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Lisa O'Donnell: The Powells.com Interview
By Jill Owens December 31, 2012
"Today is Christmas Eve. Today is my birthday. Today I am fifteen. Today I buried my parents in the backyard. Neither of them were beloved." Those dramatic first lines of Lisa O'Donnell's debut novel, The Death of Bees, launch the story of two sisters, 15-year-old Marnie and 12-year-old Nelly,...
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Matthew Dickman: The Powells.com Interview
By Jill Owens November 13, 2012
Matthew Dickman is a very unusual creature: a famous poet, at least here in Portland. At his Powell's reading on October 1, he drew over 200 people for a standing-room-only crowd. He's a local — he grew up in Southeast Portland (as did his twin brother, Michael, who is also an award-winning...
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Roger Gaetani: The Powells.com Interview
By Chris Faatz November 1, 2012
Roger Gaetani is an editor, writer, and educator who lives in Bloomington, Indiana. He serves as the vice president for World Wisdom, an independent publishing company focused on religious and philosophical texts. With Jean-Louis Michon, he edited the World Wisdom anthology on Sufism, Sufism: Love...
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Steven Johnson: The Powells.com Interview
By C. P. Farley October 2, 2012
In a 2003 TED Talk, Steven Johnson quipped: "Who decides that SoHo should have this personality and that the Latin Quarter should have that personality? There are some kind of executive decisions, but mostly the answer is, everybody and nobody." A running theme through Johnson's work is that...
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J. Robert Lennon: The Powells.com Interview
By Jill Owens September 17, 2012
J. Robert Lennon's first book, The Light of Falling Stars, got a glowing review from the New Yorker: "Lennon's impressive first novel — psychologically nuanced, richly detailed, unexpectedly comic — offers us an unsentimental examination of the ways in which we find and lose those we...
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Emma Straub: The Powells.com Interview
By Jill Owens August 20, 2012
Emma Straub is a delight. Her first book of short stories, Other People We Married, was praised by Kirkus Reviews for its "fresh voice from a writer who deserves discovery," and Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!, raved, "Emma Straub is worthy of our adoration. These stories are wise,...
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John Brandon: The Powells.com Interview
By Jill Owens July 20, 2012
John Brandon's debut novel, Arkansas, is a blackly funny chronicle of the lawless world of a couple of drug runners in the Southeast. His second, Citrus County, is a coming-of-age/love story between 14-year-old Toby and 13-year-old Shelby — even though Toby kidnaps Shelby's little sister...
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Joseph E. Stiglitz: The Powells.com Interview
By C. P. Farley June 27, 2012
After sitting on the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1995 to 1997, acting as Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997 to 2000, and winning the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001, Joseph E. Stiglitz has clearly established his bona fides. As one of the...
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Karen Thompson Walker: The Powells.com Interview
By Jill Owens June 11, 2012
Karen Thompson Walker's debut novel, The Age of Miracles, is, as Aimee Bender states, "glowing magic....at once a love letter to the world as we know it and an elegy." Julia is 11 years old when the earth, suddenly and inexplicably, begins rotating more slowly on its axis, forcing days and nights...
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Gideon Lewis-Kraus: The Powells.com Interview
By Jill Owens May 7, 2012
I started and finished A Sense of Direction in one evening; I couldn't really stop thinking about it, so I couldn't put it down. I found it incredibly honest, messily lovely, and so damn smart — a really deep, intelligent, generous, funny look at life and purpose, which never relied on easy...
