Christopher J. Preston in Conversation With Kristin Ohlson

Wednesday, March 22 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

The news about wildlife is dire — more than 900 species have been wiped off the planet since industrialization. Against this bleak backdrop, however, there are also glimmers of hope and crucial lessons to be learned from animals that have defied global trends toward extinction. Bear in Italy, bison in North America, whales in the Atlantic. These populations are back from the brink, some of them in numbers unimaginable in a century. How has this happened? What shifts in thinking did it demand? In crisp, transporting prose, Christopher J. Preston reveals the mysteries and challenges at the heart of these resurgences. Drawing on compelling personal stories from the researchers, Indigenous people, and activists who know the creatures best, Preston weaves together a gripping narrative of how some species are taking back vital, ecological roles. Each section of the book — farms, prairies, rivers, forests, oceans — offers a philosophical shift in how humans ought to think about animals, passionately advocating for the changes in attitude necessary for wildlife recovery. Tenacious Beasts (The MIT Press) is quintessential nature writing for the Anthropocene, touching on different facets of ecological restoration from Indigenous knowledge to rewilding practices. More important, perhaps, Preston’s book offers a road map — and a measure of hope — for a future in which humans and animals can once again coexist. Preston will be joined in conversation by Kristin Ohlson, author of Sweet in Tooth and Claw.

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Zoe Ballering in Conversation With Susan DeFreitas

Thursday, March 23 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

The eight stories of speculative fiction in Zoe Ballering’s There Is Only Us (University of North Texas) explore themes of loneliness, connectedness, and selfhood. Each one is an act of intimacy — an altered world shown through the lens of a close relationship. Brothers, sisters, lovers, mothers, and daughters come together in myriad constellations, often so that one character can make a body-altering choice of extreme proportions. In a variety of forms — from a satirical retelling of Noah’s Ark to a sister drama revolving around naked mole rats — There Is Only Us presents a series of escalating scenarios, intimate and yet absurd, that ask, how much can you change and still be you? Ballering’s stories bring to speculative fiction a new lightness and absurdity and a commitment to contemporary experiences of loneliness, especially among Millennials: loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic, ecological loneliness (the sense that, by the end of our lives, the earth will be barren), and the unsolvable loneliness that so many experience despite carrying around a tiny device that claims it can connect them to any human anywhere on earth. Ballering will be joined in conversation by Susan DeFreitas, author of Hot Season.

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Josh Riedel in Conversation With Erica Berry

Friday, March 24 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

A college grad with the six-figure debt to prove it, Ethan Block views San Francisco as the place to be. Yet his job at hot new dating app DateDate is a far cry from what he envisioned. Instead of making the world a better place, he reviews flagged photo queues, overworked and stressed out. But that's about to change. Reeling from a breakup, Ethan decides to view his algorithmically matched soulmate on DateDate. He overrides the system and clicks on the profile. Then, he disappears. One minute, he's in a windowless office, and the next, he's in a field of endless grass, gasping for air. When Ethan snaps back to DateDate HQ, he's convinced a coding issue caused the blip. Except for anyone to believe him, he'll need evidence. As Ethan embarks on a wild goose chase, moving from dingy startup think tanks to Silicon Valley's dominant tech conglomerate, it becomes clear that there's more to DateDate than meets the eye. With the stakes rising, and a new world at risk, Ethan must choose who — and what — he believes in. Adventurous and hypertimely, Josh Riedel’s Please Report Your Bug Here (Henry Holt) is an inventive millennial coming-of-age story, a dark exploration of the corruption now synonymous with Big Tech, and, above all, a testament to the power of human connection in our digital era. Riedel will be joined in conversation by Erica Berry, author of Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear.

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Meg Adams in Conversation With Carson Adams

Friday, March 24 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

Finally, comics that answer life’s most pressing questions: Is my partner actually upset or just hangry? Whose turn is it to remember the reusable shopping bags? Is it appropriate to put up Halloween décor two months in advance? (Spoiler alert: Yes. Yes, it is.) “Opposites attract” has never rung truer when it comes to vivacious extrovert Meg Adams and her level-headed introvert husband, Carson. Carson makes his coffee with only the finest locally roasted beans; Meg microwaves two-day-old joe. Carson is reserved and rarely opens up to friends; Meg ensures everyone in her life — including her mailman — knows about her hemorrhoid. From the joys of marrying your best friend to the bizarre musings of a twelve-pound pup to the humor and heartbreak of anxiety, Meg’s all-too-relatable comics leave no stone unturned. Dorky and downright hilarious, Why Are You Like This?: An Artbymoga Comic Collection (Andrews McMeel) explores what it means to make fun of oneself and find laughter in the little things. Meg Adams will be joined in conversation by her husband, Carson Adams.

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Kids’ Storytime

Saturday, March 25 @ 10:30am (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Join us every Saturday for kids' storytime. Today we're reading If You Laugh, I'm Starting This Book Over by Chris Harris.

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Laurel Braitman in Conversation With Rebecca Skloot

Monday, March 27 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Laurel Braitman spent her childhood learning how to outfish grown men, keep bees, and fix carburetors from her larger-than-life dad. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, he went to spectacular lengths to teach her the skills she'd need to survive without him. But by her mid-thirties she is a ship about to splinter on the rocks, exhausted by running from her own bad feelings. We follow as Braitman changes course, navigating multiple wildernesses — from northern New Mexico and western Alaska to her own Tinder app. She learns the hard way that no achievement, no matter how shiny, can protect her from pain, and works to transform guilt and regret into gold: learning from a badass birder in the Bering Sea, a few dozen grieving kids in a support group, a pile of smoking ashes, and countless online dates. Along the way, she faces a wildfire that threatens everyone and everything she cares about, a grueling test of her own survival skills, and the fact that we often have to say our hardest goodbyes before we're ready. In the end, Braitman realizes that being open to love after loss is not only possible, it can set us free. What Looks Like Bravery (Simon & Schuster) is a hero's journey for our times. Braitman teaches us that hope is a form of courage, one that can work as an all-purpose key to the locked doors of your dreams. Braitman will be joined in conversation by Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

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Tove Danovich in Conversation With Kale Williams

Tuesday, March 28 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Since first domesticating the chicken thousands of years ago, humans have become exceptionally adept at raising them for food. Yet most people rarely interact with chickens or know much about them. In Under the Henfluence (Agate Surrey), culture reporter Tove Danovich explores the lives of these quirky, mysterious birds who stole her heart the moment her first box of chicks arrived at the post office. From a hatchery in Iowa to a chicken show in Ohio to a rooster rescue in Minnesota, Danovich interviews the people breeding, training, healing, and, most importantly, adoring chickens. With more than 60 billion chickens living on industrial farms around the world, they’re easy to dismiss as just another dinner ingredient. Yet Danovich’s reporting reveals the hidden cleverness, quiet sweetness, and irresistible personalities of these birds, as well as the complex human-chicken relationship that has evolved over centuries. This glimpse into the lives of backyard chickens doesn’t just help us to understand chickens better — it also casts light back on ourselves and what we’ve ignored throughout the explosive growth of industrial agriculture. Woven with delightful and sometimes heartbreaking anecdotes from Danovich’s own henhouse, Under the Henfluence proves that chickens are so much more than what they bring to the table. Danovich will be joined in conversation by Kale Williams, environmental reporter and author of The Loneliest Polar Bear.

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Marie Lu in Conversation With Aiden Thomas

Tuesday, March 28 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

The Hating Game meets Mission: Impossible in Stars and Smoke (Roaring Brook), a smoldering new novel from Marie Lu about a superstar tapped to become a secret agent and the reluctant young spy assigned to be his partner. Meet Winter Young — rookie backup dancer turned global pop phenomenon. His star power has smashed records, selling out stadiums from LA to London. Now he’s bringing his swoonworthy assets to a whole new arena… Infamous criminal tycoon Eli Morrison has just one weakness — his daughter, Penelope. And Penelope has just one wish for her nineteenth birthday — a private concert with Winter Young. When covert ops organization The Panacea Group approaches Winter with this once-in-a-lifetime chance to infiltrate Morrison’s inner circle, Winter must use his fame, cunning, and charisma to pull it off — only he won’t be on his own. Posing as Winter’s bodyguard is the fiery Sydney Cossette, Panacea’s youngest spy. Sydney may be the only person alive impervious to Winter's charms, but as the mission brings them closer, she's forced to admit there's more to this A-lister than slick dance moves and a handsome face. Panacea's unlikeliest partners just might become its biggest heroes — and maybe even more — if they can survive each other first. Lu will be joined in conversation by Aiden Thomas, author of The Sunbearer Trials.

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Lauren Kay Johnson in Conversation With Amy Almond-Schmid

Wednesday, March 29 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Lauren Kay Johnson is just seven when she first experiences a sacrifice of war as her mother, a nurse in the Army Reserves, deploys in support of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. A decade later, in the wake of 9/11, Johnson signs her own military contract and deploys to a small Afghan province with a non-combat nation-building team. Through her role as the team's information operations officer — the filter between the U.S. military and the Afghan and international publics — and through interviews and letters from her mother's service, Johnson investigates the role of information in war and in interpersonal relationships, often wrestling with the truth in stories we read and hear from the media and official sources, and in those stories we tell ourselves and our families. A powerful generational coming-of-age narrative against the backdrop of war, The Fine Art of Camouflage (MilSpeak Books) reveals the impact from a child's perspective of watching her mother leave and return home to a hero's welcome to that of a young idealist volunteering to deploy to Afghanistan who, war-worn, eventually questions her place in the war, the military, and her family history — and their place within her. Johnson will be joined in conversation by Returning Veterans Project Executive Director Amy Almond-Schmid.

