Three siblings search for their missing mother across a ruined America in Ignatz Award nominee Jonathan Hill’s new original graphic novel, Odessa (Oni Press). Eight years ago an earthquake — the Big One — hit along the Cascadia fault line, toppling cities and changing landscapes up and down the west coast of the United States. Life as we know it changed forever. But for Vietnamese American Virginia Crane, life changed shortly after the earthquake, when her mother left and never came back. Ginny has gotten used to a life without her mother, helping her father take care of her two younger brothers, Wes and Harry. But when a mysterious package arrives for her 18th birthday, her life is shaken up yet again. For the first…
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The author of Beautiful Ruins delivers another “literary miracle” (NPR) — an intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice, and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early 20th-century America that eerily echoes our own time. The Cold Millions offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams. Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, it is a tour de force from a “writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors” (Boston Globe). Buy the Portland Book Festival Event Ticket and Book
Comments closedJoin Literary Arts for the annual Portland Book Festival, presented by Bank of America, taking place online November 5-21, 2020, with digital events streaming at different times throughout the day. The digital festival will feature author events for all ages, pop-up readings, and writing classes. Come together with your community and celebrate our shared passion for books. Subscribe to our monthly e-news and continue to check online for the latest news.
Comments closedOregon Literary Fellowships are intended to help Oregon writers initiate, develop, or complete literary projects in poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, drama (including scripts for television and film), and young readers literature. Read the guidelines and apply.
Comments closedCritically acclaimed, prize-winning author Andrés Neuman’s new novel, Fracture (translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia) (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), is an ambitious literary work set against Japan’s 2011 nuclear accident in a cross-cultural story about how every society remembers and forgets its catastrophes. An earthquake unnerves Tokyo on March 11, 2011, triggering the Fukushima nuclear disaster — and a tectonic stirring of the collective past. Mr. Yoshie Watanabe, an aging executive at an electronics company and a survivor of the atomic bomb, feels as though he is a fugitive of his own memory. As the seams of his country threaten to come undone yet again, he braces himself to make the biggest decision of his life. Meanwhile, four women narrate their own memories of…
Comments closedJoin us for the October meeting of the Fiction Addiction Book Club on October 28th at 6pm. We will discuss Anxious People by Fredrik Backman. About the Book: A poignant comedy about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined. Viewing an apartment normally doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers slowly begin opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths. First is Zara, a wealthy bank director who has been too busy…
Comments closedAnnie Bloom’s welcomes Portland authors David Biespiel and Vanessa Veselka for a livestream reading and conversation about their new books. Signed copies of both books are available! Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUqcuCuqj8vG92lnXWQqd8GA8L86yBLrlOH (Please note the new date of 10/27/20; this event was originally scheduled for 10/22.) About David Biespiel’s A Place of Exodus: Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Jewish Studies. Memoir. Are we ever done leaving home? Acclaimed poet and memoirist David Biespiel tells the story of the rise and fall of his Jewish boyhood in Texas, and his search for the answer to his life’s central riddle. After a near-forty-year exile, Biespiel returns for a day to the world he left behind as a different person. He creates a moving meditation on the meaning of home, uncovering bittersweet…
Comments closedIn The Sacrifice of Darkness (Archaia), Roxane Gay, Tracy Lynne Oliver, and Rebecca Kirby adapt Gay’s New York Times bestselling short story, “We Are the Sacrifice of Darkness,” as a full-length graphic novel, expanding and further developing the unforgettable world where the sun no longer shines. “When I was a young girl, my husband’s father flew an air machine into the sun. Since then, the days have been dark, the nights bright.” Follow one woman’s powerful journey through this new landscape as she discovers love, family, and the true light in a world seemingly robbed of any. As she challenges notions of identity, guilt, and survival, she’ll find that no matter the darkness, there remains sources of hope that can pierce the veil. Please note:…
Comments closedJoin us on October 27th at 6pm for our next Young Adult Book Club. We will discuss Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis. About the Book: A can’t-put-down, creepy thriller about the daughter of a horror film director who’s not afraid of anything–until she gets to Harrow Lake. Things I know about Harrow Lake: 1.It’s where my father shot his most disturbing slasher film. 2.There’s something not right about this town. Lola Nox is the daughter of a celebrated horror filmmaker–she thinks nothing can scare her. But when her father is brutally attacked in their New York apartment, she’s quickly packed off to live with a grandmother she’s never met in Harrow Lake, the eerie town where her father’s most iconic horror movie was shot. The…
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