Powell's Books is honored to host author events online and in-store at our locations in downtown Portland, Oregon and Beaverton (Cedar Hills Crossing).
We’re continuing to offer virtual events featuring authors from around the world. Please read our lineup of upcoming events carefully, to see whether the event you’d like to attend will be online or at one of our store locations.
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Tuesday, November 29 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
There's a basic cocktail formula for building a bar that is anything but ordinary: Spirit + Sugar + Acidity/Bitterness = Tasty Cocktail. Instead of drawing on esoteric bottles of liquor, complicated syrups, and obscure sodas, Brett Adams and Jacob Grier’s Raising the Bar (Chronicle) takes readers through the home bar bottle by bottle, ensuring that every ingredient is versatile enough to be used to the last drop. Building on a very basic cocktail pantry, each chapter thoughtfully introduces a new bottle and explains how it opens new possibilities for cocktails. Each chapter builds on the one before, so readers never encounter recipes calling for unfamiliar spirits or ingredients. Raising the Bar will be a go-to reference for the home bartender that is practical enough for the day-to-day and special enough for a party. With handsome graphics and a smart focus on what's already in stock, it's what home mixologists can turn to when they want creative and delightful drinks without a bar cart full of single-use bottles.
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Wednesday, November 30 @ 5pm (PT) / virtual
Kathy Acker (1947–1997) was a rare and almost inconceivable thing: a celebrity experimental writer. Twenty-five years after her death, she remains one of the most original, shocking, and controversial artists of her era. The author of visionary, transgressive novels like Blood and Guts in High School; Empire of the Senseless; and Pussy, King of Pirates, Acker wrote obsessively about the treachery of love, the limitations of language, and the possibility of revolution. She was notorious for her methods — collaging together texts stolen from other writers with her own diaries, sexual fantasies, and blunt political critiques — as well as her appearance. With her punkish hairstyles, tattoos, and couture outfits she looked like no other writer before or after. Her work was exceptionally prescient, taking up complicated conversations about gender, sex, capitalism, and colonialism that continue today. A feat of literary biography, Eat Your Mind (Simon & Schuster) is the first full-scale, authorized life of Acker. Drawing on exclusive interviews with hundreds of Acker’s intimates as well as her private journals, correspondence, and early drafts of her work, acclaimed journalist and critic Jason McBride offers a thrilling account and a long overdue reassessment of a misunderstood genius and revolutionary artist. McBride will be joined in conversation by Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Thrust.
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Wednesday, November 30 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
For years, consumers have been promised a simple, carefree digital future. We could live, work, learn, and play from the comforts of our homes, and have whatever we desire brought to our door with the flick of a finger. Instant communication would bring us together. Technological convenience would give us more time to focus on what really mattered. When the pandemic hit, that future transformed into the present, almost overnight. And the reviews aren't great. It turns out that leaving the house is underrated, instant communication spreads anger better than joy, and convenience takes away time rather than giving it to us. But as David Sax argues in his insightful new book, The Future is Analog (PublicAffairs), we've also had our eyes opened. There is nothing about the future that has to be digital, and embracing the reality of human experience doesn't mean resisting change. In chapters exploring work, school, leisure, and more, Sax asks perceptive and pointed questions: what happens to struggling students when they're not in a classroom? If our software is built for productivity, who tends to the social and cultural aspects of our jobs? Can you have religion without community? For many people, the best parts of quarantine have been the least digital ones: baking bread, playing board games, going hiking. We used our hands and hugged our children and breathed fresh air. The Future is Analog suggests that if we want a healthy future, we need to choose not convenience but community, not technology but humanity.
