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Bowen Blair in Conversation With Kevin Gorman

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

The 85-mile-long Columbia Gorge forms part of the border between Oregon and Washington and is one of the nation’s most historic and scenic landscapes. Many of the region’s cultural divisions boil over here — urban versus rural, west of the mountains versus east — as well as clashes over private property rights, management of public lands, and tribal treaty rights. In the early 1980s, as a new interstate bridge linked the City of Portland to rural counties in Washington, the Gorge’s renowned vistas were on the brink of destruction. Nancy Russell, 48 years old and with no experience in advocacy, fundraising, or politics, built a grassroots movement that overcame 70 years of failed efforts and bitter opposition from both Oregon and Washington governors, five of…

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Caitlin Starling in Conversation With Madeleine Roux

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

Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man — one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him. By morning,…

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Elizabeth Weinberg in Conversation With Chelsea Biondolillo

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

As wildfires char the American West, extreme weather transforms landscapes, glaciers retreat, and climate zones shift, we are undeniably experiencing the effects of the climate crisis in more and more destructive ways. Climate change is impacting every inhabited region of the world, but there is much we can still do. Unsettling (Broadleaf) explores human impacts on the environment through science, popular culture, personal narrative, and landscape. Using the stories of animals, landscapes, and people who have exhibited resilience in the face of persistent colonization across the North American continent, science writer Elizabeth Weinberg explores how climate change is a direct result of white supremacy, colonialism, sexism, and heteronormativity. Travel through the deep sea; along Louisiana's vanishing bayous; down the Colorado, Mississippi, and Potomac rivers; and…

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Amber Tamblyn in Conversation With Lidia Yuknavitch, Dr. Mindy Nettifee & Dr. Nicole Apelian

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

Edited by author, actress, and activist Amber Tamblyn, Listening in the Dark (Park Row) is an anthology on women’s intuition, with essays by Amy Poehler, Samantha Irby, Jia Tolentino, Jessica Valenti, US Poet Laureate Ada Limón, America Ferrera, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, and others. Have you ever had a feeling about something that you just couldn’t explain? Something that was telling you in your gut what decision to make, which direction to go in, or what to believe. Most women are taught from an early age to ignore their intuition in favor of making logical, evidence-based decisions. But what if that small voice or deeper knowing was your greatest power? In a time when women are revolutionizing politics, entertainment, healthcare, and other industries, it’s critical to…

Continue readingAmber Tamblyn in Conversation With Lidia Yuknavitch, Dr. Mindy Nettifee & Dr. Nicole Apelian
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Russ Feingold & Peter Prindiville

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

Over the last two decades, a fringe plan to call a convention under the Constitution's amendment mechanism — the nation's first ever — has inched through statehouses. Delegates, like those in Philadelphia two centuries ago, would exercise nearly unlimited authority to draft changes to our fundamental law, potentially altering anything from voting and free speech rights to regulatory and foreign policy powers. Such a watershed moment would present great danger, and for some, great power. In their important new book, The Constitution in Jeopardy (PublicAffairs), former U. S. Senator Russ Feingold and legal scholar Peter Prindiville distill extensive legal and historical research and examine the grave risks inherent in this effort. But they also consider the role of constitutional amendment in modern life. Though many…

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Chelsey Luger & Thosh Collins in Conversation With Sam McCracken

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

When wellness teachers and husband-wife duo Chelsey Luger and Thosh Collins founded their Indigenous wellness initiative, Well for Culture, they extended an invitation to all to honor their whole self through Native wellness philosophies and practices. In reclaiming this ancient wisdom for health and wellbeing — drawing from traditions spanning multiple tribes — they developed the Seven Circles, a holistic model for modern living rooted in timeless teachings from their ancestors. Luger and Collins have introduced this universally adaptable template for living well to Ivy league universities and corporations like Nike, Adidas, and Google, and now make it available to everyone in their wise guide. In The Seven Circles (HarperOne), Luger and Collins share intimate stories from their life journeys growing up in tribal communities,…

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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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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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Rachel King in Conversation With Kimberly King Parsons

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

It’s almost a decade after the Great Recession, and in Colorado, St. Anthony Sausage has not recovered. Neither have its employees: a laid-off railway engineer, an exiled computer whiz, a young woman estranged from her infant daughter, an older man with cancer who lacks health care. As these low-wage workers interact under the supervision of the factory’s owner and his quietly rebellious daughter, they come to understand that in America’s postindustrial landscape, although they may help or comfort each other, they also have to do what’s best for themselves. Over the course of twelve interrelated stories in Bratwurst Haven (West Virginia University), Rachel King gives life to diverse, complex, and authentic characters who are linked through the sausage factory and through their daily lives in…

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Josephine Woolington & Ramon Shiloh in Conversation With Michelle Nijhuis

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

In her debut work, Where We Call Home: Lands, Seas, and Skies of the Pacific Northwest (Ooligan Press), Josephine Woolington turns back the clock to review the events that have challenged Pacific Northwest wildlife in an effort to provide a deeper sense of place. Only then can we imagine how these imperious effects might be overcome. Join Woolington as she sheds light on the diverse species whose populations are slowly declining from the lands, seas, and skies of the Pacific Northwest. Only by acknowledging this truth can we understand that our impact on the Earth is deeper and far more significant than we ever imagined. Through interviews with local educators, Indigenous leaders, scientists, and artists from the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, the Haida Nation,…

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