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David Gessner

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

“Leave it as it is,” Theodore Roosevelt announced while viewing the Grand Canyon for the first time. “The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.” Roosevelt’s rallying cry signaled the beginning of an environmental fight that still wages today. To reconnect with the American wilderness and with the president who courageously protected it, acclaimed nature writer David Gessner embarks on a great American road trip guided by Roosevelt’s crusading environmental legacy. Gessner travels to the Dakota Badlands where Roosevelt awakened as a naturalist; to Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon where Roosevelt escaped during the grind of his reelection tour; and finally, to Bears Ears, Utah, a monument proposed by Native Tribes that is embroiled in a national conservation…

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Free

FALL Online: First Impressions: Chapter One (Nonfiction) w Whitney Otto

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

You know your story—whether a memoir, biography, essay collection, or nature writing—but how to begin? Where to begin? In this workshop, we will read, write and talk about beginnings. What engages the reader? What makes the reader turn the page, or feel the excitement you feel for your subject? What makes a non-fiction work feel as inventive as a novel? There are many ways to begin a non-fiction work: an anecdote, a statement, a line of dialog, a line of poetry. You will be asked to write short, first chapter pieces using something that you are currently working on, or maybe something new. This workshop could be the beginning of your beginning. Register for this workshop NOTE: To protect everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic, we're offering our…

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$215 – $242

Jonathan Meiburg in Conversation With Michael Azerrad

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

In 1833, Charles Darwin was astonished by an animal he met in the Falkland Islands: handsome, social, and oddly crow-like falcons that were “tame and inquisitive… quarrelsome and passionate,” and so insatiably curious that they stole hats, compasses, and other valuables from the crew of the Beagle. Darwin wondered why these birds were confined to remote islands at the tip of South America, sensing a larger story, but he set this mystery aside and never returned to it. Almost 200 years later, Jonathan Meiburg takes up this chase. He takes us through South America, from the fog-bound coasts of Tierra del Fuego to the tropical forests of Guyana, in search of these birds: striated caracaras, which still exist, though they’re very rare. He reveals the…

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Free

Amanda L. Tyler: 2021 Hatfield Lecture

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue: A Life's Work Fighting for a More Perfect Union by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Amanda L. Tyler Amanda L. Tyler is the Shannon Cecil Turner Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. She is the co-author, with the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue: A Life’s Work Fighting for a More Perfect Union. Professor Tyler holds a degree in public policy from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Prior to entering academia, Professor Tyler served as a law clerk to the Honorable Guido Calabresi at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court of the United…

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$25 – $150

Patrick Radden Keefe in Conversation With Lydia Polgreen

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Empire of Pain (Doubleday) is a grand, devastating portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, famed for their philanthropy, whose fortune was built by Valium and whose reputation was destroyed by OxyContin — written by Patrick Radden Keefe, the prize-winning, bestselling author of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions — Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing a blockbuster painkiller that was the catalyst…

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Free

Whitney Otto, Art for the Ladylike

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

We are so thrilled to be (virtually) hosting Portland author Whitney Otto with her new book Art for the Ladylike, published by Mad Creek Books. In this inviting blend of biography and memoir, Otto examines her life in terms of the women artists who influenced her, asking, “Is there any social effect when a woman is explicit in her observing?” She limns the lives of eight pioneering women photographers—Sally Mann, Imogen Cunningham, Judy Dater, Ruth Orkin, Tina Modotti, Lee Miller, Madame Yvonne, and Grete Stern— to in turn excavate her own writer’s life. The result is an affecting exploration of what it means to be a woman, what it means to be an artist, and the perils and rewards of being both at once. In…

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Free

Oregon Historical Society’s Mark O. Hatfield Lecture Series: Jon Meacham

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope Presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham is one of America's most prominent public intellectuals. A contributor to TIME and The New York Times Book Review, Meacham is a highly sought-after commentator, regularly appearing on CNN and MSNBC. Known as a skilled orator with a depth of knowledge about politics, religion, and current affairs, Meacham brings historical context to the issues and events affecting our daily lives. In his latest #1 New York Times best-seller, His Truth is Marching On, Meacham draws on decades of wide-ranging interviews with the late Congressman John Lewis. In this biography, Meacham shares how Lewis, the great-grandson of a man who was enslaved and son of an…

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$30 – $80

Daniel Barbarisi in Conversation With Jason Gay

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Daniel Barbarisi’s Chasing the Thrill (Knopf) is a full-throttle, first-person account of the treasure hunt created by eccentric millionaire art dealer — and, some would say, robber baron — Forrest Fenn that became the stuff of contemporary legend. When Fenn was given a fatal cancer diagnosis, he came up with a bold plan: He would hide a chest full of jewels and gold in the wilderness, and publish a poem that would serve as a map leading to the treasure's secret location. But he didn't die, and after hiding the treasure in 2010, Fenn instead presided over a decade-long gold rush that saw many thousands of treasure hunters scrambling across the Rocky Mountains in pursuit of his fortune. Barbarisi first learned of Fenn's hunt in…

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Free

Kai Bird in Conversation With T. J. Stiles

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter (Crown) is an essential reevaluation of the complex triumphs and tragedies of Jimmy Carter’s presidential legacy — from the expert biographer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Prometheus. Four decades after Ronald Reagan’s landslide win in 1980, Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency is often labeled a failure; indeed, many Americans view Carter as the only ex-president to have used the White House as a stepping-stone to greater achievements. But in retrospect the Carter political odyssey is a rich and human story, marked by both formidable accomplishments and painful political adversity. Forty years before today’s broad public reckoning with the vast gulf between America’s creed and its actions, Carter looked out over a nation torn by race, crippled by…

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Free

“George Venn: The Literary Lion of La Grande” Film and Q&A

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

‘George Venn : The Literary Lion of La Grande’ explores George Venn’s upbringing, his environmental work, writing process and legacy all while showcasing La Grande, Oregon as the beautiful backdrop for several poetry readings. Following the viewing of the short film will be a Q&A with filmmaker Erik Schultz from Paper Flames and George Venn. Click here to register for this event in advance. Poet, writer, literary historian, editor, linguist, and educator, George Venn (1943) is an eclectic, complex, and distinguished figure in western American literature. As one university press editor described him, "Venn’s blend of creativity and scholarship is unique...." Venn enhanced that description in the 2005 Contemporary Authors: "Politics: Independent. Religion: Ecumenist; mystic; no literalistic ethnocentric orthodoxy; everything universal." His distinguished and eclectic…

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Free
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