorious past. Soon, Larkin and Amias realize that their destinies are intertwined and she dares to dream of a future where they can freely practice magic.

Free

Wit’s End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It

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

In Wit's End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It (W. W. Norton), James Geary explores every facet of wittiness, from its role in innovation to why puns are the highest form of wit. Adopting a different style for each chapter – from dramatic dialogue to sermon, heroic couplets to a barroom monologue – Geary embodies wit in all its forms. Wit’s End agilely balances psychology, folktale, visual art, and literary history with lighthearted humor and acute insight, demonstrating that wit and wisdom are really the same thing.

Free

Reading: Christine Light

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

Christine will read from her book Crisis of Character: Finding Our Moral Compass in a Trumped Up World.

Free

ONE PAGE Wednesday: December

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

Writers, escape the solitude of your desk. Readers, come hear great fresh work. Here is an opportunity to share or listen to one page of work in progress from talented Portland writers.Come with a single page of work and sign up to read – or come to listen and prepare to be inspired! November's One Page Wednesday is hosted by Emilly Prado. December’s featured readers are Jewels and Ramiza Koya. The reading begins at 7:00. Doors open around 6:30 p.m. Potential readers can sign up to read and after the list is full, they can add their name to the fishbowl and Emilly will draw as many additional names to read as we have time for before 8:30 p.m. One Page = one page, one…

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Free

The Pacific Northwest Seafood Cookbook

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

For thousands of years, the abundance of fish and shellfish in the Pacific Northwest created a seafood paradise for the Indigenous peoples hunting and gathering along the region’s pristine waterways, and, later, for the Chinese, Scandinavian, Filipino, and Japanese immigrants (along with many others) who have made this region home. Drawing on these diverse influences, the region fostered a cuisine that is as varied as its people, yet which remains specifically Northwestern. In The Pacific Northwest Seafood Cookbook (Countryman), food writer Naomi Tomky leads readers through an exploration of this cuisine.

Free
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