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Cara Black in Conversation With Emmeline Duncan

Wednesday, March 29 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

Three missions. Two cities. One shot to win the war. October 1942: it’s been two years since Kate Rees was sent to Paris on a British Secret Service mission to assassinate Hitler. Since then, she has left spycraft behind to take a training job as a sharpshooting instructor in the Scottish Highlands. But her quiet life is violently disrupted when Colonel Stepney, her former handler, drags her back into the fray for a risky three-pronged mission in Paris. Each task is more dangerous than the next: Deliver a package of forbidden biological material. Assassinate a high-ranking German operative whose knowledge of invasion plans could turn the tide of the war against the Allies. Rescue a British agent who once saved Kate’s life — and get out. Kate will encounter sheiks and spies, poets and partisans, as she races to keep up with the constantly shifting nature of her assignment, showing every ounce of her Oregonian grit in the process. With Night Flight to Paris (Soho Crime), Cara Black has crafted another heart-stopping thrill ride that reveals a portrait of Paris at the height of the Nazi occupation. Black will be joined in conversation by Emmeline Duncan, author of Double Shot Death.

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Craig Seligman in Conversation With Silvana Nova

Thursday, March 30 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

In the 1970s, gay men and lesbians were openly despised and drag queens scared the public. Yet that was the era when Doris Fish (born Philip Mills in 1952) painted and padded his way to stardom. He was a leader of the generation that prepared the world not just for drag queens on TV but for a society that welcomes and even celebrates queer people. How did we get from there to here? In Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?: Doris Fish and the Rise of Drag (PublicAffairs) Craig Seligman looks at Doris’s short but overstuffed life as a way to provide some answers. There were effectively three Dorises — the quiet visual artist, the glorious drag queen, and the hunky male prostitute who supported the other two. He started performing in Sydney in 1972 as a member of Sylvia and the Synthetics, a psycho troupe that represented the first anarchic flowering of queer creative energy in the post-Stonewall era. After moving to San Francisco in the mid-’70s, he became the driving force behind years of sidesplitting drag shows that were loved as much as you can love throwaway trash — which is what everybody thought they were. No one, Doris included, perceived them as political theater, when in fact they were accomplishing satire’s deepest dream: not just to rail against society, but to change it. Seligman recounts this dynamic period in queer history — from Stonewall to AIDS — giving insight into how our ideas about gender have broadened to make drag the phenomenon we know it as today. In a book filled with interviews and letters about a life that ricocheted between hilarity and tragedy, Seligman revisits the places and people Doris knew in order to shed light on the multihued era that his remarkable life encapsulated. Seligman will be joined in conversation by Silvana Nova, Seligman’s husband, activist, performance artist, and former drag queen.

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April Henry in Conversation With Emmeline Duncan

Thursday, March 30 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

Piper Gray starts a true-crime podcast investigating a 17-year-old cold case in Girl Forgotten (Christy Ottaviano Books), the thrilling new YA murder mystery by author April Henry. Seventeen years ago, Layla Trello was murdered and her killer was never found. Enter true-crime fan Piper Gray, who is determined to reopen Layla’s case and get some answers. With the help of Jonas — who has a secret of his own — Piper starts a podcast investigating Layla’s murder. But as she digs deeper into the mysteries of the past, Piper begins receiving anonymous threats telling her to back off the investigation, or else. The killer is still out there, and Piper must uncover their identity before they silence her forever. Henry will be joined in conversation by Emmeline Duncan, author of Double Shot Death.

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Michelle Zauner

Friday, March 31 @ 6pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

In her exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band — and meeting the man who would become her husband — her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was 25, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart (Vintage) is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

Please note: This event is free to attend and tickets are not required. Once the event space reaches capacity, fans may still join the signing line in the Red Room. The post-event signing will take place from 7pm until the store closes at 9pm.

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Kids' Storytime With Isaac Peterson

Saturday, April 1 @ 10:30am (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Gray Fox wanders alone in the forest at night. The woods are illuminated in the silvery light of the full moon and stars. She gazes around in wonder at the light in the birch grove and stops to look at her reflection in the river. But something calls to her in her reverie. She must return to her den by dawn to care for her kits when they wake. With simple poetry young children will love, Isaac Peterson’s Gray Fox in the Moonlight (Collective Book Studio) is a journey through a nighttime wonderland that celebrates the love between parents and children. It illustrates the value of independence in the parental relationship as well as the powerful bond which calls us home from wandering.

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Ari Shapiro in Conversation With Thomas Lauderdale / TICKETED EVENT

Sunday, April 2 @ 7:30pm (PT) / Revolution Hall

In his first book, broadcaster Ari Shapiro — the beloved host of NPR's All Things Considered — takes us around the globe to reveal the stories behind narratives that are sometimes heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking, but always poignant. He details his time traveling on Air Force One with President Obama, or following the path of Syrian refugees fleeing war, or learning from those fighting for social justice both at home and abroad. As the self-reinforcing bubbles we live in become more impenetrable, Shapiro keeps seeking ways to help people listen to one another; to find connection and commonality with those who may seem different; to remind us that, before religion, or nationality, or politics, we are all human. Shapiro's stirring memoir-in-essays, The Best Strangers in the World (HarperOne), is a testament to one journalist’s passion for Considering All Things — and sharing what he finds with the rest of us. Shapiro will be joined in conversation by Pink Martini bandleader Thomas Lauderdale.
 
Please note: Tickets for this event are $38.99 (before service charges) and include admission, as well as one hardcover copy of Shapiro’s The Best Strangers in the World. Books distributed at event.

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Brian Lowery

Monday, April 3 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

There's nothing we spend more time with, but understand less, than ourselves. You've been with yourself every waking moment of your life. But who — or, rather, what — are you? In Selfless (Harper), social psychologist and Stanford professor Brian Lowery argues for the radical idea that the "self" as we know it — that "voice in your head" — is a social construct, created in our relationships and social interactions. We are unique because our individual pattern of relationships is unique. We change because our relationships change. Your self isn't just you, it's all around you. Lowery uses this research-driven perspective of selfhood to explore questions of inequity, race, gender, politics, and power structures, transforming our perceptions of how the world is and how it could be. His theory offers insight into how powerful people manage their environment in sophisticated, often unconscious, ways to maintain the status quo; explains our competing drives for deep social connection and personal freedom; and answers profound, personal questions such as: Why has my sense of self evolved over time? Why do I sometimes stop short of changes that I want to make in life? In Selfless, Lowery persuasively breaks down common assumptions and beliefs; his insights are humbling. Despite what many may think, we aren't islands unto ourselves; we are the creation of the many hands that touch us. We don't just exist in communities, we are created and shaped by them. Our highs and lows are not only our own but belong to others as well. By recognizing that we are products of relationships — from fleeting transactions to deep associations — we shatter the myth of individualism and free ourselves to make our lives and the world accordingly.

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Kesha Ajọsẹ-Fisher in Conversation With Omar El Akkad

Tuesday, April 4 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Winner of the Oregon Book Award for Fiction, Kesha Ajọsẹ-Fisher's No God Like the Mother (Forest Avenue Press) follows characters in transition, through tribulation and hope. Set around the world — the bustling streets of Lagos, the arid gardens beside the Red Sea, an apartment in Paris, and the rain-washed suburbs of the Pacific Northwest — this collection of nine stories is a masterful exploration of life's uncertainty. Ajọsẹ-Fisher will be joined in conversation by Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise.

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Alison Roman in Conversation With Nicole Rucker

Tuesday, April 4 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

Casual, effortless, chic: these are not words you'd use to describe most desserts. But before Alison Roman made recipes so perfect that they go by one name — The Cookie, The Pasta, The Lemon Cake — she was a restaurant pastry chef who spent most of her time learning to make things the hard way. She studied flavor, technique, and precision, then distilled her knowledge to pare it all down to create dessert recipes that feel special and approachable, impressive and doable. In Sweet Enough (Clarkson Potter), Roman — author of Dining In and Nothing Fancy — has written the book for people who think they don't have the time or skill to pull off dessert. Here, the desserts you want to make right away, you can make right away. Roman shows you how to make simple yet sublime sweets with her trademark casualness, like how to make jam in the oven, then turn that jam into a dessert — swirled into ice cream or folded into easy one-bowl cake batter. She waxes poetic on the virtues of frozen fruit and teaches you the best way to throw your own Sundae Party. There are effortless cakes that take just minutes to get into a pan. And there are new, instant classics with a signature Alison twist, like Salted Lemon Pie, Raspberries and Sour Cream, Toasted Rice Pudding, or a Caramelized Maple Tart. Requiring little more than your own two hands and a few mixing bowls, the recipes are geared towards those without fancy equipment or specialty ingredients. Whether you're a dedicated baker or, better yet, someone who doesn't think they are a baker, Sweet Enough lets you finish any dinner, any party, or any car ride to a dinner party with a little something wonderful and sweet. Roman will be joined in conversation by baker Nicole Rucker, author of Dappled: Baking Recipes for Fruit Lovers.

