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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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Free

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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Free

Delve Readers Seminar: Little Things: A Study of Literary Compression

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

“It’s the little things that count”; “Good things come in small packages”; “Brevity is the soul of wit”; “The Devil’s in the details”… We’ll put these aphorisms to the test in this Delve Seminar exploring short poems, prose poetry, and short/micro fiction. These compressed forms aren’t lacking for content in their brevity, and we will explore ways of extracting their compressed contents like we would with zip files, expanding them like dry sponges in water, receiving the full communications of their code like expert cryptographers. We’ll also try writing a few small pieces of our own to learn through direct experience just what makes them tick. Authors we’ll read include Emily Dickinson, Russell Edson, Lucille Clifton, William Carlos Williams, Matsuo Bashō, and many more. Access…

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$240

Delve Readers Seminar: Haunted Chambers: Piranesi and The Little Stranger

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

Setting is an important aspect of every story, but sometimes it is so integral as to be almost a character in itself. Susannah Clarke’s Piranesi and Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger explore the unsettling power of place and its influence on the human mind. Piranesi lives in the House, a fantastical, dreamlike structure where ocean waves surge through infinite vestibules, clouds float and birds fly through halls decorated with statuary, and human remains lie secreted in niches. Alone except for occasional visits from a man he calls the Other, Piranesi records his daily routines and discoveries in his journal, muses on the Other’s quest for “a Great Secret and Knowledge,” and gradually unravels mysteries that threaten to upend his fragile contentment. In The Little Stranger,…

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$240

Chelsea Bieker: Book Launch for Paperback of Heartbroke

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

Please join us to celebrate the launch of the paperback edition of Heartbroke, with the author Chelsea Bieker in conversation with fellow author Genevieve Hudson. Heartbroke is a defining book of Californian stories where everyone is seeking or sabotaging love. United by the stark and sprawling landscapes of California's Central Valley, the characters in these stories boil with reckless desire. A woman steals a baby from a shelter in an attempt to recoup her own lost motherhood. A phone-sex operator sees divine opportunity when a lavender-eyed cowboy walks into her life. A mother and a son selling dream catchers along a highway that leads to a toxic beach manifest two young documentary filmmakers into their realm. And two teenage girls play a dangerous online game…

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Free

Fonda Lee & Kate Elliott

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

A young woman forms a tempestuous bond with a gigantic and deadly bird of prey in Untethered Sky (Tordotcom), the epic new fantasy fable about the pursuit of obsession at all costs, written by World Fantasy Award–winning author Fonda Lee. Ester’s family was torn apart when a manticore killed her mother and baby brother, leaving her with nothing but her father’s painful silence and a single, overwhelming need to kill the monsters that took her family. Ester’s path leads her to join the King’s Royal Mews, where the giant rocs of legend are flown to hunt manticores by their brave and dedicated ruhkers. Paired with a fledgling roc named Zahra, Ester finds purpose and acclaim by devoting herself to a calling that demands absolute sacrifice…

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Free

Oregon Literary Fellowship Reading

Literary Arts 925 SW Washington Street, Portland, OR, United States

A reading featuring the 2023 Oregon Literary Fellowship recipients.  

Free

Reading: Jessica E. Johnson and Kesha Ajose-Fisher

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

Annie Bloom's welcomes Portland writers Jessica E. Johnson and Kesha Ajose-Fisher for readings and conversation. Jessica E. Johnson's new poetry collection is Metabolics. Kesha Ajose-Fisher's short story collection, No God Like the Mother, is newly reissued by Portland's own Forest Avenue Press. Signed and personalized copies of both authors' books are available for order! Please, please, please include the name for personalization in the order notes; all orders without a name specified in the order notes will be signed only. About Metabolics: In this debut poetry collection, a single speaker tries to control her body and negotiate her time with digital devices, all the while navigating identities, impulses, and relationships that are often in tension. Metabolics, a book-length poem, borrows the movements of metabolic pathways…

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Free

Angie Thomas in Conversation With Rosanne Parry

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

Superstar author Angie Thomas makes her middle grade debut with the launch of an inventive, hilarious, and suspenseful new contemporary fantasy trilogy inspired by African American history and folklore. It’s not easy being a Remarkable in the Unremarkable world. Some things are cool — like getting a pet hellhound for your twelfth birthday. Others, not so much — like not being trusted to learn magic because you might use it to take revenge on an annoying neighbor. All Nic Blake wants is to be a powerful Manifestor like her dad. But before she has a chance to convince him to teach her, a series of shocking revelations and terrifying events launch Nic and two friends on a hunt for a powerful magic tool she’s never…

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Free

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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Free
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