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Thursday, December 1 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
From Matthew Quick, author of The Silver Linings Playbook — made into the Academy Award–winning movie starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper — comes a poignant and hopeful novel about a widower who takes in a grieving teenager and inspires a magical revival in their small town. Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero — everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst, Karl. It is only when Eli, an 18-year-old young man whom the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas’s backyard that an unlikely alliance takes shape and the two embark on a journey to heal their neighbors and, most importantly, themselves. Quick's We Are the Light (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster) is an unforgettable new novel about the quicksand of grief and the daily miracle of love. The humorous, soul-baring story of Lucas Goodgame offers an antidote to toxic masculinity and celebrates the healing power of art. In this tale that will stay with you long after the final page is turned, Quick reminds us that life is full of guardian angels.
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Thursday, December 1 @ 7:30pm (PT) / Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
In 2018, without any plan or agenda for what might happen next, Patti Smith posted her first Instagram photo: her hand with the simple message “Hello Everybody!” Known for shooting with her beloved Land 250 Camera, Smith started posting selfies with her phone, portraits of her kids, her radiator, her boots, and her Abyssinian cat, Cairo. Followers felt an immediate affinity with these miniature windows into Smith’s world, her daily coffee, the books she’s reading, the graves of beloved heroes: William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, Simone Weil, and Albert Camus. Over the days and months, a coherent story of a life devoted to art took shape in the extraordinarily personal photographs that chart Smith’s passions, devotions, obsessions, and whims. Original to Smith’s new book, A Book of Days (Random House), are vintage photographs: anniversary pearls, a mother’s keychain, and a husband’s Mosrite guitar. Here, too, are photos from Smith's archives of life on and off the road, train stations, obscure cafés, a notebook always nearby. In wide-ranging yet intimate daily notations, Smith shares dispatches from her travels around the world. With more than 365 photographs that take you through a single year, A Book of Days is a new way to experience the expansive mind of the visionary poet, writer, and performer. Hopeful, elegiac, and playful, A Book of Days is a deeply generous and inspirational map of an artist’s life, by the National Book Award–winning author of Just Kids and M Train.
Please note: Tickets for this event are $38.99 (before service charges) and include admission, as well as one hardcover copy of Smith’s A Book of Days. Books distributed at event.
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Friday, December 2 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Breathless (Simon & Schuster) is the story of SARS-CoV-2 and its fierce journey through the human population, as seen by the scientists who study its origin, its ever-changing nature, and its capacity to kill us. David Quammen expertly shows how strange new viruses emerge from animals into humans as we disrupt wild ecosystems, and how those viruses adapt to their human hosts, sometimes causing global catastrophe. He explains why this coronavirus will probably be a “forever virus,” destined to circulate among humans and bedevil us endlessly, in one variant form or another. As scientists labor to catch it, comprehend it, and control it, with their high-tech tools and methods, the virus finds ways of escape. Based on interviews with nearly 100 scientists, including leading virologists in China and around the world, Quammen explains that: infectious disease experts saw this pandemic coming; some scientists, for more than two decades, warned that “the next big one” would be caused by a changeable new virus — very possibly a coronavirus — but such warnings were ignored for political or economic reasons; the precise origins of this virus may not be known for years, but some clues are compelling, and some suppositions can be dismissed; and much more. Breathless takes you inside the frantic international effort to understand and control SARS-CoV-2 as if we were peering over the shoulders of the brilliant scientists who led the chase.
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Saturday, December 3 @ 10:30am (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Nora Ericson's new picture book, Too Early (Abrams Books for Young Readers), is a gentle, cozy story following a family’s bleary-eyed wake-up routine, a little one who’s eager to start the day, and the quiet magic of early mornings. In sweet, melodic verse written from the perspective of the earliest riser, Too Early follows a family's morning routine, exploring both the groggy haze and the everyday magic inherent in the predawn hours of a loving household.
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Monday, December 5 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
In her uproariously funny and charming new book for middle grade readers, How Do Meerkats Order Pizza?: Wild Facts about Animals and the Scientists Who Study Them (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers), Brooke Barker introduces readers to incredible animals and the bizarre things human scientists do to understand them. Did you know that crows never forget a face? Or that jaguars have a favorite cologne? Have you ever wondered how to pet a yeti crab? Or whether dogs can tell if you’re smiling? And just what is a burrowing bettong? Meet these weird, wonderful animals and the equally weird and wonderful scientists who study them. From crafting fake poop to slurping up bugs with a straw, there’s nothing these amazing humans won’t do to help us learn more about the animals around us. Packed with fascinating facts, the hilarious new book from the creator of Sad Animal Facts reveals secrets like why roosters crow and how meerkats make decisions as a group and how humans can better understand the wild creatures we share the planet with.
