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Poetry Reading & Process Talk

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for the next Siren Nation Speaks on December 5, a Poetry Reading & Process Talk with authors Dao Strom, Michele Glazer, and Endi Bogue Hartigan. They’ll read from their work, talk about their creative processes, and answer your questions. Find out how they get started on a piece, see it forward, and explore the power of language and art. Speakers Dao Strom is an artist who works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. The author of five books and two song-cycles, most recently the poetry collection Instrument (Fonograf Editions) and its companion album, Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records), Strom was born in Vietnam and grew up in the Sierra Nevadas of California. Her bilingual…

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Free

Robin George Andrews in Conversation With Steve Olson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Volcanoes are capable of acts of pyrotechnical prowess verging on magic: they spout black magma more fluid than water, create shimmering cities of glass at the bottom of the ocean and frozen lakes of lava on the moon, and can even tip entire planets over. Between lava that melts and reforms the landscape, and noxious volcanic gases that poison the atmosphere, volcanoes have threatened life on Earth countless times in our planet’s history. Yet despite their reputation for destruction, volcanoes are inseparable from the creation of our planet. A lively and utterly fascinating guide to these geologic wonders, Super Volcanoes (W. W. Norton) revels in the incomparable power of volcanic eruptions past and present, earthbound and otherwise — and recounts the daring and sometimes death-defying…

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Michael J. Fox in Conversation With Willie Geist / Ticketed Event

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The entire world knows Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, the teenage sidekick of Doc Brown in Back to the Future; as Alex P. Keaton in Family Ties; as Mike Flaherty in Spin City; and through numerous other movie roles and guest appearances on shows such as The Good Wife and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Diagnosed at age 29, Fox is equally engaged in Parkinson’s advocacy work, raising global awareness of the disease and helping find a cure through The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the world’s leading nonprofit funder of PD science. In his new memoir, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality (Flatiron), Fox shares personal stories and observations about illness and health, aging, the strength of family and friends,…

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$17.99

Paul Levy in Conversation With Andrew Harvey

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In its Native American meaning, wetiko is an evil cannibalistic spirit that can take over people's minds, leading to selfishness, insatiable greed, and consumption as an end in itself, destructively turning our intrinsic creative genius against our own humanity. Revealing the presence of wetiko in our modern world behind every form of destruction our species is carrying out, both individual and collective, Paul Levy shows how this mind-virus is so embedded in our psyches that it is almost undetectable — and it is our blindness to it that gives wetiko its power. Yet, as Levy reveals in striking detail in his new book, Wetiko: Healing the Mind-Virus That Plagues Our World (Inner Traditions), by recognizing this highly contagious mind parasite, by seeing wetiko, we can…

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André Lewis Carter in Conversation With Kaylie Jones

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In André Lewis Carter’s debut novel, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Kaylie Jones Books), the Vietnam War is raging, the US Navy has only recently begun the process of integration, and the country is reeling from racial turmoil and unrest. So why does César, a street-tough kid of Afro-Cuban descent, enlist in the navy? He is on the run from a life of crime and from Mr. Mike, a charismatic, sociopathic gangster who was once a mentor but has now turned on him. Escaping into a navy wrestling with its history of racism and sexism, César soon sees the absurdity of certain prejudices that seem as old as the US Armed Forces. When he is deployed aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, racial…

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Free

Dan Millman

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In his long-awaited true story of a search for the good life, author Dan Millman describes his quest for meaning in the modern world, including the story behind his writing of the spiritual classic, Way of the Peaceful Warrior. His evolution from childhood dreamer to world-class athlete catapults him, over a span of two decades, through mind-expanding experiences with four radically different mentors who prepare him for his calling as a down-to-earth spiritual teacher. For 40 years, through books and seminars, Millman has shown how to live with a peaceful heart and a warrior’s spirit. This memoir shares his course corrections, wake-up calls, and life lessons as he introduces readers to four key mentors: the Professor, a Bolivian scientist-mystic; the Guru, an American-born spiritual master;…

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Let’s Get It On The Page: Writing Sex Scenes to Excite and Entice Your Readers

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Perhaps you snuck a peek at your grandma’s romance novels and giggled at the over-the-top metaphors. Maybe your writing group said you could use a sex scene but you’re mortified by putting it on the page. Maybe you write erotica and want to polish your craft. Sex can be one of the most exciting and emotionally resonant moments in a novel. It can also be cringe-worthy and awkward. Join author and sex-positivity advocate, Karelia Stetz-Waters, for a talk on writing fabulous sex scenes. This fun, unembarrassed look at sex scenes will cover plot and character elements as well as the physicality of sex on the page, Karelia will practical tips and tricks that any writer can use. All heat levels, sexual orientations, and gender identities…

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Etan Thomas in Conversation With Dave Zirin

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In his new book, Police Brutality and White Supremacy: The Fight Against American Traditions (Edge of Sports), Etan Thomas, an 11-year NBA veteran, weaves together his personal experiences with police violence and white supremacy with multiple interviews of family members of victims of police brutality like exonerated Central Park Five survivor, Raymond Santana, and Rodney King's daughter, Lora Dene King; as well as activist athletes and other public figures such as Steph Curry, Chuck D, Isiah Thomas, Sue Bird, Jake Tapper, Jemele Hill, Stan Van Gundy, Kyle Korver, Mark Cuban, Rick Strom, and many more. Thomas speaks with retired police officers about their efforts to change policing, and white allies about their experiences with privilege and their ability to influence other white people. Thomas also…

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Michelle Tam in Conversation With Gregory Gourdet

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Michelle Tam knows that the healthiest meal is the one you make yourself, so she’s all about getting you off your butts and into the kitchen. Whether you’re cooking for yourself, whipping up a family dinner, or preparing a special-occasion feast, Nom Nom Paleo: Let’s Go! (Andrews McMeel) — co-written with Henry Fong — will inspire you with deliciously nourishing meals. Weeknight suppers should be healthy and flavor-packed but also fast and simple. Weekends and celebrations, on the other hand, are the perfect excuse to craft elevated (but easy!) crowd-pleasers. Nom Nom Paleo: Let’s Go! offers crazy-delicious recipes for all occasions, and every single one is free of grains, gluten, dairy, and refined sugar. Better yet? No one in your family will notice what’s missing!…

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Chuck Klosterman

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The ’90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we’re still groping to understand. Beyond epiphenomena like “Cop Killer” and Titanic and Zima, there were wholesale shifts in how society was perceived: the rise of the Internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it. In The Nineties (Penguin Press), Chuck Klosterman makes a home in all of it: the film, the…

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