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Gemma Whalen in Conversation with Rene Denfeld

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

We are excited to host Gemma Whelan for the launch of her second novel, Painting Through the Dark. Gemma will be in conversation with Portland author Rene Denfeld, the author of several books, including The Enchanted, The Child Finder, The Butterfly Girl, and the forthcoming (May 2023) Fire and Water. Gemma's new novel tells the story of feisty 21-year-old Ashling O'Leary, who flees the emotional shackles of her family in Ireland and the convent where she was training to be a nun. She arrives in San Francisco in 1982 with a backpack, a judo outfit, her artist's portfolio, a three-month visa, and a determination to find a way to speak up about the abuse of girls and women in Catholic Ireland. As she becomes embroiled…

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Free

Joy Castro & S. Tremaine Nelson

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for a conversation with Joy Castro, author of One Brilliant Flame, and S. Tremaine Nelson of the Northwest Review. This is a virtual event. Click here to register in advance. If you have any questions, reach out to Jessica Meza-Torres at jessica@literary-arts.org. Joy Castro Joy Castro is the award-winning author of Flight Risk, a finalist for a 2022 International Thriller Award; the post-Katrina New Orleans literary thrillers Hell or High Water, which received the Nebraska Book Award, and Nearer Home, which have been published in France by Gallimard’s historic Série Noire; the story collection How Winter Began; the memoir The Truth Book; and the essay collection Island of Bones, which received the International Latino Book Award. She is also editor of the craft…

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Free

Deb Perelman in Conversation With Liz Crain

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

Deb Perelman is the author of two bestselling cookbooks (The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook and Smitten Kitchen Every Day), one of the internet's most successful food bloggers, the creator of a homegrown brand with more than a million Instagram followers, and the self-taught cook with the tiny kitchen who obsessively tests her recipes to make sure that no bowls are wasted and that the results are always worth the effort. In her new book, Smitten Kitchen Keepers: New Classics for Your Forever Files (Knopf), Perelman gives us 100 recipes (including a few favorites from her site) that aim to make shopping easier, preparation more practical and enjoyable, and food more reliably delicious for the home cook. These are the fail-safe, satisfying recipes you’ll rely on for…

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Free

Kevin Maloney in Conversation With Jon Raymond

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

Provocative, poignant, and resoundingly hilarious, Kevin Maloney’s The Red-Headed Pilgrim (Two Dollar Radio) is the tragicomic tale of an anxious red-head and his sordid pursuit of enlightenment and pleasure (not necessarily in that order). On a sunny day in a business park near Portland, Oregon, 42-year-old web developer Kevin Maloney is in the throes of an existential crisis that finds him shoeless in a field of Queen Anne’s lace, reflecting on the tumultuous events that brought him to this moment. Growing up in the suburbs, young Kevin suffered “a psychological break that ripped me from my humdrum existence” mainlining high fructose corn syrup and episodes of The Golden Girls. Thus begins a journey of hard-earned insights and sexual awakening that takes Kevin from angst-ridden Beaverton…

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Free

Grief, Lyrically

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Writers often use musical techniques to access states of consciousness we associate with grief. Lyrical writing prioritizes music, rhythm, and emotion over the narrative arc. The goal of this course is to find entry into writing through reading, conversation,and various prompts and exercises to catalyze memory and thinking. We will consider how writers crafting stories and poetry about grief use lyricism, discursiveness, fragmentation, and silence to embody writing content through form. Participants should be prepared to write a lot! Prompts and exercises will allow students to access various parts of memory. In a short period of time, we will get to know one another and provide a sounding board for our stories in a safe space. Access Program We want our classes to be accessible…

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$155

Gabrielle Bates in Conversation With Luther Hughes

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

Gabrielle Bates’s electric debut collection, Judas Goat (Tin House), plumbs the depths of intimate relationships. The book’s eponymous animal is used to lead sheep to slaughter, while its own life is spared, and its harrowing existence echoes through this spellbinding collection of forty poems, which wrestle with betrayal and forced obedience, violence and young womanhood, and the “forbidden felt language” of sexual and sacred love. Bates’s poems conjure encounters with figures from scriptures, domesticated animals eyeing the wild, and mothering as a shape-shifting, spectral force; they question what it means to love another person and how to exorcise childhood fears. All the while, the Deep South haunts, and no matter how far away the speaker moves, the South always draws her back home. In confession,…

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Free

Morgan Thomas in Conversation With Genevieve Hudson

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

The nine stories in Morgan Thomas’s shimmering debut collection witness Southern queer and genderqueer characters determined to find themselves reflected in the annals of history, whatever the cost. As Thomas’s subjects trace deceit and violence through Southern tall tales and their own pasts, their journeys reveal the porous boundaries of body, land, and history, and the sometimes ruthless awakenings of self-discovery. A trans woman finds her independence with the purchase of a pregnancy bump; a young Virginian flees their relationship, choosing instead to immerse themself in the life of an intersex person from Colonial-era Jamestown. A writer tries to evade the murky and violent legacy of an ancestor who supposedly disappeared into a midwifery bag, and in the uncanny title story, a young trans person…

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Free

Book Launch: “The Butter House,” by Sarah Gerard

Keys Lounge 533 NE Killingsworth Street, Portland, OR, United States

Celebrate the release of The Butter House, a new book from Lambda award-winning author Sarah Gerard. The Butter House follows a woman who moves to Florida and becomes a caretaker for a feral cat colony. Publishers Weekly says, "With precise and lush details, Gerard captures a sense of life's fragility amid new possibilities." Hosted by Portland-based publisher, Conium Press, this event will feature an author discussion between Sarah Gerard and James R. Gapinski. Paperback and limited-edition hardcover copies will be available, and there will be a book signing after the event. Keys Lounge is a 21+ venue with a full food and drink menu, including vegan, vegetarian, and gluten free options. Learn more about this event on the Conium Press website or find this event on Facebook.

Free

A Conversation with Comics Creator Maia Kobabe

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

To join us for this lively event, please register here. On Monday, March 13, Portland State University hosts Will Eisner Week 2023, celebrating sequential art and freedom of expression in a no-holds-barred conversation with creator Maia Kobabe (e/em/eir), author and illustrator of Gender Queer, the US’s most banned book of 2022! The Zoom discussion will be moderated by Dr. Susan Kirtley, director of PSU’s Comics Studies program, in conjunction with the department of English, the department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning, and the Center for Urban Studies. Winner of the comics industry’s Ignatz Award, the American Library Association Alex Award, and the Stonewall Books Award, Maia Kobabe is a nonbinary, queer author and illustrator from the Northern California Bay Area,…

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Free

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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Free
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