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Monday, December 5 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
In his new book, Silent Spring Revolution (Harper), acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties, telling a highly charged story of an indomitable generation that quite literally saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. With the detonation of an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert in 1945, humans took control of the earth for the first time. They were dominators and their hubris pervaded the post-World War II economic boom under Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, as America became the world’s leading hyper-industrial and military giant. But the Cold War era’s prosperity came at a high cost: oceans began to die, wilderness vanished, DDT poisoned ecosystems, species went extinct, and smog made breathing difficult in cities. Very few people cared, in part because pollution was typically diverted to the poorest neighborhoods. Silent Spring Revolution is crucial to understanding the battle to protect America’s land, water, wildlife, and air. In a fast-evolving era when the nation is witnessing new types of environmental crises due to climate change and resource exhaustion, Brinkley’s meticulously researched and deftly written book is also a clarion call, reminding us of the passionate grassroots work that still needs to be done as the spirit of the Silent Spring Revolution continues well into the 21st century.
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Tuesday, December 6 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
From the moment there was an “online,” there was sex online. The famous test image used by software engineers to develop formats like the jpeg was “Lena,” taken from Playboy’s November 1972 centerfold. Early bulletin boards and multi-user domains quickly came to serve their members sexual musings. Facebook started as a way to rate “hot or not” Harvard co-eds. In fact, virtually every significant development that defines the Internet we know and love (and hate) today — privacy issues, online payments and online banking, dating, social media, streaming technology, mass data collection — came about through the meeting of sexuality and technology. And the kicker is, not only did sexuality vastly influence the Internet, but the Internet arguably changed modern human sexuality by giving every imaginable non-hetereonormative community a place to explore, fantasize, thrive, and be accepted. A lively, highly visual history, filled with broad themes and backstories, pioneering personalities and eureka-moments, Vice Motherboard senior staff writer Samantha Cole's How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex (Workman) is a short, serious, and highly entertaining look at the intertwining convergence of sex and the Internet. Cole will be joined in conversation by Andi Zeisler, Bitch Media cofounder and author of We Were Feminists Once.
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Tuesday, December 6 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Adrienne Young returns to the world of The Narrows with Saint (Wednesday Books), a captivating prequel to Fable and Namesake. As a boy, Elias learned the hard way what happens when you don’t head the old tales. Nine years after his lack of superstition got his father killed, he’s grown into a young man of piety, with a deep reverence for the hallowed sea and her fickle favor. As stories of the fisherman’s son who has managed to escape the deadliest of storms spreads from port to port, his devotion to the myths and creeds has given him the reputation of the luckiest bastard to sail the Narrows. Now, he’s mere days away from getting everything his father ever dreamed for him: a ship of his own, a crew, and a license that names him as one of the first Narrows-born traders. But when a young dredger from the Unnamed Sea with more than one secret crosses his path, Elias’s faith will be tested like never before. The greater the pull he feels toward her, the farther he drifts from the things he’s spent the last three years working for. He is dangerously close to repeating his mistakes and he’s seen firsthand how vicious the jealous sea can be. If he’s going to survive her retribution, he will have to decide which he wants more, the love of the girl who could change their shifting world, or the sacred beliefs that earned him the name that he’s known for — Saint. Young will be joined in conversation by Laini Taylor, author of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy.