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Ling Ling Huang

Wednesday, April 5 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Sly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Ling Ling Huang’s Natural Beauty (Dutton) follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost. Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents — also talented musicians — who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. But when an accident leaves her parents debilitated, she abandons her future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City. Holistik is known for its remarkable products and procedures — from remoras that suck out cheap Botox to eyelash extensions made of spider silk — and her new job affords her entry into a world of privilege and gives her a long-awaited sense of belonging. She becomes transfixed by Helen, the niece of Holistik's charismatic owner, and the two strike up a friendship that hazily veers into more. All the while, our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister. A piercing, darkly funny debut, Natural Beauty explores questions of consumerism, self-worth, race, and identity — and leaves readers with a shocking and unsettling truth.

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Slamlandia

Thursday, April 6 @ 6 – 7:30pm (PT) / Guilder Cafe inside Powell’s City of Books

Slamlandia is a poetry open mic that meets every first Thursday of the month inside of Guilder Cafe. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets new and old to come share their work. We strive towards a safer space for poets to read their own poetry, witness others, and participate in community.

James M. Zimmerman in Conversation With Candace Pinger Smith

Thursday, April 6 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

In 1923 Shanghai, native and foreign travelers alike are enthralled by the establishment of a new railway line to distant Peking. With this new line comes the Peking Express, a luxurious express train on the cutting edge of China’s continental transportation. Among those drawn to the train are oil heiress Lucy Aldrich, journalist John Benjamin Powell, and vacationing Army Majors Roland Pinger and Robert Allen, wives and children in tow. These errant Americans and their eclectic fellow passengers all eagerly anticipate an idyllic overnight journey in first class. But the train’s passengers are not the only ones enchanted by the Peking Express. The bandit revolutionary Sun Mei-yao sees in it the promise of a reckoning long overdue. From his vantage in Shantung Province, a conflict-ravaged region through which the train must pass, he identifies the Peking Express as a means of commanding the global stage. By disrupting the train and taking its wealthy passengers hostage, he can draw international attention to the plight of Shantung and, he hopes, thereby secure a solution. In the first hours of May 6, 1923, Sun and his bandit troops enact their daring plan. Wrested from the pleasures of their luxury cabins, dozens of travelers including Aldrich, Powell, Pinger, and Allen are plunged into the unfamiliar Shantung terrain. Pursued by warlords and led by their captors, they must make their way to the bandits’ mountain stronghold and there await their fate. James M. Zimmerman’s The Peking Express (PublicAffairs) is the incredible, long-forgotten story of a hostage crisis that shocked China and the West. It vividly captures the events that made international headlines and later inspired Josef von Sternberg’s 1932 Hollywood masterpiece, Shanghai Express. Zimmerman will be joined in conversation by Candace Pinger Smith, granddaughter of Colonel Roland Pinger, one of the hostages in the Peking Express incident.

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John W. Reid

Friday, April 7 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Five stunningly large forests remain on Earth: the Taiga, extending from the Pacific Ocean across all of Russia and far-northern Europe; the North American boreal, ranging from Alaska’s Bering seacoast to Canada’s Atlantic shore; the Amazon, covering almost the entirety of South America’s bulge; the Congo, occupying parts of six nations in Africa’s wet equatorial middle; and the island forest of New Guinea, twice the size of California. These megaforests are vital to preserving global biodiversity, thousands of cultures, and a stable climate, as economist John W. Reid and celebrated biologist Thomas E. Lovejoy argue convincingly in Ever Green (W. W. Norton). Megaforests serve an essential role in decarbonizing the atmosphere — the boreal alone holds 1.8 trillion metric tons of carbon in its deep soils and peat layers, 190 years’ worth of global emissions at 2019 levels — and saving them is the most immediate and affordable large-scale solution to our planet’s most formidable ongoing crisis. Reid and Lovejoy offer practical solutions to address the biggest challenges these forests face, from vastly expanding protected areas, to supporting Indigenous forest stewards, to planning smarter road networks. In gorgeous prose that evokes the majesty of these ancient forests along with the people and animals who inhabit them, Reid and Lovejoy take us on an exhilarating global journey.

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Kids' Storytime With Danielle Krysa

Saturday, April 8 @ 10:30am (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Art and Joy: Best Friends Forever (Prestel Junior) is the story of two best friends — Art and Joy — and how they overcome the insidious “Art Bully” that criticizes their creative endeavors. Danielle Krysa knows that kids have an inner critic too — the kind that tells them their artworks are stupid, messy, the wrong color, or just plain wrong. Employing the same arch humor that make her books for adults so relatable and helpful, Krysa illustrates this uplifting tale with her brilliantly colored collages and witty typography. As Art and Joy learn how to tap into their imaginations and shrug off the Art Bully, they also discover some clever ways to get their creative juices flowing using color, shape, line and found objects.

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Archie Bongiovanni in Conversation With Sarah Shay Mirk

Saturday, April 8 @ 2pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Archie Bongiovanni, the comics artist behind the hit A Quick and Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns, explores queerness in their shockingly frank and funny graphic novel, Mimosa (Abrams ComicArts – Surely). Best friends and chosen family Chris, Elise, Jo, and Alex work hard to keep themselves afloat. Their regular brunches hold them together even as the rest of their lives threaten to fall apart. In an effort to avoid being the oldest gays at the party, the crew decides to put on a new queer event called Grind — specifically for homos in their dirty thirties. Grind is a welcome distraction from their real problems: after a messy divorce, Chris adjusts to being a single parent while struggling to reconnect to their queer community. Elise is caught between feelings for her boss and the career of her dreams. Jo tries to navigate the murky boundaries of being a supportive friend and taking care of her own needs. And Alex is guarding a secret that might change his friendships forever. While navigating exes at work, physical and mental exhaustion, and drinking way, way too much on weekdays, this chosen family proves that being messy doesn’t always go away with age. Bongiovanni will be joined in conversation by Sarah Shay Mirk, comics journalist, zine-maker, and author of Guantanamo Voices.

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Katie Holten in Conversation With David Naimon

Tuesday, April 11 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Inspired by forests, trees, leaves, roots, and seeds, The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape (Tin House) invites readers to discover an unexpected and imaginative language to better read and write the natural world around us and reclaim our relationship with it. In her gorgeously illustrated and deeply thoughtful collection, Katie Holten gifts readers her tree alphabet and uses it to masterfully translate and illuminate beloved writing in praise of the natural world. With an introduction from Ross Gay, and featuring writings from over 50 contributors, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Ada Limón, Robert Macfarlane, Zadie Smith, Radiohead, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, James Gleick, Elizabeth Kolbert, Plato, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, Holten illustrates each selection with an abiding love and reverence for the magic of trees. She guides readers on a journey from "primeval atoms" and cave paintings to the death of a 3,500 year-old cypress tree, from Tree Clocks in Mongolia and forest fragments in the Amazon to the language of fossil poetry, unearthing a new way to see the natural beauty all around us and an urgent reminder of what could happen if we allow it to slip away. The Language of Trees considers our relationship with literature and landscape, resulting in an astonishing fusion of storytelling and art and a deeply beautiful celebration of trees through the ages. Holten will be joined in conversation by David Naimon, host of the literary podcast, Between the Covers.

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Fonda Lee & Kate Elliott

Tuesday, April 11 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

A young woman forms a tempestuous bond with a gigantic and deadly bird of prey in Untethered Sky (Tordotcom), the epic new fantasy fable about the pursuit of obsession at all costs, written by World Fantasy Award–winning author Fonda Lee. Ester’s family was torn apart when a manticore killed her mother and baby brother, leaving her with nothing but her father’s painful silence and a single, overwhelming need to kill the monsters that took her family. Ester’s path leads her to join the King’s Royal Mews, where the giant rocs of legend are flown to hunt manticores by their brave and dedicated ruhkers. Paired with a fledgling roc named Zahra, Ester finds purpose and acclaim by devoting herself to a calling that demands absolute sacrifice and a creature that will never return her love. The terrifying partnership between woman and roc leads Ester not only on the empire’s most dangerous manticore hunt, but on a journey of perseverance and acceptance.
 
The Republic of Chaonia fleets, under the joint command of Princess Sun and her formidable mother, Queen-Marshal Eirene, have defeated and driven out an invading fleet of the Phene Empire, though not without heavy losses. But the Empire remains undeterred. While Chaonia scrambles to rebuild its military, the Empire’s rulers are determined to squash Chaonia once and for all. They believe their military might is strong enough to defeat the enemy, but they also secure a secret alliance with a deadly religious sect skilled in the use of assassination and covert ops, to destabilize the republic. On the eve of Eirene’s bold attack on the rich and populous Karnos System, an unexpected tragedy strikes the republic. Sun must take charge or lose the throne. Will Sun be content with the pragmatic path laid out by her mother for Chaonia’s future? Or will she choose to forge her own legend? Can she succeed despite all the forces arrayed against her? Furious Heaven (Tor) is the sequel to Kate Elliott’s thrilling space adventure, Unconquerable Sun, a genderspun Alexander the Great.

