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Judith Montgomery and E. Ivy Ross Ricci

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

We are thrilled to welcome two poets to the store, one debuting her first collection and one returning with her fourth: E. Ivy Ross Ricci and Judith H. Montgomery. Ivy Ross Ricci is a musician, writer, educator, and activist based in Port Angeles, Washington, who lived for many years in Portland. Her debut collection of poetry, The Force of Gravity, is playful and profound, an honest portrait of a growing writer surrounded by the intoxicating buzz of 24-hour poetry. Since 1996, Ricci has been recognized for her contributions and leadership in the fields of girls’ empowerment, literacy, public art, women’s health, juvenile justice & youth advocacy, music education, teen peer leadership training, implementation of anti-bias curricula, and creative after-school programming. Her original songs exude gumption,…

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Free

ELVIA WILK Reading and discussion with Tabitha Nikolai

Yale Union 800 SE 10th Ave, Portland, OR, United States

Join home school and Yale Union on 15 June 2019, 6-8pm to celebrate the launch of Elvia WIlk’s Oval (Soft Skull Press). Elvia will read from the book and show images, and Portland-based artist Tabitha Nikolai will join her in conversation. —- Bizarre weather. Unprecedented economic disparity. Artists employed by corporations as consultants. And the ultimate work of art: Oval, a pill that increases generosity. Elvia Wilk’s debut novel, Oval, asks questions of empathy and power on every scale—from bodies to bureaucracies—to create an unsettling portrait of the future of cities. Elvia Wilk is a writer and editor living in New York and Berlin. She writes about art, architecture, and technology for publications including frieze, Artforum, Bookforum, e-flux, Metropolis, Mousse, Flash Art, and Art in…

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Free

Michelle Ruiz Keil in Conversation With Tehlor Kay Mejia

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR, United States

Seventeen-year-old Xochi's life changed when she became governess to precocious twelve-year-old Pallas, but the duo unintentionally summons a pair of ancient creatures determined to right the wrongs of Xochi's adolescence. All of Us With Wings (Soho Teen) is Michelle Ruiz Keil’s young adult fantasy debut about love, found family, and healing – an ode to post-punk San Francisco through the eyes of a Mexican American girl. Keil will be joined in conversation by Tehlor Kay Mejia, author of We Set the Dark on Fire.

Free

Poetry Reading: Cathy Cain and Piper Bringman

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes local poets Cathy Cain and Piper Bringman, whose new collections are published by The Poetry Box. Cathy Cain, like a bee to flower, gathers thought from one encounter with nature to another. She speaks from many perspectives—as herself, as tree, as mushroom, or as goddess-hero. Sometimes playful, even mystical, Cain is deeply honest as she confronts the state of our relationship with the natural environment, with technology, and with what it means to be human. "A roadmap to abundance, Cathy Cain’s poetry expresses the impulse to reinvent ourselves outside of cyber noise and instead define ourselves within the boundaries of sentiencies around us." —Tricia Knoll, author of How I Learned to be White and Broadfork Farm "Thrumming with a wise and generous curiosity,…

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Free

Lauren Kate

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd, Beaverton, OR, United States

The Orphan’s Song (G. P. Putnam’s Sons) is the adult debut novel by author Lauren Kate (the Fallen series), a sweeping love story about family and music — and the secrets each hold — that follows the intertwined fates of two Venetian orphans. Venice, 1736. When fate brings Violetta and Mino together on the roof of the Hospital of the Incurables, they form a connection that will change their lives forever. Both are orphans at the Incurables, dreaming of escape. But when the resident Maestro notices Violetta’s voice, she is selected for the Incurables’ world-famous coro, and must sign an oath never to sing beyond its church doors. After a declaration of love ends in heartbreak, Mino flees the Incurables in search of his family.…

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Free

Translators Bruce Fulton & Ju-Chan Fulton

Powell's Books on Hawthorne 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR, United States

In this shocking English debut, Mina (Two Lines), award-winning Korean author Kim Sagwa delivers an astonishingly complex portrait of modern-day adolescence. With pitch-perfect dialogue and a precise eye for detail, Kim creates a piercingly real teen protagonist — at once powerful, vulnerable, and utterly confused. As one bad decision leads to another, this promising life spirals to a devastating climax. Crystal toils day and night to earn top grades at her cram school. She’s also endlessly texting, shopping, drinking, vexing her boyfriends, cranking up her mp3s, and fantasizing about her next slice of cheesecake. Her nonstop frenzy never quite manages the one thing that might calm her down: opening up about the pressures that are driving her to the edge. She certainly hasn’t talked with…

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Free

Reading: Judith Teitelman: Guesthouse for Ganesha

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Los Angeles author Judith Teitelman to read from her debut novel, Guesthouse for Ganesha. In 1923, seventeen-year-old Esther Grünspan arrives in Köln "with a hardened heart as her sole luggage." Thus begins a twenty-two-year journey, woven against the backdrops of the European Holocaust and the Hindu Kali Yuga (the "Age of Darkness" when human civilization degenerates spiritually), in search of a place of sanctuary. Throughout her travails, using cunning and shrewdness, Esther relies on her masterful tailoring skills to help mask her Jewish heritage, navigate war-torn Europe, and emigrate to India. Esther's traveling companion and the novel's narrator is Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu God worshipped by millions for his abilities to destroy obstacles, bestow wishes, and avenge evils. Impressed by Esther's fortitude…

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Free

Kristen Arnett in Conversation With Karen Russell

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

One morning, Jessa-Lynn Morton walks into the family taxidermy shop to find that her father has committed suicide, right there on one of the metal tables. Shocked and grieving, Jessa steps up to manage the failing business, while the rest of the Morton family crumbles. Her mother starts sneaking into the shop to make aggressively lewd art with the taxidermied animals. Her brother Milo withdraws, struggling to function. And Brynn, Milo’s wife — and the only person Jessa’s ever been in love with — walks out without a word. As Jessa seeks out less-than-legal ways of generating income, her mother’s art escalates — picture a figure of her dead husband and a stuffed buffalo in an uncomfortably sexual pose — and the Mortons reach a…

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Free

Peg Alford Pursell in Conversation With Sophia Shalmiyev

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

Following her acclaimed debut, Show Her a Flower, a Bird, a Shadow, Peg Alford Pursell explores and illuminates love and loss in 78 hybrid stories and fables. A Girl Goes Into the Forest (Dzanc) immerses readers in the complex desires, contradictions, and sorrows of daughters, wives, and husbands, artists, siblings, and mothers. In forests literal and metaphorical, the characters try, fail, and try again to see the world, to hear each other, and to speak the truth of their longings. Powerful, lyrical, and precise, Pursell’s stories call up a world at once mysterious and recognizable. A Girl Goes Into the Forest invites fans of Lydia Davis and Helen Oyeyemi into a world where “no one can deter a person from her mistakes.” Pursell will be…

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Free

Reading: Kay Jennings: Shallow Waters

Annie Bloom's Books 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, OR, United States

Annie Bloom's welcomes Portland author Kay Jennings to read from her debut mystery, Shallow Waters. The last thing Port Stirling Chief of Police Matt Horning needed on day one of his new job was for the mayor’s daughter to turn up dead in a tunnel on the Oregon beach. Horning, escaping professional troubles in Texas, accepts the vacant job in Port Stirling, Oregon, looking for a fresh start in what he thought would be a sleepy coastal town. Nothing much ever happens here…or does it? With only a ragtag county crime team to assist him, Horning must match wits with a diabolical killer, the likes of which this peaceful village has never seen. For one week in wild and stormy January, Horning calls on all…

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