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Wednesday, December 7 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
“Literature is pathetic.” So claims Eileen Myles in their bold and bracing introduction to Pathetic Literature (Grove Press), an exuberant collection of pieces ranging from poetry to theater to prose to something in between, all of which explore those so-called “pathetic” or sensitive feelings around which lives are built and revolutions are incited. Myles first reclaimed the word for a seminar they taught at the University of California San Diego, rescuing it from the derision into which it had slipped and restoring its original meaning of inspiring emotion or feeling, from the Ancient Greek rhetorical method pathos. Their reinvention of “pathetic” formed the bedrock for this anthology, which includes a breathtaking 105 contributors, encompassing titans of global literature like Robert Walser, Jorge Luis Borges, Rumi, and Gwendolyn Brooks, queer icons and revolutionaries like Dodie Bellamy, Samuel R. Delany, and Bob Flanagan, as well as the invigorating newness and excitement of writers on the rise, including Nicole Wallace, Precious Okoyomon, and Will Farris. The result is a matchless anthology that is as much an ongoing dialogue as an essential compendium of queer, revolutionary, joyful, and always moving literature. From confrontations with suffering, embarrassment, and disquiet, to the comforts and consolations of finding one’s familiar double in a poem, Pathetic Literature is a swarming taxonomy of ways to think differently and live pathetically on a polarized and fearful planet. Myles will be joined in conversation by Pathetic Literature contributors Jess Arndt, author of Large Animals; Janice Lee, author Separation Anxiety; and Camille Roy, author of Honey Mine.
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Wednesday, December 7 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
David Moscow, creator and star of the groundbreaking series, From Scratch, takes us on an exploration of our planet’s complex and interconnected food supply, showing us where our food comes from and why it matters in his new book of global culinary adventures. In an effort to help us reconnect with the food that sustains our lives, Moscow has spent four years going around the world, meeting with rock-star chefs, and sourcing ingredients within local food ecosystems — experiences taking place in over 20 countries that include milking a water buffalo to make mozzarella for pizza in Italy; harvesting oysters in Long Island Sound and honey from wild bees in Kenya; and making patis in the Philippines, beer in Malta, and sea salt in Iceland. Moscow takes us on deep dives (sometimes literally) with fisherfolk, farmers, scientists, community activists, historians, hunters, and more, bringing back stories of the communities, workers, and environments involved — some thriving, some in jeopardy, all interconnected with food. From Scratch (Premuted Press), cowritten by David Moscow and Jon Moscow, marvels in the world around us while simultaneously examining the environmental issues, cultural concerns, and overlooked histories intertwined with the food we eat to survive and thrive. Through the people who harvest, hunt, fish, and forage each day, we come to understand today’s reality and tomorrow’s risks and possibilities. The Moscows will be joined in conversation by Sandra Ford, leading member of Portland’s Black Panther Party.
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Thursday, December 8 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Artist Molly Hashimoto has appreciated trees all her life — they have shaped her as a hiker, outdoors lover, gardener, traveler, and artist. She pays homage to them through her art, working in many different media, each revealing different aspects of these stalwart companions: crisp lines, imposing silhouettes, and the subtle — or sometimes brilliant — hues of foliage. As in her popular Colors of the West and Birds of the West, Hashimoto's new book, Trees of the West (Mountaineers Books), emphasizes her personal experiences with nature, telling stories about her encounters with trees everywhere from her backyard to national parks and forests throughout the West. She focuses primarily on native trees, rather than cultivars, with a special interest in 45 major species found across the region, ranging from the stately Coast redwoods to the diminutive but distinctive Fishhook Barrel Cactus. Hashimoto also delves into the process of creating art, discussing the mediums she used in the featured pieces and the reasons she chose them, as well as sidebars with tips and techniques. Rooted in place, trees offer endless opportunities for observation, admiration, relaxation, and inspiration. Trees of the West invites us to pause and appreciate these sentinels in all their quiet glory.