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Jenny Odell in Conversation With Chelsea Biondolillo

Wednesday, April 12 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

In How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell wrote about the importance of disconnecting from the “attention economy” to spend time in quiet contemplation. But what if you don’t have time to spend? In order to answer this seemingly simple question, Odell took a deep dive into the fundamental structure of our society and found that the clock we live by was built for profit, not people. This is why our lives, even in leisure, have come to seem like a series of moments to be bought, sold, and processed ever more efficiently. Odell shows us how our painful relationship to time is inextricably connected not only to persisting social inequities but to the climate crisis, existential dread, and a lethal fatalism. Inspired by pre-industrial cultures, ecological cues, and geological timescales, Saving Time (Random House) brings within reach a more humane, responsive way of living. As planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days alongside gardens growing, birds migrating, and cliffs eroding; the stretchy quality of waiting and desire; the way the present may suddenly feel marbled with childhood memory; the slow but sure procession of a pregnancy; the time it takes to heal from injuries. Odell urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms of life in which time is not reducible to standardized units and instead forms the very medium of possibility. Saving Time tugs at the seams of reality as we know it — the way we experience time itself — and rearranges it, imagining a world not centered on work, the office clock, or the profit motive. If we can “save” time by imagining a life, identity, and source of meaning outside these things, time might also save us. Odell will be joined in conversation by Chelsea Biondolillo, author of The Skinned Bird.

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Regan Penaluna

Thursday, April 13 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

As a young woman growing up in small-town Iowa, Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions: who are we and what is this strange world we find ourselves in? In college she fell in love with philosophy and chose to pursue it as an academician — the first step, she believed, toward becoming a self-determined person living a life of the mind. What Penaluna didn’t realize was that the Western philosophical canon taught in American universities, as well as the culture surrounding it, would slowly grind her down through its misogyny, its harassment, its devaluation of women and their intellect. Where were the women philosophers? One day, in an obscure monograph, Penaluna came across Damaris Cudworth Masham’s name. The daughter of philosopher Ralph Cudworth and a contemporary of John Locke, Masham wrote about knowledge and God, and the condition of women. Masham’s work led Penaluna to other remarkable women philosophers of the era: Mary Astell, who moved to London at age 21 and made a living writing philosophy; Catharine Cockburn, a philosopher, novelist, and playwright; and the better-known Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote extensively in defense of women’s minds. Together, these women rekindled Penaluna’s love of philosophy and awakened her feminist consciousness. In How to Think Like a Woman (Grove Press), Penaluna blends memoir, biography, and criticism to tell the stories of these four women, weaving throughout an alternative history of philosophy as well as her own search for love and truth. Funny, honest, and wickedly intelligent, Penaluna's new book is a moving meditation on what philosophy could look like if women were treated equally.

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Lisa Dodson in Conversation With Andrea Paluso

Friday, April 14 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Many Americans take comfort and convenience for granted. We eat at nice restaurants, order groceries online, and hire nannies to care for kids. Getting Me Cheap (The New Press) is a riveting portrait of the lives of the low-wage workers — primarily women — who make this lifestyle possible. Sociologists Lisa Dodson and Amanda Freeman follow women in the food, health care, home care, and other low-wage industries as they struggle to balance mothering with bad jobs and without public aid. While these women tend to the needs of well-off families, their own children frequently step into premature adult roles, providing care for siblings and aging family members. Based on years of in-depth field work and hundreds of eye-opening interviews, Getting Me Cheap explores how America traps millions of women and their children into lives of stunted opportunity and poverty in service of giving others of us the lives we seek. Destined to rank with works like Evicted and Nickel and Dimed for its revelatory glimpse into how our society functions behind the scenes, Getting Me Cheap also offers a way forward — with both policy solutions and a keen moral vision for organizing women across class lines. Dodson will be joined in conversation by organizer and community activist Andrea Paluso.

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Kids' Storytime With Stephanie Shaw

Saturday, April 15 @ 10:30am (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Hen insists on doing everything alone. When Fox comes calling, Hen's friends start to worry… but should they? Hen isn't a little chick anymore. She's spread her wings and can get a job done just the way she likes it! She can grow wheat herself, she can wheelbarrow it home by herself, and she can turn it into delicious bread all by herself. No need to bother offering Hen a helping hand of any sort, thank you. She's got it covered! But then comes Fox… and Fox loves to eat all kinds of tasty things. So when Pig, Horse, and Cow discover that Fox has paid Hen a visit, should they step in and offer assistance that Hen hasn't asked for? Stephanie Shaw’s All by Myself (Peachtree) is a delectable social-emotional learning tale celebrating the strong-willed and independent, putting a quirky spin on the classic stories, Henny Penny and The Little Red Hen.

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Smallpresspalooza

Sunday, April 16 @ 4-8pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

After a four-year absence, Smallpresspalooza is back! Powell's presents this marathon reading of authors published by local and national small presses for the twelfth time. This year's lineup features Marcelle Heath, Sam Rose Preminger, Nicholas Yandell & Timothy Arliss O'Brien, Craig Buchner, Benjamin Kessler, Marialicia González, Eric Tran, Alyssa Giannini, Ashley Yang-Thompson, Quinn Gancedo, X.C. Atkins, and April Alexis Hernandez. Hosted by Powell's small-press champion and publisher of Future Tense Books, Kevin Sampsell.

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Matt Ruff

Tuesday, April 18 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Summer, 1957. Atticus Turner and his father, Montrose, travel to North Carolina, where they plan to mark the centennial of their ancestor’s escape from slavery by retracing the route he took into the Great Dismal Swamp. But an encounter with an old nemesis turns their historical reenactment into a real life-and-death pursuit. Back in Chicago, George Berry fights for his own life. Diagnosed with cancer, he strikes a devil’s bargain with the ghost of Hiram Winthrop, who promises a miracle cure — but to receive it, George will first have to bring Winthrop back from the dead. Meanwhile, 15-year-old Horace Berry, reeling from the killing of a close friend, joins his mother, Hippolyta, and her friend Letitia Dandridge on a research trip to Nevada for The Safe Negro Travel Guide. But Hippolyta has a secret — and far more dangerous — agenda that will take her and Horace to the far end of the universe and bring a new threat home to Letitia’s doorstep. Hippolyta isn’t the only one keeping secrets. Letitia’s sister, Ruby, has been leading a double life as her white alter ego, Hillary Hyde. Now, the supply of magic potion she needs to transform herself is nearly gone, and a surprise visitor throws her already tenuous situation into complete chaos. Yet these troubles are soon eclipsed by the return of Caleb Braithwhite. Stripped of his magic and banished from Chicago at the end of Lovecraft Country, he’s found a way back into power and is ready to pick up where he left off. But first he has a score to settle… In The Destroyer of Worlds (Harper) — a blend of enthralling historical fiction and fantastical horror — Matt Ruff returns to the world of Lovecraft Country and explores the meaning of death, the hold of the past on the present, and the power of hope in the face of uncertainty.

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Tobin Mitnick in Conversation With Casey Clapp & Alex Crowson

Wednesday, April 19 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Tobin Mitnick, JewsLoveTrees creator and shameless tree lover, leads you, the tree-curious, through the wonderful world of North American trees with fact, opinion, and humor. In Must Love Trees (Rock Point), Mitnick invites you to share his deeply personal connection to our forest companions in ways that expand the storied genre of nature writing. From an imagined dialogue with the world’s oldest bristlecone pine, to the minutiae of tree huggability, to the emotional toll of taking up the practice of bonsai, this fresh take into the world of trees is divided into three equally humorous and insightful sections. The first section discusses Mitnick’s personal opinions and relationship with trees, while the second section describes the science behind trees (from tree botany to tree biology to tree ecology). In the final section, Mitnick answers the question: who would these trees be if they all attended high school together? Mitnick’s detailed description of a tree in action and his thorough run-down of our most-treasured North American trees (all 100 of whom happen to be classmates at “Tree High North America”), makes this compilation an original and occasionally outlandish guide for both the budding and seasoned tree-lover. Mitnick will be joined in conversation by Casey Clapp and Alex Crowson, hosts of the Completely Arbortrary podcast.

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Nicole Chung in Conversation With Lydia Kiesling

Thursday, April 20 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

From the bestselling author of All You Can Ever Know comes a searing memoir of class, inequality, and grief — a daughter’s search to understand the lives her adoptive parents led, the life she forged as an adult, and the lives she’s lost. When Nicole Chung graduated from high school, she couldn’t hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast and no longer the only Korean she knew, she found a sense of community she had always craved as an Asian American adoptee — and a path to the life she’d long wanted. But the middle-class world she begins to raise a family in — where there are big homes and college funds — looks very different from the middle-class world she thought she grew up in, where paychecks have to stretch to the end of the week and there are no safety nets. When her father dies at only 67, killed by the kidney disease that took the life of his mother before him, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of financial instability and lack of access to health care contributed to his premature death. And then the unthinkable happens — less than a year later, her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance between them becomes insurmountable as COVID descends upon the world. Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy, A Living Remedy (Ecco) examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home, and another — and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and tragic inequalities in American society. Chung will be joined in conversation by Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State.

