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The Great Word Regatta with Shawn Aveningo-Sanders, Michael Schein, Annie Lighthart, and Matthew Brouwer

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

Come hear four festive writers bring life to hallowed Portland pub space through their wily and resplendent words. Opened by the briefest of open mics and followed by the pouring of libations. No cover, but please support your venue that so kindly hosts poets and other weirdos at no charge. Vaccination required. Michael Schein wrote Liquid Perishable Hazardous (2019) (poetry), John Surratt: The Lincoln Assassin Who Got Away (2015) (historical), The Killer Poet’s Guide to Immortality by AB Bard (2012) (hysterical), historical novels Bones Beneath Our Feet (2011); Just Deceits (2005). Schein edited Poets UNiTE! The LiTFUSE Anthology (2015). His poetry appears in many journals and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times. Schein is the founder of LiTFUSE Poets’ Workshop (litfuse.us), & has taught at Port Townsend…

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Free

2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Saeed Jones, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Paisley Rekdal

Reed College - Cerf Amphitheater 3203 Southeast Woodstock Boulevard, Portland, OR, United States

We are excited to once again be offering in-person readings as part of our 2022 Summer Workshop programming. Starting at 7:30 pm, these events will take place in Reed College’s Cerf Amphitheater and are free and open to the public. Faculty books will be available for purchase at the Reed Bookstore, with authors signing after the event. Masks are not required in the outdoor amphitheater. Saeed Jones is the author of the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives, winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction, and the poetry collection Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics…

Continue reading2022 Tin House Summer Workshop Reading Series: Saeed Jones, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Paisley Rekdal
Free

Meng Jin & K-Ming Chang in Conversation With Rachel Khong

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Meng Jin’s debut novel, Little Gods, was praised as “spectacular and emotionally polyphonic" (Omar El-Akkad) and “meticulously observed, daringly imagined” (Claire Messud). Now Jin turns her considerable talents to short fiction, in ten thematically linked stories. Written during the turbulent years of the Trump administration and the first year of the pandemic, these stories explore intimacy and isolation, coming-of-age and coming to terms with the repercussions of past mistakes, fraying relationships, and surprising moments of connection. Moving between San Francisco and China, and from unsparing realism to genre-bending delight, Self-Portrait with Ghost (Mariner) considers what it means to live in an age of heightened self-consciousness, seemingly endless access to knowledge, and little actual power. Gods of Want (One World) features stories that center the bodies,…

Continue readingMeng Jin & K-Ming Chang in Conversation With Rachel Khong
Free

Reclaiming Our Lost Selves with Gerette Buglion

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

RECLAIMING OUR LOST SELVES How understanding undue influence builds compassion and resilience In this presentation four questions are presented and aimed to be answered through personal anecdotes, quoted resources and from reading brief sections from An Everyday Cult, Gerette’s memoir. These questions are: What is Undue Influence and Coercive Control? How does indoctrination take place? Who is vulnerable to cultic influence? And perhaps most relevant: how can this exploration support the health and resilience of our communities, neighborhoods and families? IGotOut.org is pleased to sponsor this event. The #igotout movement empowers survivors of cultic abuse to share their stories online as a catalyst for education, prevention, and healing. Learn more at igotout.org

Free

Chris Belcher in Conversation With Katherine Morgan

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

The dominatrix is the id of American femininity. She says the words that we all wish we could say when we find ourselves frozen in the presence of men. No is principal among them. So writes Chris Belcher, who appeared destined for a life of conventional femininity after she took first place in an infant beauty contest — a minor glory that can follow you around a working-class town of 1,600 people in rural West Virginia. But when she came out as queer, the conservative community that had once celebrated its prettiest baby turned on her. A decade later, living in Los Angeles and trying to stay afloat in the early years of a PhD program, Belcher plunges into the work of a pro domme.…

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Free

Eve Fairbanks in Conversation With Kiese Laymon

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A dozen years in the making, The Inheritors (Simon & Schuster) weaves together the stories of three ordinary South Africans over five tumultuous decades in a sweeping and exquisite look at what really happens when a country resolves to end white supremacy. Dipuo grew up on the south side of a mine dump that segregated Johannesburg’s black townships from the white-only city. Some nights, she hiked to the top. To a South African teenager in the 1980s — even an anti-apartheid activist like Dipuo — the divide that separated her from the glittering lights on the other side appeared eternal. But in 1994, the world’s last explicit racial segregationist regime collapsed to make way for something unprecedented. With penetrating psychological insight, intimate reporting, and bewitching…

Continue readingEve Fairbanks in Conversation With Kiese Laymon
Free

Lyndsie Bourgon in Conversation With Ed Jahn

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

There's a strong chance that chair you are sitting on was made from stolen lumber. In Tree Thieves (Little, Brown Spark), Lyndsie Bourgon takes us deep into the underbelly of the illegal timber market. As she traces three timber poaching cases, she introduces us to tree poachers, law enforcement, forensic wood specialists, the enigmatic residents of former logging communities, environmental activists, international timber cartels, and indigenous communities along the way. Old-growth trees are invaluable and irreplaceable for both humans and wildlife, and are the oldest living things on earth. But the morality of tree poaching is not as simple as we might think: stealing trees is a form of deeply rooted protest, and a side effect of environmental preservation and protection that doesn't include communities…

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Free

Mikel Jollett

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

Hollywood Park (Celadon) is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett, frontman for The Airborne Toxic Event, was born into one of the country’s most infamous cults, and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer. His story opens in an experimental commune in California, which later morphed into the Church of Synanon, one of the country’s most infamous and dangerous cults. Per the leader’s mandate, all children, including Jollett and his older brother, were separated from their parents when they were six months old, and handed over to the cult’s “School.” When…

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Free

Vince A. Liaguno & Rena Mason in Conversation With Tananarive Due, Jennifer McMahon, Alma Katsu & Nathan Carson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Other Terrors (William Morrow) is an anthology of original new horror stories edited by Bram Stoker Award winners Vince A. Liaguno and Rena Mason that showcases authors from underrepresented backgrounds telling terrifying tales of what it means to be, or merely to seem, “other.” Offering original new stories from some of the biggest names in horror, as well as some of the hottest up-and-coming talents, Other Terrors will provide the ultimate reading experience for horror fans who want to celebrate fear of “the other.” Be they of a different culture, a different background, a different sexual preference, a different belief system, or a different skin color, some people simply aren’t part of the dominant community — and are perceived as scary. Humans are almost instinctively…

Continue readingVince A. Liaguno & Rena Mason in Conversation With Tananarive Due, Jennifer McMahon, Alma Katsu & Nathan Carson
Free

Marilyn Milne & Linda Kirk

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

In the 1960s, Tillamook County, Oregon was at war with itself. As the regional dairy industry shifted from small local factories to larger consolidated factories, and as profit margins for milk and cheese collapsed, Tillamook farmers found themselves in a financial crisis that fueled multiple disputes. The ensuing Cheese War included lies and secrets, as well as spies, high emotion, a shoving match, and even a death threat. Sisters Marilyn Milne and Linda Kirk, children of the Cheese War, conducted years of research and have integrated it with tales of their experiences as farm kids living through the all-consuming fight. As Americans become ever more interested in food supply chains and ethical consumption, Cheese War (Oregon State) is the story of the very human factors…

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Free
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