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Thursday, December 8 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
As a Deafblind woman with partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids, Hugo Award–winning author Elsa Sjunneson lives at the crossroads of blindness and sight, hearing and deafness — much to the confusion of the world around her. While she cannot see well enough to operate without a guide dog or cane, she can see enough to know when someone is reacting to the visible signs of her blindness and can hear when they’re whispering behind her back. And she certainly knows how wrong our one-size-fits-all definitions of disability can be. As a media studies professor, she’s also seen the full range of blind and deaf portrayals on film, and here she deconstructs their impact, following common tropes through horror, romance, and everything in between. Part memoir, part cultural criticism, part history of the Deafblind experience, Being Seen (Simon Element) explores how our cultural concept of disability is more myth than fact, and the damage it does to us all. Sjunneson will be joined in conversation by Curtis C. Chen, author of the Kangaroo series.
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Thursday, January 12 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
When Caverly Morgan reentered the world after a period of eight solitary years as a practicing Zen monk, she was confronted with a question so many of us find ourselves asking these days: when faced with the enormity of the collective problems before us, how can an individual mindfulness and meditation practice actually make a difference in our world? In The Heart of Who We Are (Sounds True), Morgan explores how contemplative technologies designed for the pursuit of personal freedom can be — and must be — applied collectively. Filled with wisdom rooted in presence and the truth of our oneness, Morgan’s timely guide invites us to connect with the core of who we are and then use that understanding to transform our own lives and the world around us. Blending Zen practice, Western psychology, and a focus on direct experience, Morgan presents a non-dual approach and systemic view of the global challenges before us, offering a wealth of teachings, tools, personal stories, and reflection questions that inspire us to put our deeply held values into action. At the heart of her book is the call to liberation, to find freedom that is within and without, both personally and collectively. “The longer we cling to the notion that there’s a separate self who awakens, the more arduous our path will be,” Morgan writes. “We realize freedom together.”
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Sunday, January 15 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Emme Lund’s The Boy with a Bird in His Chest (Atria) is a “poignantly rendered and illuminating” (The Washington Post) coming-of-age story about “the ways in which family, grief, love, queerness, and vulnerability all intersect” (Kristen Arnett). Though Owen Tanner has never met anyone else who has a chatty bird in their chest, medical forums would call him a Terror. From the moment Gail emerged between Owen’s ribs, his mother knew that she had to hide him away from the world. After a decade spent in isolation, Owen takes a brazen trip outdoors and his life is upended forever. Suddenly, he is forced to flee the home that had once felt so confining and hide in plain sight with his uncle and cousin in Washington. There, he feels the joy of finding a family among friends; of sharing the bird in his chest and being embraced fully; of falling in love and feeling the devastating heartbreak of rejection before finding a spark of happiness in the most unexpected place; of living his truth regardless of how hard the thieves of joy may try to tear him down. But the threat of the Army of Acronyms is a constant, looming presence, making Owen wonder if he’ll ever find a way out of the cycle of fear. “An honest celebration of life and everything we need right now in a book” (Andrew Sean Greer), The Boy with a Bird in His Chest grapples with the fear, depression, and feelings of isolation that come with believing that we will never be loved for who we truly are and learning to live fully and openly regardless. Lund will be joined in conversation by Vanessa Friedman, writer, teacher, and community editor at Autostraddle.
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Tuesday, January 17 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
At first, Erika Bolstad knew only one thing about her great-grandmother, Anna: she was a homesteader on the North Dakota prairies in the early 1900s before her husband committed her to an asylum under mysterious circumstances. As Erika's mother was dying, she revealed more. Their family still owned the mineral rights to Anna's land — and oil companies were interested in the black gold beneath the prairies. Their family, Erika learned, could get rich thanks to the legacy of a woman nearly lost to history. Anna left no letters or journals, and very few photographs of her had survived. But Erika was drawn to the young woman who never walked free of the asylum that imprisoned her. As a journalist well versed in the effects of fossil fuels on climate change, Erika felt the dissonance of what she knew and the barely acknowledged whisper that had followed her family across the Great Plains for generations: we could be rich. Desperate to learn more about her great-grandmother and the oil industry that changed the face of the American West forever, Erika set out for North Dakota to unearth what she could of the past. What she discovers is a land of boom-and-bust cycles and families trying their best to eke out a living in an unforgiving landscape, bringing to life the ever-present American question: What does it mean to be rich? Windfall: The Prairie Woman Who Lost Her Way and the Great-Granddaughter Who Found Her (Sourcebooks) is Erika Bolstad’s book about her family's buried past and its dark connection to the promised land of the American West. Bolstad will be joined in conversation by Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State.
