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Katherine Dunn Tribute Event with Naomi Huffman & Lydia Kiesling

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

Toad (MCD) is a previously unpublished novel of the reflections of a deeply scarred and reclusive woman, from cult icon Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love. Sally Gunnar has been in love, has been mad, has been an agent of destruction, has been spurned; and now she has retreated from the world. She lives in isolation in her small house, where her only companions are a vase of goldfish, a garden toad, and the door-to-door salesman who sells her cleaning supplies once a month. From her comfortable perch, she broods over her deepest regrets: her wayward, weed-hazy college days; her blighted romance with a scornful poet; a tragically comic accident involving a paper cutter; a suicide attempt; and her decision to ultimately relinquish a conventional…

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Free

Alison Cochrun in Conversation With Anita Kelly

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

Alison Cochrun, author of the “swoon-worthy debut” (Harper’s Bazaar), The Charm Offensive, returns with a festive romantic comedy about a woman who fakes an engagement with her landlord… only to fall for his sister. One year ago, recent Portland transplant Ellie Oliver had her dream job in animation and a Christmas Eve meet-cute with a woman at a bookstore that led her to fall in love over the course of a single night. But after a betrayal the next morning and the loss of her job soon after, she finds herself adrift, alone, and desperate for money. Finding work at a local coffee shop, she’s just getting through the days — until Andrew, the shop’s landlord, proposes a shocking, drunken plan: a marriage of convenience…

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Free

TAP@PBF: Motherhood Is Psychedelic

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Stay tuned for a special podcast-only Portland Book Festival episode of Literary Arts’ The Archive Project! This podcast will explore the myths and realities of raising children while writing; whether the desire for motherhood is a creative desire, and how intersectional identities impact both motherhood and creativity. Featuring a stellar line-up novelists, poets and memoir authors and witches: Kendra DeColo (Enchantments), Kaitlyn Greenidge (Libertie), Mya Spalter (I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers From the World), and Michelle Tea (Knocking Myself Up). This event is podcast only, and will be released on The Archive Project wherever you get your podcasts as part of the 2022 Portland Book Festival. Kaitlyn Greenidge Kaitlyn Greenidge's debut novel is We Love You, Charlie Freeman (Algonquin Books), one of the…

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Free

In-Store Reading: Rosanne Parry, Trudy Ludwig, Mark Fearing

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

Annie Bloom's welcomes our own Rosanne Parry for a reading from her new picture book, Big Truck Day. Rosanne will be joined by local authors Trudy Ludwig, whose new picture book is Calling the Wind: A Story of Healing and Hope, and Mark Fearing, whose new middle grade book is Welcome to Feral. This event is presented in coordination with Portland Book Festival's Cover to Cover program. This in-store reading is first come, first served. Seating is limited. Please be mindful of any store health policies that might be in effect on the night of the reading. About Big Truck Day: Get ready for Big Truck Day! Celebrate trucks, reading, sharing, and community with award-winning and New York Times–bestselling author Rosanne Parry and debut illustrator…

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Free

Documentary Screening: The Bookstour

Rose City Book Pub 1329 NE Fremont, Portland, OR, United States

In 2019, Mason took a road trip around the country to 50 independent bookstores in 50 days. His goal was to promote his self-published novel, 2084, but his conversations with booksellers shifted his focus. On a second trip, he brought a cameraman along and asked booksellers a simple question: why should we shop indie? The resultant documentary, “The Bookstour”, premiered on public television this spring. Mason works on his books--and bookish films--in Los Angeles. Screening at 8:00, panel discussion at 8:30.

Free

Reimagine Resistance: Harper Glenn & Justina Ireland

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Two novels that reveal truths about our time — about race and power, but also hope and love — through a reimagined past and a speculative future. Harper Glenn‘s debut Monarch Rising finds us in a chilling near-future New United States of America, where Jo Monarch has grown up in the impoverished borderlands of New Georgia. She’s given one chance to change her fate… if she can survive a boy trained to break hearts. And Justina Ireland, the author of the visionary New York Times bestseller Dread Nation, returns in Rust in the Root with another spellbinding historical fantasy set at the crossroads of race and power in America. Moderated by Alicia Tate of Multnomah County Library. Portland Book Festival General Admission Passes are required for entry…

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Free

National Anthems: Juhea Kim & Lidia Yuknavitch

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Two girls — one in Korea at the beginning of the twentieth century, one in a fallen American city in the coming late twenty-first century–must forge their destinies against and alongside that of their respective nations. Juhea Kim‘s Beasts of a Little Land is an epic story of love, war, and redemption set against the backdrop of the Korean independence movement, following the intertwined fates of a young girl sold to a courtesan school and the penniless son of a hunter. As rising waters—and an encroaching police state—endanger her life and family, a girl with the gifts of a “carrier” travels through water and time to rescue vulnerable figures from the margins of history in Lidia Yuknavitch‘s newest novel, Thrust. Moderated by Marisa Siegel (Fixed…

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Free

Haunted: Writing into Death & The Dead with Sonya Lea — begins November 8th

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Haunted: Writing into Death & The Dead Begins November 8th, 2022 Four weekly 2-hour sessions over Zoom on Tuesdays from 5-7PM PST (11/8, 11/15, 11/22, 11/29) “Many people live and die without ever confronting themselves in the darkness. Pray that one day, you will spin around at the water’s edge, lean over, and be able to count yourself among the lucky.” ― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties “What would you read to someone who was dying? Annie Dillard had asked our class. She wanted this to be the standard for our work. There, at the memorial service for my friend, I thought of another: Dying, what stories would you tell?” ― Alexander Chee, How to Write An Autobiographical Novel: Essays “My grief…

Continue readingHaunted: Writing into Death & The Dead with Sonya Lea — begins November 8th
$200 – $400

Leanne Grabel, Brontosaurus Illustrated, reading with Joanna Rose and Sherri Levine

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

We are thrilled to welcome Leanne Grabel, one of the most creative artists in town, back to Broadway Books to talk about her new book Brontosaurus Illustrated, along with her "back-up band": the writers Sherri Levine and Joanna Rose. Brontosaurus Illustrated is the story of a rape that is now fifty years old. Nina Gold was a 19-year-old Stanford sophomore riding a full math scholarship to the American dream. But her avid quest was trampled one spring break by a kidnapping and rape, a trauma the size of a brontosaurus. Brontosaurus Illustrated is a graphic rendition of this story and Nina's consequent spin-out that lasted for decades as she searched for reasons, meanings, antidotes. And a way forward. With a rape occurring every minute of…

Continue readingLeanne Grabel, Brontosaurus Illustrated, reading with Joanna Rose and Sherri Levine
Free

Delve Readers Seminar: The Art of Memory: Autofiction

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

“Fiction isn’t memory,” writes Jane Gardam, “but memory is fiction.” Autofiction embodies this view, blending truth and fiction to produce stories rooted in the writer’s life, but filtered through the imagination. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and Saša Stanišić’s Where You Come From are compelling examples of the genre. To the Lighthouse is the story of the Ramsay family’s holiday on the Isle of Skye. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is composed as a letter from a young man to his mother, immigrants to the US from Vietnam. Through the story of their relationship, Vuong asks questions about race, violence, masculinity, addiction, and love. Bosnian-German writer Saša Stanišić is little known in the US but deserves a wider…

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$245
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