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Omar El Akkad in Conversation With Roy Scranton

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

From Omar El Akkad, the widely acclaimed author of American War, comes What Strange Paradise (Knopf), a beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic, and profoundly moving new novel that brings the global refugee crisis down to the level of a child’s eyes. More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one has made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials but of Vänna: a teenage girl, native to the island, who lives inside her own sense…

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Free

Carrot Quinn in Conversation With Torrey Peters

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

After a childhood marked by neglect, poverty, and periods of homelessness, and raised by a mother who believed herself to be the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary, Carrot Quinn moved out on her own. She found a sense of belonging among straight-edge anarchists who taught her how to traverse the country by freight trains, sleep in fields under the stars, and feed herself by foraging in dumpsters. Her new life was one of thrilling adventure and freedom, but still, she was haunted by the ghosts of her lonely and traumatic childhood. The Sunset Route (Dial Press) is a powerful and brazenly honest adventure memoir set in the unseen corners of the United States — in the Alaskan cold, on trains rattling through forests and deserts,…

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Free

Patrick Wyman in Conversation With Mike Duncan

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Patrick Wyman, creator of the hit podcast series Tides of History and Fall of Rome, explores the four explosive decades between 1490 and 1530, bringing to life the dramatic and deeply human story of how the West was reborn. In the bestselling tradition of The Swerve and A Distant Mirror, The Verge (Twelve) tells the story of a period that marked a decisive turning point for both European and world history. Here, Wyman examines two complementary and contradictory sides of the same historical coin: the world-altering implications of the developments of printed mass media, extreme taxation, exploitative globalization, humanistic learning, gunpowder warfare, and mass religious conflict in the long term, and their intensely disruptive consequences in the short term. As told through the lives of…

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Free

the IPRC hosts a zine reading

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The Independent Publishing Resource Center hosts as cool zinesters read their new work. The Independent Publishing Resource Center will host a live zine reading during #virtualpzs2021. The line-up is yet to be announced but the IPRC is very cool, and we are very excited for this event.

Free

Proof of Stake Book Launch

Oregon Contemporary (formerly DISJECTA) 8371 N Interstate Avenue, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for the launch of Charles Valle's book-length poem, Proof of Stake: An Elegy, featuring readings by Charles, Ashley Toliver, Stephanie Adams-Santos and Robert Lashley.

Free

Lisa Wells in Conversation With Lydia Millet

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Like many of us, Lisa Wells has spent years overwhelmed by news of apocalyptic-scale climate change and a coming sixth extinction. She did not need to be convinced of the stakes. But what can be done? Wells embarked on a pilgrimage, seeking answers in dedicated communities — outcasts and visionaries — on the margins of society. Wells meets Finisia Medrano, an itinerant planter and misanthrope leading a group of nomadic activists to rewild the American desert. She finds a group of environmentalist Christians practicing "watershed discipleship" in New Mexico; another group in Philadelphia turning the tools of violence into tools of farming — guns into plowshares. She watches the world’s greatest tracker teach how to read a trail, and visits botanists who are restoring land…

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Free

Live on Crowdcast! Joshilyn Jackson, Mother May I, in conversation with Samantha Downing, For Your Own Good

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Live on Crowdcast! Joshilyn Jackson, Mother May I, in conversation with Samantha Downing, For Your Own Good IF YOU WANT TO ATTEND AND REQUIRE SHIPPING PLEASE EMAIL US AND WE'LL EXPLAIN THE PROCESS. ORDER AND PREORDER ON OUR WEBSITE NOW! MOTHER MAY I Revenge doesn't wait for permission. Growing up poor in rural Georgia, Bree Cabbat was warned that the world was a dark and scary place. Bree rejected that fearful outlook, and life has proved her right. Having married into a family with wealth, power, and connections, Bree now has all a woman could ever dream of. Until the day she awakens and sees someone peering into her bedroom window--an old gray-haired woman dressed all in black who vanishes as quickly as she appears.…

Continue readingLive on Crowdcast! Joshilyn Jackson, Mother May I, in conversation with Samantha Downing, For Your Own Good
Free

Karolina Waclawiak in Conversation With Vanessa Veselka

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Karolina Waclawiak’s breakout novel, Life Events (Picador), follows Evelyn, who, at 37, is on the verge of divorce and anxiously dreading the death of everyone she loves. She combats her existential crisis by avoiding her husband and aimlessly driving along the freeways of California looking for an escape — one that eventually comes when she discovers a collective of “exit guides.” Evelyn enrolls in their training course, where she learns to provide companionship and a final exit for terminally ill patients seeking a conscious departure. She meets Daphne, a dying woman still full of life; Lawrence, an aging porn king; and Daniel, who seems too young to die and whom Evelyn falls for, despite knowing better, not to mention the exit guide code. Each client…

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Free

Chuck Wendig in Conversation With Cassandra Khaw

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A family returns to their hometown — and to the dark past that haunts them still — in The Book of Accidents (Del Rey), a new masterpiece of literary horror by Chuck Wendig, bestselling author of Wanderers. Long ago, Nathan Graves lived in a house in the country with his abusive father — and has never told his family what happened in that house. Long ago, Maddie Graves was a little girl making dolls in her bedroom when she saw something she shouldn’t — and is trying to remember that lost trauma by making haunting sculptures. Long ago, something sinister, something hungry, walked in the tunnels and the mountains and the coal mines of their hometown in rural Pennsylvania. Now Nate and Maddie are married,…

Continue readingChuck Wendig in Conversation With Cassandra Khaw
Free

See Me. iAm. HEAR. Creative Activation of Youth Voices of Color

Madison Street Plaza 1219 SW Park Avenue, Portland, OR, United States

IPRC is excited to partner with the City of Portland, I Am M.O.R.E, The Numberz.fm, NAYA Many Nations Academy, and the Portland Art Museum for event that is a part of the City of Portland “Supporting Community Healing with Art” Initiative. Saturday, July 31st join us from 12-4 PM in Madison Street Plaza (1219 SW Park Avenue) for poetry, printmaking, DJs, Open Mic, and free ice cream.

Free
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