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Don Winslow

Thursday, April 20 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

Following the ambitious City on Fire, comes the dramatic second novel in an epic crime trilogy from Don Winslow, author of the Cartel trilogy (The Power of the Dog, The Cartel, and The Border). Hollywood. The city where dreams are made. On the losing side of a bloody East Coast crime war, Danny Ryan is now on the run. The Mafia, the cops, the FBI all want him dead or in prison. With his little boy, his elderly father and the tattered remnants of his loyal crew of soldiers, he makes the classic American migration to California to start a new life. A quiet, peaceful existence. But the Feds track him down and want Danny to do them a favor that could make him a fortune or kill him. And when Hollywood starts shooting a film based on his former life, Danny demands a piece of the action and begins to rebuild his criminal empire. Then he falls in love. With a beautiful movie star who has a dark past of her own. As their worlds collide in an explosion that could destroy them both, Danny Ryan has to fight for his life in a city where dreams are born. Or where they go to die. From the shores of Rhode Island to the deserts of California where bodies disappear, from the power corridors of Washington where the real criminals operate to the fabled movie studios of Hollywood where the real money is made, Winslow’s City of Dreams (William Morrow) is a sweeping saga of family, love, revenge, survival, and the fierce reality behind the dream.

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Classical Up Close

Saturday, April 22 @ 1pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Musicians from the Oregon Symphony return to Powell’s City of Books for a Pop-Up Performance as part of the 10th season of Classical Up Close — a festival of free chamber music concerts held all over the Portland Metro area. This is your chance to see classical music made in an intimate, casual environment with some of our region’s most talented musicians. Audience members are encouraged to ask the musicians questions and interact on a personal level in this unique concert environment. Everyone welcome!

Neal Shusterman & Eric Elfman

Saturday, April 22 @ 2pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

Eoin Colfer meets Rick Riordan — with a little Margaret Peterson Haddix sprinkled on top — in I Am the Walrus (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), the first book in a hilarious new sci-fi series from authors Neal Shusterman and Eric Elfman. When 14-year-old Noah falls from the trees on his classmate Sahara, he doesn’t understand how, or why, he would have been up there. It’s just one more in a string of strange things happening to Noah lately. Like when he keels over and every muscle in his body freezes when confronted by bullies. And when he vanishes into the background at a moment he doesn’t want to be noticed. And when he unexpectedly blasts Sahara with a bird shriek while flapping his arms uncontrollably in the middle of a school dance. What does it all mean? And why do there suddenly seem to be so many mysterious people trying to kill him? Noah’s friend Ogden has an idea… but like all of Ogden’s ideas, it’s out there. Way out there…

Please note: A purchase of I Am the Walrus is required to join the signing line.

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Matt Kracht

Sunday, April 23 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Guess what: bees are incredible. If you don't think so, you're wrong; but you're also in luck! Extreme bee enthusiast Matt Kracht — author of The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America and its sequel, The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of the Whole Stupid World — is here to set the record straight with his helpful guidebook to all things bees. With lighthearted watercolor and ink drawings, humorous quips, lists, and musings, OMFG, BEES! (Chronicle) will show you just how important these esteemed bee-list celebrities really are. (Hint: We can't live without them.) Delving into various bee topics, from distinguishing between bees and not bees (very crucial), to exploring the absolute wonder that is bee behavior (they do a coded dance directing their bee friends to food, for crying out loud!), to divulging the mind-blowing bee-magic behind honey making (within some extremely intricate and precisely constructed hexagonal honeycomb, no big deal), and more, Kracht's ode to bees paints a charming and enthusiastic picture of our favorite pollinators. Bee-autiful full-color illustrations fill these pages that playfully and earnestly examine different kinds of bees, from the honeybee to the teddy bear bee, providing unbelievably cool facts about bees and reasons why they deserve a lot more credit as well as our appreciation and advocacy. Because omfg, BEES!!

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Jake Bittle in Conversation With Monica Samayoa

Monday, April 24 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

When the subject of migration that will be caused by global climate change comes up in the media or in conversation, we often think of international refugees — those from foreign countries who will emigrate to the United States to escape disasters like rising shorelines and famine. What many people don’t realize though, is that climate migration is happening now — and within the borders of the United States. A human-centered narrative with national scope, Jake Bittle’s The Great Displacement (Simon & Schuster) is the first book to report on climate migration in the US. From half-drowned Louisiana to fire-scorched California, from the dried-up cotton fields of Arizona to the soaked watersheds of inland North Carolina, people are moving. In the last decade alone, the federal government has sponsored the relocation of tens of thousands of families away from flood zones, and tens of thousands more have moved of their own accord in the aftermath of natural disasters. Insurance and mortgage markets are already shifting to reflect mounting climate risk, pushing more people away from their homes. Rising seas have already begun to sink eastern coastal cities, while extreme heat, unprecedented drought, and unstoppable wildfires plague the west. Over the next 50 years, millions of Americans will be caught up in this churn of displacement created by climate change, forced inland and northward in what will be the largest national migration we’ve yet to experience. The Great Displacement compassionately tells the stories of those who are already experiencing life on the move, while detailing just how radically climate change will transform our lives — forcing us out of the country’s hardest-hit areas, uprooting countless communities, and prompting a massive migration that will fundamentally reshape the United States. Bittle will be joined in conversation by Monica Samayoa, climate and environmental journalist at OPB.

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Brent Weeks

Tuesday, April 25 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

Brent Weeks returns to the world of the Night Angel in Night Angel Nemesis (Orbit), following master assassin Kylar on a new adventure as the High King Logan Gyre calls on him to save his kingdom and the hope of peace. After the war that cost him so much, Kylar Stern is broken and alone. He's determined not to kill again, but an impending amnesty will pardon the one murderer he can't let walk free. He promises himself this is the last time. One last hit to tie up the loose ends of his old, lost life. But Kylar's best — and maybe only — friend, the High King Logan Gyre, needs him. To protect a fragile peace, Logan’s new kingdom, and the king’s twin sons, he needs Kylar to secure a powerful magical artifact that was unearthed during the war. With rumors that a ka'kari may be found, adversaries both old and new are on the hunt. And if Kylar has learned anything, it’s that ancient magics are better left in the hands of those he can trust. If he does the job right, he won’t need to kill at all. This isn’t an assassination — it’s a heist. But some jobs are too hard for an easy conscience, and some enemies are so powerful the only answer lies in the shadows.

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Eli Francovich in Conversation With Erica Berry

Thursday, April 27 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

The gray wolf has made an astonishing comeback in Washington. Nearly eradicated by the 1990s, conservationists and environmentalists have cheered its robust return to the state over the last two decades. But Washington ranchers are not so joyous. When wolves prey on livestock, ranchers view their livelihood as under attack. In The Return of Wolves (Timber Press), journalist Eli Francovich investigates how we might mend this divide while keeping wolf populations thriving. He finds an answer in the time-honored tradition of range riding and one passionate range rider, Daniel Curry, who has jumped directly into the fray by patrolling the rural Washington landscape on horseback. Curry engages directly with farmers, seeking to protect livestock from wolves while also protecting and proliferating wolf populations. In The Return of Wolves, we meet an eclectic cast of players — local ranchers, politicians, environmentalists, and everyday folks caught in the middle — and find hope for the future of wolves, and perhaps for our divided nation. Francovich will be joined in conversation by Erica Berry, author of Wolfish.

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Max Miller in Conversation With Holly Erickson & Natalie Mortimer

Thursday, April 27 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

What began as a passion project when Max Miller was furloughed during Covid-19 has become a viral YouTube sensation with a million followers amassed in just two years. The Tasting History with Max Miller channel has thrilled food enthusiasts and history buffs alike as Miller recreates a dish from the past, often using historical recipes from vintage texts, but updated for modern kitchens as he tells stories behind the cuisine and culture. From ancient Rome to Ming China to medieval Europe and beyond, Miller has collected the best-loved recipes from around the world and has shared them with his fans. Now, with beautiful photographs portraying the dishes and historical artwork throughout, Miller’s new cookbook, Tasting History (S&S/Simon Element) compiles over 60 dishes such as: Tuh’u: a red beet stew with leeks dating back to 1740 BC; Globi: deep-fried cheese balls with honey and poppy seeds; Soul Cakes: yeasted buns with currants from circa 1600; Pumpkin Tourte: a crustless pumpkin cheesecake with cinnamon and sugar on top from 1570; and much more. Including the original recipe and Miller’s modern recreation, Tasting History is a must-have for any avid cook or history fan looking to experience delicious recipes from the past. Miller will be joined in conversation with Holly Erickson and Natalie Mortimer, founders of The Modern Proper.