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Monday, January 23 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Running saved Alison Désir’s life. At rock bottom and searching for meaning and structure, Désir started marathon training, finding that it vastly improved both her physical and mental health. Yet as she became involved in the community and learned its history, she realized that the sport was largely built with white people in mind. Running While Black (Portfolio) draws on Désir’s experience as an endurance athlete, activist, and mental health advocate to explore why the seemingly simple, human act of long distance running for exercise and health has never been truly open to Black people. Weaving historical context — from the first recreational running boom to the horrific murder of Ahmaud Arbery — together with her own story of growth in the sport, Désir unpacks how we got here and advocates for a world where everyone is free to safely experience the life-changing power of movement. As America reckons with its history of white supremacy across major institutions, Désir argues that, as a litmus test for an inclusive society, the fitness industry has the opportunity to lead the charge — fulfilling its promise of empowerment. Désir will be joined in conversation by Peter Bromka, a runner and writer from Portland.
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Tuesday, January 24 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Deb Perelman is the author of two bestselling cookbooks (The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook and Smitten Kitchen Every Day), one of the internet's most successful food bloggers, the creator of a homegrown brand with more than a million Instagram followers, and the self-taught cook with the tiny kitchen who obsessively tests her recipes to make sure that no bowls are wasted and that the results are always worth the effort. In her new book, Smitten Kitchen Keepers: New Classics for Your Forever Files (Knopf), Perelman gives us 100 recipes (including a few favorites from her site) that aim to make shopping easier, preparation more practical and enjoyable, and food more reliably delicious for the home cook. These are the fail-safe, satisfying recipes you’ll rely on for years to come — from Perelman’s forever files to yours. Perelman will be joined in conversation by Liz Crain, author of Food Lover's Guide to Portland and Dumplings Equal Love.
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Wednesday, January 25 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Provocative, poignant, and resoundingly hilarious, Kevin Maloney’s The Red-Headed Pilgrim (Two Dollar Radio) is the tragicomic tale of an anxious red-head and his sordid pursuit of enlightenment and pleasure (not necessarily in that order). On a sunny day in a business park near Portland, Oregon, 42-year-old web developer Kevin Maloney is in the throes of an existential crisis that finds him shoeless in a field of Queen Anne’s lace, reflecting on the tumultuous events that brought him to this moment. Growing up in the suburbs, young Kevin suffered “a psychological break that ripped me from my humdrum existence” mainlining high fructose corn syrup and episodes of The Golden Girls. Thus begins a journey of hard-earned insights and sexual awakening that takes Kevin from angst-ridden Beaverton to the beaches of San Diego, a frontier-themed roadside attraction in Helena, Montana, and a hermetic shack on an organic lettuce farm. Everything changes when Kevin falls in love with Wendy. After a chance tarot reading lands them on the frigid coast of Maine, their lives are unsettled by the birth of their daughter, Zoë, whose sudden presence is oftentimes terrifying, frequently disturbing, and yet — miraculously — always wondrous. The Red-Headed Pilgrim is an irresistible novel of misadventure and new beginnings, of wanderlust and bad decisions, of parenthood and divorce, and of the heartfelt truths we unearth when we least expect it. Maloney will be joined in conversation by Jon Raymond, author of Denial.
