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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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Free

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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Free

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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Free

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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Free

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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Free

Consider This with David F. Walker and Douglas Wolk

Alberta Rose Theatre 3000 NE Alberta St, Portland, OR, United States

Oregon Humanities’ 2022 Consider This series, “American Dreams, American Myths, American Hopes,” continues on March 16 with a live conversation on comics, hope, fantasy, history, and myth. We’ll be joined by. The guests for this conversation are David F. Walker, a comic book writer, filmmaker, journalist, and educator whose work includes Bitter Root, Naomi, and The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History, and Douglas Wolk, a pop culture critic and author of Reading Comics and All of the Marvels, for which he read some 27,000 Marvel comic books. Writer Courtenay Hameister will moderate the program. This event will take place on March 16, 2021 at the Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., in Portland. Doors will open at 6:00 p.m. Pacific, and the…

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Free – $15

Book Talk: Fencing With the King | Diana Abu Jaber & Omar El Akkad

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Please join the Middle East Studies Center for our next installment of the Scholarly Lecture Series. Author and Portland State University English Faculty Diana Abu Jaber will be discussing her new novel Fencing With the King with award-winning author Omar El Akkad. Zoom Registration About the Book A mesmerizing breakthrough novel of family myths and inheritances by the award-winning author of Crescent. Amani is hooked on a mystery—a poem on airmail paper that slips out of one of her father’s books. It seems to have been written by her grandmother, a refugee who arrived in Jordan during the First World War. Soon the perfect occasion to investigate arises: her Uncle Hafez, an advisor to the King of Jordan, invites her father to celebrate the king’s sixtieth birthday—and to fence…

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Free

Overcoming Rejection for Writers

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

FEATURING: Jami Attenberg Deesha Philyaw Tommy Pico Moderated by Denne Michele Norris Sponsored by GrubStreet's Muse & the Marketplace conference Whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned pro, all writers face rejection—but how we cope with that rejection plays a huge role in shaping our literary future. Rebounding can be tough, but rather than allowing rejection to stop us in our tracks, we can reframe it into a motivational and instructional tool. Some rejections actually make us stronger—as writers, editors, applicants, and people—while others just need to be ignored. Poet and TV writer Tommy Pico (JUNK, Reservation Dogs), memoirist Jami Attenberg (I Came All This Way to Meet You), and award-winning short story writer Deesha Philyaw (The Secret Lives of Church Ladies) will share…

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$10

Busting Myths About Parenting and Writing

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

FEATURING: Claire Vaye Watkins Kaitlyn Greenidge Matthew Salesses Moderated by Kelly Luce Sponsored by GrubStreet's Muse & the Marketplace conference The idea that parenthood is a barrier to art creation is outdated, even dangerous—that we create in spite of having children rather than making complex work productively informed by parenthood in all its glory, sorrow, and ambivalence. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought parenting issues to the forefront of the national conversation, and the result has been that the discussions around parenthood specific to writing have evolved, too. Novelists Claire Vaye Watkins (I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness), Kaitlyn Greenidge (Libertie), and novelist and essayist Matthew Salesses (Craft in the Real World) will talk about the struggles, triumphs, stereotypes, and assumptions of writing as parents…

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$10
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