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Anastacia-Reneé in Conversation With Jamila Osman

Friday, April 28 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Anastacia-Reneé’s Side Notes from the Archivist (Amistad Press) is a preservation of Black culture viewed through a feminist lens. The Archivist leads readers through poems that epitomize youthful renditions of a Black girl coming of age in Philadelphia’s pre-funk ’80s; episodic adventures of “the Black Girl” whose life is depicted through the white gaze; and selections of verse evincing affection for self and testimony to the magnificence within Black femme culture at-large. Every poem in Side Notes elevates and honestly illustrates the buoyancy of Blackness and the calamity of Black lives on earth. In her uniquely embracing and experimental style, Anastacia-Reneé documents these truths as celebrations of diverse subjects, from Solid Gold to halal hotdogs; as homages and reflections on iconic images, from Marsha P. Johnson to Aunt Jemima; and as critiques of systemic oppression forcing some to countdown their last heartbeat. From internet “Fame” to the toxicity of the white gaze, Side Notes from the Archivist cements Anastacia-Reneé's role as a leading light in the womanist movement — an artist whose work is in conversation with advocates of Black culture and thought such as Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, and Nikki Giovanni. Anastacia-Reneé will be joined in conversation by Jamila Osman, Somali writer, educator, and community organizer.

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Kids’ Storytime

Saturday, April 29 @ 10:30am (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Join us every Saturday for kids' storytime. Today we're reading All the Ways to Be Smart by Davina Bell.

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Ram Shankar Siva Kumar & Hyrum Anderson

Monday, May 1 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

In Not With A Bug, But With A Sticker (Wiley), adversarial machine learning researchers Ram Shankar Siva Kumar and Hyrum Anderson deliver a riveting account of the most significant risk to artificial intelligence systems: cybersecurity threats. The authors take you on a sweeping tour — from inside secretive government organizations to academic workshops at ski chalets to Google’s cafeteria — recounting how major AI systems remain vulnerable to the exploits of bad actors of all stripes. Siva Kumar and Anderson outline the different ways any AI system — from Alexa to Tesla — can be manipulated by adversaries. Their book is aimed at a general audience, and, in playful language and anecdotes, attempts to answer a multitude of questions: How to subvert these AI systems? What are nations and organizations doing about this? Do you have to worry about these attacks? What’s all of this got to do with a gifted French high schooler? Or Google's free food? A panda? Or, a sticker? The authors are donating the proceeds from this book to two charities: Black in AI and Bountiful Children’s Foundation.

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Grant Lindsley in Conversation With Scott Korb

Tuesday, May 2 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Funny, perceptive, and deeply personal, Mediocre Monk (Girl Friday Books) follows Grant Lindsley’s rocky journey toward spiritual growth — one that ultimately leads him to places he never imagined. After the sudden death of a friend, Lindsley abandons his corporate job to train as a monk in one of the strictest Buddhist traditions on earth. Lost and bereft, he believes he can find answers in the mountains of Thailand. He shaves his head and eyebrows, eats one bowl of food a day, and lives in a cave, his solitude punctuated by brushes with snakes, scorpions, and drug smugglers. But Lindsley can’t transform himself into the profound guru he envisions — he’s hungry, restless, and lacking in the humility that monkhood requires. Eventually, he exhausts himself into moments of genuine growth, but not in the way he expects. Rather than transcending grief and becoming entirely self-reliant, he is surprised to find solace in allowing pain and reopening himself to community. For anyone who has nurtured a fantasy of dropping out in search of answers, Mediocre Monk suggests a reality that is far more complicated — and rewarding. Lindsley will be joined in conversation by Scott Korb, winner of a 2021 Oregon Literary Fellowship and director of the MFA in Writing at Pacific University.

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David Goodrich in Conversation With George Rede

Wednesday, May 3 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

The traces of the Underground Railroad hide in plain sight: a great church in Philadelphia; a humble old house backing up to the New Jersey Turnpike; an industrial outbuilding in Ohio. Over the course of four years, climate scientist David Goodrich rode his bicycle 3,000 miles east of the Mississippi to travel the routes of the Underground Railroad and delve into the history and stories in the places where they happened. He followed the most famous of conductors, Harriet Tubman, from where she was enslaved in Maryland, on the eastern shore, all the way to her family sanctuary at a tiny chapel in Ontario, Canada. Travelling South, he rode from New Orleans, where the enslaved were bought and sold, through Mississippi and the heart of the Delta Blues. As we pedal along with him, Goodrich brings us to the Borderland along the Ohio River, a kind of no-mans-land between North and South in the years before the Civil War. Here, slave hunters roamed both banks of the river, trying to catch people as they fled for freedom. We travel to Oberlin, Ohio, a town that staunchly defended freedom seekers, embodied in the life of Lewis Leary, who was lost in the fires of Harpers Ferry, but his spirit was reborn in the Harlem Renaissance. On Freedom Road (Pegasus) enables us to see familiar places in a very different light: from the vantage point of desperate people seeking to outrun the reach of slavery. Join in this journey to find the heroes and stories, both known and hidden, of the Underground Railroad. Goodrich will be joined in conversation by George Rede, veteran Oregon journalist and retired adjunct instructor.

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Michio Kaku

Wednesday, May 3 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

The runaway success of the microchip processor may be reaching its end. Running up against the physical constraints of smaller and smaller sizes, traditional silicon chips are not likely to prove useful in solving humanity's greatest challenges, from climate change, to global starvation, to incurable diseases. But the quantum computer, which harnesses the power and complexity of the atomic realm, already promises to be every bit as revolutionary as the transistor and microchip once were. Its unprecedented gains in computing power herald advancements that could change every aspect of our daily lives. Automotive companies, medical researchers, and consulting firms are betting on quantum computing, hoping to exploit its power to design more efficient vehicles, create life-saving new drugs, and streamline industries to revolutionize the economy. But this is only the beginning. Quantum computers could allow us to finally create nuclear fusion reactors that create clean, renewable energy without radioactive waste or threats of meltdown. They could help us crack the biological processes that generate natural, cheap fertilizer and enable us to feed the world's growing populations. And they could unravel the fiendishly difficult protein folding that lies at the heart of previously incurable diseases like Alzheimer's, ALS, and Parkinson's, helping us to live longer, healthier lives. There is not a single problem humanity faces that couldn't be addressed by quantum computing. Told with Michio Kaku's signature clarity and enthusiasm, Quantum Supremacy (Doubleday) is the story of this exciting frontier and the race to claim humanity's future.

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Slamlandia

Thursday, May 4 @ 6 – 7:30pm (PT) / Guilder Cafe inside Powell’s City of Books

Slamlandia is a poetry open mic that meets every first Thursday of the month inside of Guilder Cafe. This mic provides a creative, fun, and welcoming space for all literary communities in Portland. We encourage poets new and old to come share their work. We strive towards a safer space for poets to read their own poetry, witness others, and participate in community.

Peter Wohlleben in Conversation With Dave Miller

Friday, May 5 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

In his beloved book The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben revealed astonishing discoveries about the social networks of trees and how they communicate. Now, in The Power of Trees (translated by Jane Billinghurst) (Greystone), he turns to their future, with a searing critique of forestry management, tree planting, and the exploitation of old growth forests. As human-caused climate change devastates the planet, forests play a critical role in keeping it habitable. While politicians and business leaders would have us believe that cutting down forests can be offset by mass tree planting, Wohlleben offers a warning: many tree planting schemes lead to ecological disaster. Not only are these trees more susceptible to disease, flooding, fires, and landslides, we need to understand that forests are more than simply a collection of trees. Instead, they are ecosystems that consist of thousands of species, from animals to fungi and bacteria. The way to save trees, and ourselves? Step aside and let forests — which are naturally better equipped to face environmental challenges — to heal themselves. With the warmth and wonder familiar to readers from his previous books, Wohlleben also shares emerging scientific research about how forests shape climates both locally and across continents; that trees adapt to changing environmental conditions through passing knowledge down to their offspring; and how old growth may in fact have the most survival strategies for climate change. At the heart of The Power of Trees lies Wohlleben's passionate plea: that our survival is dependent on trusting ancient forests, and allowing them to thrive. Wohlleben will be joined in conversation by Dave Miller, host of OPB’s Think Out Loud.

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Kids' Storytime With Carrie Tillotson

Saturday, May 6 @ 10:30am (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

From Carrie Tillotson, author of Counting to Bananas, comes a hilarious bedtime ABC book about a Banana who doesn't want to go to bed. A is for Awake… but B is for Bedtime. When the narrator of this alphabet book tries to make it a bedtime book, Banana objects. Bedtime is BORING! And Banana is the star of this book, so it should really be called B Is for Bananas (Flamingo Books) instead. It shouldn't be about bedtime at all. Journey through all the letters of the alphabet in Tillotson’s new laugh-out-loud story. Join us for a special pajama-themed storytime: wear your pajamas and bring along your favorite stuffie!

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Roxanna Asgarian in Conversation With Shane Dixon Kavanaugh

Sunday, May 7 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

On March 26, 2018, rescue workers discovered a crumpled SUV and the bodies of two women and several children at the bottom of a cliff beside the Pacific Coast Highway. Investigators soon concluded that the crash was a murder-suicide, but there was more to the story: Jennifer and Sarah Hart, it turned out, were a white married couple who had adopted the six Black children from two different Texas families in 2006 and 2008. Behind the family's loving facade, however, was a pattern of abuse and neglect that went ignored as the couple withdrew the children from school and moved across the country. It soon became apparent that the State of Texas knew very little about the two individuals to whom it had given custody of six children — with fateful consequences. In the manner of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family and other classic works of investigative journalism, Roxanna Asgarian's We Were Once a Family (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a revelation of vulnerable lives; it is also a shattering exposé of the foster care and adoption systems that produced this tragedy. As a journalist in Houston, Asgarian became the first reporter to put the children's birth families at the center of the story. We follow the author as she runs up against the intransigence of a state agency that removes tens of thousands of kids from homes each year in the name of child welfare, while often failing to consider alternatives. Her reporting uncovers persistent racial biases and corruption as children of color are separated from birth parents without proper cause. The result is a riveting narrative and a deeply reported indictment of a system that continues to fail America's most vulnerable children while upending the lives of their families. Asgarian will be joined in conversation by Oregonian reporter Shane Dixon Kavanaugh.