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Monday, January 30 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
From Stephen Markley, author of Ohio, comes a masterful American epic charting a near future approaching collapse and a nascent but strengthening solidarity. In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters — a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot, and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come. From the Gulf Coast to Los Angeles, the Midwest to Washington, DC, their intertwined odysseys unfold against a stark backdrop of accelerating chaos as they summon courage, galvanize a nation, fall to their own fear, and find wild hope in the face of staggering odds. As their stories hurtle toward a spectacular climax, each faces a reckoning: what will they sacrifice to salvage humanity’s last chance at a future? A singular achievement, The Deluge (Simon & Schuster) is a once-in-a-generation novel that meets the moment as few works of art ever have. Markley will be joined in conversation by Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise and American War.
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Tuesday, January 31 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
The nine stories in Morgan Thomas’s shimmering debut collection witness Southern queer and genderqueer characters determined to find themselves reflected in the annals of history, whatever the cost. As Thomas’s subjects trace deceit and violence through Southern tall tales and their own pasts, their journeys reveal the porous boundaries of body, land, and history, and the sometimes ruthless awakenings of self-discovery. A trans woman finds her independence with the purchase of a pregnancy bump; a young Virginian flees their relationship, choosing instead to immerse themself in the life of an intersex person from Colonial-era Jamestown. A writer tries to evade the murky and violent legacy of an ancestor who supposedly disappeared into a midwifery bag, and in the uncanny title story, a young trans person brings home a replacement daughter for their elderly father. Winding between reinvention and remembrance, transition and transcendence, these origin stories resound across centuries. With warm, meticulous emotional intelligence, Thomas uncovers how the stories we borrow to understand ourselves in turn shape the people we become. Ushering in a new form of queer mythmaking, Manywhere (Picador) introduces a storyteller of uncommon range and talent. Thomas will be joined in conversation by Genevieve Hudson, author of Boys of Alabama.
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Wednesday, February 1 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
From Miriam Toews, author of Women Talking and All My Puny Sorrows, comes a compassionate, darkly humorous, and deeply wise novel about three generations of women. “You’re a small thing,” Grandma writes, “and you must learn to fight.” Swiv’s Grandma, Elvira, has been fighting all her life. From her upbringing in a strict religious community, she has fought those who wanted to take away her joy, her independence, and her spirit. She has fought to make peace with her loved ones when they have chosen to leave her. And now, even as her health fails, Grandma is fighting for her family: for her daughter, partnerless and in the third term of a pregnancy; and for her granddaughter Swiv, a spirited 9-year-old who has been suspended from school. Cramped together in their Toronto home, on the precipice of extraordinary change, Grandma and Swiv undertake a vital new project, setting out to explain their lives in letters they will never send. Alternating between the exuberant, precocious voice of young Swiv and her irrepressible, tenacious Grandma, Fight Night (Bloomsbury) is a love letter to mothers and grandmothers, and to all the women who are still fighting — painfully, ferociously — for a way to live on their own terms. Toews will be joined in conversation by Chelsea Bieker, author of Heartbroke and Godshot.
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Friday, February 3 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
When your dream and creative passion is to write, how do you succeed without selling out or selling yourself short? Ariel Gore has spent her life solving this puzzle, writing and organizing her way towards a creative utopian vision, where storytelling is a form of resistance and writing is an outsider art. In The Wayward Writer (Microcosm), the follow-up to How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead, Gore offers a lyrical call to literary revolution paired with practical exercises. Through her own experiences and interviews with other authors, publishers, and agents, she shows you how to chart your own creative education, vanquish shame and imposter syndrome, cast off oppression, cast a spell on your readers, step into your unique powers, and build your own literary community where respect and honesty reign — and where you can be a writer and survive. Gore presents an alternative narrative structure to the patriarchal hero's journey, with a focus on tapping into myths and hidden places. She urges us to not be precious about where or when we write, or to apologize for who and what we are, or to stop short of telling the truth about our lives. The result is an impossible-to-ignore rallying cry for writing dangerously to create a liberatory literary utopia — and a helpful guide through the thorny landscape of publishing your work. Gore will be joined in conversation by Laura Stanfill, Forest Avenue Press publisher and author of Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary; Vanessa Veselka, author of The Great Offshore Grounds; and Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks.
