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Brian Lowery in Conversation With Darrell Wade

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

There's nothing we spend more time with, but understand less, than ourselves. You've been with yourself every waking moment of your life. But who — or, rather, what — are you? In Selfless (Harper), social psychologist and Stanford professor Brian Lowery argues for the radical idea that the "self" as we know it — that "voice in your head" — is a social construct, created in our relationships and social interactions. We are unique because our individual pattern of relationships is unique. We change because our relationships change. Your self isn't just you, it's all around you. Lowery uses this research-driven perspective of selfhood to explore questions of inequity, race, gender, politics, and power structures, transforming our perceptions of how the world is and how…

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Ling Ling Huang

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

Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Ling Ling Huang’s Natural Beauty (Dutton) follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost. Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents — also talented musicians — who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City. Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures — from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk — and her new job affords her entry into a…

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Archie Bongiovanni in Conversation With Sarah Shay Mirk

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

Archie Bongiovanni, the comics artist behind the hit A Quick and Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns, explores queerness in their shockingly frank and funny graphic novel, Mimosa (Abrams ComicArts – Surely). Best friends and chosen family Chris, Elise, Jo, and Alex work hard to keep themselves afloat. Their regular brunches hold them together even as the rest of their lives threaten to fall apart. In an effort to avoid being the oldest gays at the party, the crew decides to put on a new queer event called Grind — specifically for homos in their dirty thirties. Grind is a welcome distraction from their real problems: after a messy divorce, Chris adjusts to being a single parent while struggling to reconnect to their queer community. Elise…

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Taylor Koekkoek

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

An amusement park employee overdoses after eating the gel of a fentanyl patch. Two homeless men discover the body of a drowned woman. A sister encounters a dangerous stranger while driving her brother to rehab. Ex-lovers seek to rekindle their relationship with the aid of an earthquake. In the nine masterful stories that comprise Thrillville, USA (Simon & Schuster), debut author Taylor Koekkoek depicts Americans living on the margins of society, seeking escape from isolation and underemployment in drugs, booze, and self-destructive relationships. While the action is set largely in the rural Pacific Northwest, the characters’ malaise and disaffectedness is endemic of the country as a whole. The title takes its name from the aforementioned amusement park, but Thrillville is as much a state of…

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Katie Holten in Conversation With David Naimon

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

Inspired by forests, trees, leaves, roots, and seeds, The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape (Tin House) invites readers to discover an unexpected and imaginative language to better read and write the natural world around us and reclaim our relationship with it. In her gorgeously illustrated and deeply thoughtful collection, Katie Holten gifts readers her tree alphabet and uses it to masterfully translate and illuminate beloved writing in praise of the natural world. With an introduction from Ross Gay, and featuring writings from over 50 contributors, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Ada Limón, Robert Macfarlane, Zadie Smith, Radiohead, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, James Gleick, Elizabeth Kolbert, Plato, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, Holten illustrates each selection with an abiding love and reverence for the magic…

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Regan Penaluna

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

As a young woman growing up in small-town Iowa, Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions: who are we and what is this strange world we find ourselves in? In college she fell in love with philosophy and chose to pursue it as an academician — the first step, she believed, toward becoming a self-determined person living a life of the mind. What Penaluna didn’t realize was that the Western philosophical canon taught in American universities, as well as the culture surrounding it, would slowly grind her down through its misogyny, its harassment, its devaluation of women and their intellect. Where were the women philosophers? One day, in an obscure monograph, Penaluna came across Damaris Cudworth Masham’s name. The daughter of philosopher Ralph Cudworth and…

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Lisa Dodson in Conversation With Andrea Paluso

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

Many Americans take comfort and convenience for granted. We eat at nice restaurants, order groceries online, and hire nannies to care for kids. Getting Me Cheap (The New Press) is a riveting portrait of the lives of the low-wage workers — primarily women — who make this lifestyle possible. Sociologists Lisa Dodson and Amanda Freeman follow women in the food, health care, home care, and other low-wage industries as they struggle to balance mothering with bad jobs and without public aid. While these women tend to the needs of well-off families, their own children frequently step into premature adult roles, providing care for siblings and aging family members. Based on years of in-depth field work and hundreds of eye-opening interviews, Getting Me Cheap explores how…

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Kids’ Storytime With Stephanie Shaw

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

Hen insists on doing everything alone. When Fox comes calling, Hen's friends start to worry… but should they? Hen isn't a little chick anymore. She's spread her wings and can get a job done just the way she likes it! She can grow wheat herself, she can wheelbarrow it home by herself, and she can turn it into delicious bread all by herself. No need to bother offering Hen a helping hand of any sort, thank you. She's got it covered! But then comes Fox… and Fox loves to eat all kinds of tasty things. So when Pig, Horse, and Cow discover that Fox has paid Hen a visit, should they step in and offer assistance that Hen hasn't asked for? Stephanie Shaw’s All by…

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Smallpresspalooza

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

After a four-year absence, Smallpresspalooza is back! Powell's presents this marathon reading of authors published by local and national small presses for the twelfth time. This year's lineup features Marcelle Heath, Sam Rose Preminger, Nicholas Yandell & Timothy Arliss O'Brien, Craig Buchner, Benjamin Kessler, Marialicia González, Eric Tran, Alyssa Giannini, Ashley Yang-Thompson, Quinn Gancedo, X.C. Atkins, and April Alexis Hernandez. Hosted by Powell's small-press champion and publisher of Future Tense Books, Kevin Sampsell. A full Smallpresspalooza schedule is available here. Preorder a Signed Edition (Heath) Preorder a Signed Edition (Preminger) Preorder a Signed Edition (Yandell & O’Brien) Preorder a Signed Edition (Buchner) Preorder a Signed Edition (Kessler) Preorder a Signed Edition (González) Preorder a Signed Edition (Tran) Preorder a Signed Edition (Giannini) Preorder a Signed…

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Matt Ruff

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

Summer, 1957. Atticus Turner and his father, Montrose, travel to North Carolina, where they plan to mark the centennial of their ancestor’s escape from slavery by retracing the route he took into the Great Dismal Swamp. But an encounter with an old nemesis turns their historical reenactment into a real life-and-death pursuit. Back in Chicago, George Berry fights for his own life. Diagnosed with cancer, he strikes a devil’s bargain with the ghost of Hiram Winthrop, who promises a miracle cure — but to receive it, George will first have to bring Winthrop back from the dead. Meanwhile, 15-year-old Horace Berry, reeling from the killing of a close friend, joins his mother, Hippolyta, and her friend Letitia Dandridge on a research trip to Nevada for…

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