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Rebecca Heisman

Tuesday, May 9 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

For the past century, scientists and naturalists have been steadily unravelling the secrets of bird migration. How and why birds navigate the skies, traveling from continent to continent — flying thousands of miles across the earth each fall and spring — has continually fascinated the human imagination, but only recently have we been able to fully understand these amazing journeys. Although we know much more than ever before, even the most enthusiastic birdwatcher may not know how we got here, the ways that the full breadth of scientific disciplines have come together to reveal these annual avian travels. Flight Paths (Harper) is the never-before-told story of how a group of migration-obsessed scientists in the 20th and 21st centuries engaged nearly every branch of science to understand bird migration — from where and when they take off to their flight paths and behaviors, their destinations and the challenges they encounter getting there. Uniting curious minds from across generations, continents, and disciplines, bird enthusiast and science writer Rebecca Heisman traces the development of each technique used for tracking migratory birds, from the first attempts to mark individual birds to the cutting-edge technology that lets ornithologists trace where a bird has been, based on unique DNA markers. Along the way, she touches on the biggest technological breakthroughs of modern science and reveals the almost-forgotten stories of the scientists who harnessed these inventions in service of furthering our understanding of nature (and their personal obsession with birds). While the world looks to tackle massive challenges involving conservation and climate, the story of migration research offers a beacon of hope that we can find solutions to difficult and complex problems.

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Dean King

Tuesday, May 9 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

In June of 1889 in San Francisco, John Muir — iconic environmentalist, writer, and philosopher — meets face-to-face for the first time with his longtime editor Robert Underwood Johnson, an elegant and influential figure at The Century magazine. Before long, the pair, opposites in many ways, decide to venture to Yosemite Valley, the magnificent site where 20 years earlier, Muir experienced a personal and spiritual awakening that would set the course of the rest of his life. Upon their arrival, the men are confronted with a shocking vision, as predatory mining, tourism, and logging industries have plundered and defaced “the grandest of all the special temples of Nature.” While Muir is consumed by grief, Johnson, a champion of society’s most pressing debates via the pages of the nation’s most prestigious magazine, decides that he and Muir must fight back. The pact they form marks a watershed moment, leading to the creation of Yosemite National Park, and launching an environmental battle that captivates the nation and ushers in the beginning of the American environmental movement. Beautifully rendered, deeply researched, and inspiring, Dean King’s Guardians of the Valley (Scribner) is a moving story of friendship, the written word, and the transformative power of nature. It is also a timely and powerful “origin story” as the toweringly complex environmental challenges we face today become increasingly urgent.

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Kristen Jokinen

Friday, May 12 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Explorers Kristen and Ville Jokinen met scuba diving in Vietnam and fell in love. She was a real estate agent from Oregon, and he a financial analyst for Toyota in his native Finland. After hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from California to Canada they decided their next adventure would be a two-year cycling trip covering 18,000 miles from Prudoe Bay, Alaska, to Ushuaia, Argentina, despite never having cycled other than around the block. Only their starting and ending points were planned, in between was navigated daily by their sense of adventure and intuition. Locals in Mexico, Central America, and South America allowed them to camp in their fields and farms, invited them into their homes and families and acted as tour guides. Kristen and Ville held babies, attended quinceañeras, drank pulque, played soccer, and visited schools. They persevered unrelenting, punishing rain and wind, altitude sickness, dog attacks, bike accidents, and countless flat tires to cycle between the ends of the earth. Ville and Kristen move through the world with a sense of curiosity while practicing kindness. They believe that creating a space of support and excitement make astonishing goals possible. Kristen Jokinen’s Joy Ride (Hawthorne) is about the courage to follow your wildest dream and inspiring others to do the same. Ville and Kristen are love on wheels.

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David Schmader & Ashod Simonian

Friday, May 12 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

The Pacific Northwest has a thriving, rich film culture, and it's finally celebrated in a guide as visually arresting and compelling as the films and television themselves. Author and culture writer David Schmader put in a lot of screen time watching movies and TV shows, and the result is more than 200 entries that feature hilarious and insightful synopses, behind-the-scene facts and trivia, and regional scenic highlights. Sidebars showcase filmmakers like Gus Van Sant and Lynn Shelton, the television shows that shaped the public's perception of the region, documentaries, queer cinema, silent films, Vancouver-shot imposters, and more. From Twin Peaks to Twilight, from Practical Magic to Portlandia!, Filmlandia! (Sasquatch) highlights more than 200 film and television entertainments created and centered in Seattle, Portland, and the greater Pacific Northwest, extensively researched and curated by Schmader and illustrated by Ashod Simonian.

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Kids' Storytime With Meredith Steiner

Saturday, May 13 @ 10:30am (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Meredith Steiner’s Just. Like. You. (Pow! Kids Books) is a rhyming story in celebration of diversity that introduces readers to all the different members of a classroom, and what makes each of them uniquely who they are. Written in a melodic, read-aloud ready rhyme, Just. Like. You. is a joyful celebration of individuality and diversity. Follow a class of students throughout the school day from morning to night and discover what makes each of them unique; from different talents, abilities, and body sizes, to ethnicities, religions, gender expressions and more, there are so many things to love about being you.

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Hernan Diaz

Sunday, May 14 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth — all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit. Hernan Diaz’s Trust (Riverhead) elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another — and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation. At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.

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Zaji Cox in Conversation With Lidia Yuknavitch

Monday, May 15 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

As a neurodivergent child in a 100-year-old house, Zaji Cox collects grammar books, second-hand toys, and sightings of feral cats. She dances and cartwheels through self-discovery and doubt, guided by her big sister and their devoted single mother. Through short essays that evoke the abundant imagination of childhood, Plums for Months (Forest Avenue Press) explores the challenges of growing up mixed race and low-income on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. Cox will be joined in conversation by Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Thrust.

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TJ Klune in Conversation With Fonda Lee

Wednesday, May 17 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots — fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe. The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio — a past spent hunting humans. When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming. Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: can he accept love with strings attached? Inspired by Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio, and like Swiss Family Robinson meets WALL-E, In the Lives of Puppets (Tor) is a masterful standalone fantasy adventure from TJ Klune, the beloved author who brought you The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door. Klune will be joined in conversation by Fonda Lee, author of the Green Bone Saga.

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Jane Wong in Conversation With Mat Johnson

Thursday, May 18 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

In the late 1980s on the Jersey shore, Jane Wong watches her mother shake ants from an MSG bin behind the family's Chinese restaurant. She is a hungry daughter frying crab rangoon for lunch, a child sneaking naps on bags of rice, a playful sister scheming to trap her brother in the freezer before he traps her first. She is part of a family staking their claim to the American dream, even as this dream crumbles. Beneath Atlantic City's promise lies her father's gambling addiction, an addiction that causes him to disappear for days and ultimately leads to the loss of the restaurant. In her debut memoir, Wong tells a new story about Atlantic City, one that resists a single identity, a single story, as she writes about making do with what you have — and what you don't. What does it mean, she asks, to be both tender and angry? What is strength without vulnerability--and humor? Filled with beauty found in unexpected places, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House) is a resounding love song of the Asian American working class, a portrait of how we become who we are, and a story of lyric wisdom to hold and to share. Wong will be joined in conversation by Mat Johnson, author of Invisible Things.

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Megan Carle in Conversation With Neil Everett

Thursday, May 18 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

Ranging from general conflict to psychological violence, workplace bullying has become an epidemic at many offices. The Workplace Bullying Institute reports that workplace bullying affects more than 80 million workers. And with the Great Resignation, we're seeing that a toxic culture or manager is one of the top reasons employees leave a company. In Walk Away to Win (McGraw-Hill), Megan Carle draws on her own experience as a target of workplace bullying and reveals how unhealthy workplace cultures enable bullying, describes the costs of such bullying to the bottom line, and explains what business professionals of all levels can do to combat bullying against themselves and their coworkers. She analyzes the common characteristics of bullies and helps readers understand how to face each style of bullying behavior. Walk Away to Win sends a loud-and-clear message to targets: you are seen, you are doing nothing wrong, you have options, and success may look different from what you have been taught. It offers hope and sanity — and a way to preserve your dignity in even the most toxic of workplaces. Carle will be joined in conversation by Neil Everett, anchor for ESPN's SportsCenter.