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Tuesday, February 7 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: the Berlin Wall fell, and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. Landlines fell to cell phones, the internet exploded, and pop culture accelerated without the aid of technology that remembered everything. It was the last era with a real mainstream to either identify with or oppose. The '90s brought about a revolution in the human condition, and a shift in consciousness, that we’re still struggling to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job. In The Nineties (Penguin), Klosterman dissects the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the pre-9/11 politics, the changes regarding race and class and sexuality, the yin/yang of Oprah and Alan Greenspan, and (almost) everything else. The result is a multidimensional masterpiece, a work of synthesis so smart and delightful that future historians might well refer to this entire period as Klostermanian.
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Saturday, February 18 @ 10:30am (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Marcia Berneger’s Busy Feet (Starry Forest) makes wiggling around and learning opposites a blast. Little ones will be itching to join the party as the characters dance, hop, and march along! Feet wake up, Time to play. Happy feet, Out all day! Follow along as adorable baby feet move through a busy day. Where do these feet go? How do they get there? What exciting activities will they get up to? See just how busy little feet can be at playtime, bath time, and more!
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Thursday, March 2 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Daisy sees dead people — something impossible to forget in bustling, ghost-packed Toronto. She usually manages to deal with her unwanted ability, but she’s completely unprepared to be dumped by her boyfriend. So when her mother inherits a secluded mansion in northern Ontario where she spent her childhood summers, Daisy jumps at the chance to escape. But the house is nothing like Daisy expects, and she begins to realize that her experience with the supernatural might be no match for her mother’s secrets, nor what lurks within these walls. A decade later, Brittney is desperate to get out from under the thumb of her abusive mother, a bestselling author who claims her stay at “Miracle Mansion” allowed her to see the error of her ways. But Brittney knows that’s nothing but a sham. She decides the new season of her popular Haunted web series will uncover what happened to a young Black girl in the mansion ten years prior and finally expose her mother’s lies. But as she gets more wrapped up in the investigation, she’ll have to decide: if she can only bring one story to light, which one matters most — Daisy’s or her own? As Brittney investigates the mansion in the present, Daisy’s story runs parallel in the past, both timelines propelling the girls to face the most dangerous monsters of all: those that hide in plain sight. The Haunting of Hill House meets Sadie in Delicious Monsters (Margaret K. McElderry), Liselle Sambury’s evocative and mind-bending new psychological thriller. Sambury will be joined in conversation by Aiden Thomas, author of The Sunbearer Trials.
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Monday, March 20 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
In the tradition of Educated and The Glass Castle, Michelle Dowd’s Forager (Algonquin) is a shattering and poetic memoir telling the story of her experience in an apocalyptic cult, and how understanding the natural world was her key to escape — and survival. As a child, Dowd grew up on a mountain in the Angeles National Forest. She was born into an ultra-religious cult — or the Field as they called it — started in the 1930s by her grandfather, a mercurial, domineering, and charismatic man who convinced generations of young male followers that he would live 500 years and ascend to the heavens when doomsday came. Comfort and care are sins, Dowd is told. As a result, she was forced to learn the skills necessary to battle hunger, thirst, and cold; she learned to trust animals more than humans; and most importantly, she learned how to survive in the natural world. At the Field, a young Dowd lives a life of abuse, poverty, and isolation, as she obeys her family’s rigorous religious and patriarchal rules — which are so extreme that Dowd is convinced her mother would sacrifice her, like Abraham and Isaac, if instructed by God. She often wears the same clothes for months at a time; she is often ill and always hungry for both love and food. She is taught not to trust Outsiders, and especially not Quitters, nor her own body and its warnings. But as Dowd gets older, she realizes she has the strength to break free. Using stories of individual edible plants and their uses to anchor each chapter, Forager is both a searing coming-of-age story and a meditation on the ways in which understanding nature can lead to freedom, even joy. Dowd will be joined in conversation by Liz Prato, author of Kids in America: A Gen X Reckoning.
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