PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media − and booksellers.

Describe your latest book.
A Mind Unraveled is a book unlike any I’ve written. My first three were each about corporate fraud. My fourth was about the global fight against international terrorism. For the first time, I have turned away from reporting about the actions of others and turned the microscope onto myself. 

My new book is a memoir of sorts, about my decades spent dealing with intractable epilepsy. My decision to write the book — which required me revisiting many extremely horrible experiences — evolved over time. In 2010, officials from a number of epilepsy organizations met and decided that people with epilepsy needed to step forward, to discuss having the condition, so as to take it out of the shadows. As someone who was told essentially that my life was over at the time of my diagnosis...

There are all sorts of ways to get a meal on the table, depending on the sort of cook you are. One person’s idea of cooking simply is the next person’s culinary nightmare. For me, for example, it’s about being able to stop at my grocery store on the way home, pick up a couple of things that look good, and make something within 20 or 30 minutes of getting home. My husband, Karl, on the other hand, has a completely different idea of what “simple cooking” is. If we’re having friends over on the weekend, he’ll want to spend a good amount of time beforehand prepping and cooking as much as he can so that very little needs to be done when our guests are around...

"Dick" on the Red Square...
Presidential campaign in a muzzle...
Destroying Russian Orthodox icons...
Jerking off in the biggest outdoor pool in the world.

Actions that will change my life.

Introduction: What is Moscow actionism? 
Moscow actionism is a radical art form created by a group of Moscow artists in the 1990s. 

Actionism’s brutality and the traumatic consequences of Soviet collapse go hand in hand; one does not exist without the other. It was a reaction to entering the decade of the new Russian capitalism and commercialization. As Anatoly Osmolovsky wrote, "Is Moscow radical art an art of trash? Partly yes. To the same extent as it avoids being intellectual and [critically reflective].”...

I’ve illustrated many books, but Little Brown is the ninth book I’ve both written and illustrated. This is a big deal to me because I wanted to become an author-illustrator since before I started kindergarten. I say “before I started kindergarten” as if that was an easy process. I was a wreck about it and cried nearly every day leading up to it and all through the school year too. The book I clung to back then, the one that consoled me and set me on my vocational course, was The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson. That deceptively simple book gave me my first inkling that I exist apart from my mom and dad and brother and sister...

Describe your latest book.
My new novel, Gone So Long, begins from the point of view of a dying man in his 60s, a man who — when he was in his 20s — did the worst thing possible to another human being, the mother of his child, and now 40 years have come and gone, and he has not seen this child since she was three, and now she’s 43, and he sets off to see her one more time before he dies.

What was your favorite book as a child? 
I believe it was a picture book of The Arabian Nights, and there was one image I would constantly stare at, a beautiful dark-haired woman whose face and torso sat on the body of a snake...

How would you describe your job to someone you just met?
Powell's Books for Home and Garden is small and I do a bit of everything around the store, but mostly I match people up with cookbooks and inform disoriented-looking customers that they might be in the wrong place — Powell's on Hawthorne is just two doors down.

Last book you loved.
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. It claims to be a manual on writing, but it's full of guidance for people who suffer from both crippling self-doubt and delusions of grandeur, i.e., me, all my friends, and pretty much every creative person I've known. I could not stop laughing out loud as I read it...

I started work on this book of essays right after Trump was elected, so the theme of the book quickly went from “What’s wrong with our culture?” to the much more desperate “How did we land here?” and “How do we navigate this poisonous world?” The music I listened to while writing was often angry and sad, but it also tended to hint at some way to survive in a world gone mad.

"Should Have Known Better" by Sufjan Stevens
I could listen to the outro of this song on an endless loop. The melancholy of the first half of the song segues into a fragile acceptance: Nothing can be changed, so focus on the present moment...

My new book takes an honest and open look at mental health. The last word is key: health. (Don’t) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Conversation About Mental Health features the insights and experiences of life with a brain from a wide array of writers, athletes, artists, actors, and celebrities. Some speak to living with illnesses like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder. Others write about being neurodivergent and navigating a world that overlooks those who think differently. Still others take on alcoholism and recovery, confidence, plastic surgery addiction, and grappling with life after surviving a school shooting. Each voice is raw and vulnerable, sharing some of the lowest of lows alongside some of the brightest glimmers of light...

What do you do in Portland?
I'm the goalkeeper for the Portland Timbers, and author of the It Had to Be Told series.

Where are you from originally?
I grew up in Clearwater, Florida.

Last book you loved:
Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand.

Describe your first memorable reading experience.
My first memorable reading experience was the book Holes. When I was younger, I was not much of a reader and it’d be really hard for me to get into a book. When I picked up Holes from a book fair, it was really the first time that I was excited about reading. Friends were talking about it, it was an easy read for a kid like me, and it kept me hooked from start to finish...

1) Once you have had 6-8 cups of coffee, it’s time to enter the room you’ve designated as a writing area. Upon entering the room, make an inspection of your desk. Even a good desk could be much better than it is. Contemplate how you might improve the look and feel of your desk so that later, when you’re dead and people on a guided tour of your house enter the writing room, they see what a fitting desk it was. To make the desk good, you must make it so that the desk provokes a feeling of smallness, and of humility. There should be no other books in sight of this desk — only the thought of a book: that book which you hope will come out of it. 

2) Repeat step one with your stationery....

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