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Chasten Buttigieg

Saturday, May 20 @ 2pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Growing up, Chasten Glezman Buttigieg didn’t always fit in. He felt different from his father and brothers, who loved to hunt and go camping, and out of place in the rural, conservative small town where he lived. Back then, blending in was more important than feeling seen. So, when Chasten realized he was gay, he kept that part of himself hidden away for a long, painful time. With incredible bravery, and the support of his loved ones, Chasten eventually came out — and when he did, he learned that being true to himself was the most rewarding journey of all. Finding acceptance and self-love can seem like a tremendous challenge, but it’s never impossible. With honesty, courage, and warmth, Chasten relays his experience of growing up in America and embracing his identity, while inspiring young people across the country to do the same. I Have Something to Tell You—For Young Adults (Atheneum) is the young adult adaptation of the moving, hopeful, and refreshingly candid memoir by the husband of a former Democratic presidential candidate about growing up gay in his small Midwestern town.

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Paul Levy

Monday, May 22 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

The profound and radical Native American idea of “wetiko,” a virus of the mind, underlies the collective insanity and evil that is destructively playing out around the world. Yet, as Paul Levy reveals in his new book, Undreaming Wetiko (Inner Traditions), encoded within wetiko itself lies the very medicine needed to combat the mind-virus and heal both ourselves and our world. Levy begins by investigating how the process of becoming triggered, wounded, or falling into suffering can help us better understand the workings of wetiko in a way that transforms our struggles into opportunities for awakening. He reveals the source of wetiko: unhealed multi-generational ancestral trauma, which gets acted out, passed down, and propagated through the family lineage via our relationships. He highlights one of the primary archetypes currently activated in the collective unconscious of humanity — the wounded healer/shaman — and shows how recognizing this archetype can help us as we navigate a collective descent into the underworld of the unconscious, a true bardo realm between our past and future worlds. Drawing on the work of C. G. Jung, Rudolf Steiner, Henry Corbin, Wilhelm Reich, and Nicolas Berdyaev, Levy introduces the inner guide — a daemon/angel that lives within us as an ally in our encounters with the daemonic energy of wetiko. Ultimately, Levy reveals that the best protection and medicine for wetiko is to connect with the light of our true nature by becoming who we truly are.

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Margaret Owen in Conversation With Aiden Thomas

Monday, May 22 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

After accidentally starting a cult and invoking the wrath of the gods, a scam artist must fight to save everyone she has ever loved in Painted Devils (Henry Holt), the sequel to Margaret Owen’s YA fantasy, Little Thieves. When misfortune strikes, the “reformed” jewel thief Vanja manipulates a remote village for help and, in turn, accidentally starts a cult around a Low God, the Scarlet Maiden. Soon after, her nemesis-turned-suitor Emeric and a supervising prefect arrive to investigate the claim of godhood, and she realizes how in over her head she must be. But the Scarlet Maiden does reveal herself… only to claim Emeric as her virgin sacrifice. Desperate to save the only man she’s ever cared for, Vanja decides to seek an alternative: bring the Scarlet Maiden a drop of blood from each of the seven brothers for the midsummer feast. While the thief and prefect-in-training still have feelings for one another, Emeric must determine whether Vanja has committed fraud as his final test for prefect-hood. And as they travel the Haarzlands, a harsh land far from the rules of the city, the past that Vanja barely remembers comes into full view and she fears a future that does not require her to keep running. With vengeful apparitions, supernatural fraud, and ravenous hellhounds, readers will not be able to put down Owen’s new Bavarian-themed YA fantasy. Owen will be joined in conversation by Aiden Thomas, author of The Sunbearer Trials.

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Simone Stolzoff in Conversation With April Rinne

Thursday, May 25 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

When designer and journalist Simone Stolzoff had a choice between his dream job, or a good job — with interesting-enough work, great benefits, and much more money — the choice should have been easy, but instead it was agonizing. He realized that at stake was not his well-being, but his identity: “Who are you, and what are you worth?” The Good Enough Job (Portfolio) is the story of Stolzoff’s journey to understand a peculiar American pathology, defined by productivity hacks and #hustle: workism. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Michelin star chefs, Wall Street bankers, overwhelmed teachers, and other laborers across the American economy, he found that while many feel overworked and underpaid, we are obsessed with our work, seeking from our jobs emotional fulfillment instead of better conditions. If we want to be happy, he asks, how can we emotionally disentangle ourselves from our work? When is it good enough? Through provocative critique and deep reporting, Stolzoff punctures the myths that keep us chained to our jobs. By exposing the lies we — and our employers — tell us about the value of our work, The Good Enough Job makes the urgent case for reclaiming your time. Because your coworkers aren’t your family. You aren’t what you do. And above all — there is no dream job. Good enough is great. Stolzoff will be joined in conversation by April Rinne, author of Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change.

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The Bigfoot Regional Poetry Slam

Friday, June 2 @ 5pm & 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

The Bigfoot Regional Poetry Slam is a tournament featuring teams of spoken word poets from all over the Pacific Northwest (and beyond!). At this event, four teams of poets will compete in a battle of words at 5 p.m., followed by a different set of four teams at 7 p.m. Audience members selected at random will determine the winner. Come see this dynamic event for yourself!

Brianna Wiest in Conversation With Bianca Sparacino

Monday, June 5 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

If you’re in a pivot period — if you’re still bridging the space between where you are and where you want to be — remember that the person you’re becoming is already within you. The journey is convincing your mind to act consistently on what your heart already knows it wants to do. Brianna Wiest’s The Pivot Year (Thought Catalog) is a book of 365 daily meditations on finding the courage to become who you’ve always wanted to be — from the author of 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think and The Mountain Is You. Wiest will be joined in conversation by Bianca Sparacino, author of A Gentle Reminder.

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Santi Elijah Holley in Conversation With Mic Crenshaw

Thursday, June 8 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

They have been celebrated, glorified, and mythologized. They have been hailed as heroes, liberators, and freedom fighters. They have been condemned, pursued, imprisoned, exiled, and killed. But the true and complete story of the Shakur family — one of the most famous names in contemporary Black American history — has never been told. For over 50 years, the Shakurs have inspired generations of activists, scholars, and music fans. Many people are only familiar with Assata Shakur, the popular author and thinker, living for three decades in Cuban exile; or the late rapper Tupac. But the branches of the Shakur family tree extend widely, and the roots reach into the most furtive and hidden depths of the underground. Santi Elijah Holley’s An Amerikan Family (Mariner) is a history of the long struggle for Black liberation in the United States, as experienced and shaped by the Shakur family. It is the story of hope and betrayal, addiction and murder, persecution and revolution. An Amerikan Family is not only family genealogy, it is the story of Black America’s long struggle for racial justice and the nation’s covert and repressive tactics to defeat that struggle. It is the story of a small but determined community, taking extreme, unconventional, and often perilous measures in the quest for freedom. In short, the story of the Shakurs is the story of America. Holley will be joined in conversation by Mic Crenshaw, independent hip hop artist, emcee, poet, educator, and activist.

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John Kaag & Jonathan van Belle

Thursday, June 15 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books

Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living (Princeton) invites readers to rethink how we work today by exploring an aspect of Henry David Thoreau that has often been overlooked: Thoreau the worker. John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle overturn the popular misconception of Thoreau as a navel-gazing recluse who was scornful of work and other mundanities. In fact, Thoreau worked hard — surveying land, running his family’s pencil-making business, writing, lecturing, and building his cabin at Walden Pond — and thought intensely about work in its many dimensions. And his ideas about work have much to teach us in an age of remote work and automation, when many people are reconsidering what kind of working lives they want to have. Through Thoreau, readers will discover a philosophy of work in the office, factory, lumber mill, and grocery store, and reflect on the rhythms of the workday, the joys and risks of resigning oneself to work, the dubious promises of labor-saving technology, and that most vital and eternal of philosophical questions, “How much do I get paid?” In ten chapters, including “Manual Work,” “Machine Work,” and “Meaningless Work,” this personal, urgent, practical, and compassionate book introduces readers to their new favorite coworker: Henry David Thoreau.

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Courtney Gould in Conversation With Aiden Thomas

Tuesday, June 20 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing

Beck Birsching has been adrift since the death of her mother, a brilliant but troubled investigative reporter. She can’t stop herself from slipping into memories of happier days, longing for a time when things were more normal. So when a mysterious letter in her mother’s handwriting arrives in the mail with the words Come and find me, pointing to the small town at the center of her last investigation, Beck hopes that it may hold the answers. But when Beck and her sister Riley arrive in Backravel, Arizona, it’s clear that something’s off. There are no cars, no cemeteries, no churches. The town is a mix of dilapidated military structures and new, shiny buildings, all overseen by a gleaming treatment center high on a plateau. No one seems to remember when they got there, and when Beck digs deeper into the town’s enigmatic leader and his daughter, Avery, she begins to suspect that they know more than they’re letting on. As the sisters search for answers about their mother, Beck and Avery are increasingly drawn together, and their unexpected connection brings up emotions Beck has fought to keep buried. Beck is desperate to hold onto the way things used to be, but when she starts losing herself in Backravel — and its connection to her mother — she risks losing her way back out. In Where Echoes Die (Wednesday Books), Courtney Gould draws readers into a haunting desert town to explore grief, the weight of not letting go of the past, first love, and the bonds between sisters, mothers, and daughters. Gould will be joined in conversation by Aiden Thomas, author of The Sunbearer Trials.

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