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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Thursday, October 6 @ 5pm (PT)
In a future much nearer than you think, where scientific experimentation is exploited for commercial profit, unwisely under-supervised cutting-edge technology creates a menace that threatens the very fabric of human existence. Wrath (Union Square) — by Shäron Moalem (Survival of the Sickest) and Daniel Kraus (The Living Dead) — is the story of a lab rat instilled with human genes whose supersized intelligence helps him to engineer his escape into the world outside the lab: a world vastly ill-equipped to deal with the menace he represents. Modified through advances that have boosted his awareness of humankind’s cruelty in the name of science, and endowed with a rat’s natural proclivity to procreate regularly, Sammy has the potential to sire a rodent army capable of viciously overwhelming the human race. Moalem and Kraus will be joined in conversation by Grady Hendrix, author of The Final Girl Support Group.
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Monday, October 10 @ 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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Monday, October 10 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
In this prequel to They Both Die at the End, two new strangers spend a life-changing day together after Death-Cast first makes their fateful calls. It's the night before Death-Cast goes live, and there's one question on everyone's mind: Can Death-Cast actually predict when someone will die, or is it just an elaborate hoax? Orion Pagan has waited years for someone to tell him that he's going to die. He has a serious heart condition, and he signed up for Death-Cast so he could know what's coming. Valentino Prince is restarting his life in New York. He has a long and promising future ahead and he only registered for Death-Cast after his twin sister nearly died in a car accident. Orion and Valentino cross paths in Times Square and immediately feel a deep connection. But when the first round of End Day calls goes out, their lives are changed forever — one of them receives a call, and the other doesn't. Though neither boy is certain how the day will end, they know they want to spend it together… even if that means their goodbye will be heartbreaking. Told with Adam Silvera's signature bittersweet touch, The First to Die at the End (Quill Tree) celebrates the lasting impact that people have on each other and proves that life is always worth living to the fullest. Silvera will be joined in conversation by Aiden Thomas, author of The Sunbearer Trials.
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Monday, October 10 @ 7:30pm (PT) / Revolution Hall
We are sorry to report that this event has been cancelled.
From Jodi Picoult, the bestselling author of Wish You Were Here, and Jennifer Finney Boylan, the bestselling author of She’s Not There, comes a soul-stirring novel about what we choose to keep from our past, and what we choose to leave behind. Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life — living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising a beautiful son, Asher — was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in, and taking over her father's beekeeping business. Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start. And for just a short while, these new beginnings are exactly what Olivia and Lily need. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can’t help but fall for him, too. With Ash, she feels happy for the first time. Yet at times, she wonders if she can trust him completely. Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But she would be lying if she didn’t acknowledge the flashes of his father’s temper in him, and as the case against him unfolds, she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her. Picoult and Boylan’s Mad Honey (Ballantine) is a riveting novel of suspense, an unforgettable love story, and a moving and powerful exploration of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves.
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Tuesday, October 11 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Isaac Fitzgerald has lived many lives. He's been an altar boy, a bartender, a fat kid, a smuggler, a biker, a prince of New England. But before all that, he was a bomb that exploded his parents’ lives — or so he was told. In Dirtbag, Massachusetts (Bloomsbury), Fitzgerald, with warmth and humor, recounts his ongoing search for forgiveness, a more far-reaching vision of masculinity, and a more expansive definition of family and self. Fitzgerald’s memoir-in-essays begins with a childhood that moves at breakneck speed from safety to violence, recounting an extraordinary pilgrimage through trauma to self-understanding and, ultimately, acceptance. From growing up in a Boston homeless shelter to bartending in San Francisco, from smuggling medical supplies into Burma to his lifelong struggle to make peace with his body, Fitzgerald strives to take control of his own story: one that aims to put aside anger, isolation, and entitlement to embrace the idea that one can be generous to oneself by being generous to others. Gritty and clear-eyed, loud-hearted and beautiful, Dirtbag, Massachusetts is a rollicking book that might also be a lifeline. Fitzgerald will be joined in conversation by Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State.
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Friday, October 14 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Throughout his adult life, whether he was opening a Seattle record store in the '90s or touring the world as the only non-white band member in alternative rock bands, Nabil Ayers felt the shadow and legacy of his father's musical genius, and his race, everywhere. In 1971, a white, Jewish, former ballerina chose to have a child with the famous Black jazz musician Roy Ayers, fully expecting and agreeing that he would not be involved in the child's life. In his highly original memoir, My Life in the Sunshine (Viking), their son, Nabil Ayers, recounts a life spent living with the aftermath of that decision, and his journey to build an identity of his own despite and in spite of his father’s absence. Growing up, Nabil only meets his father a handful of times. But Roy’s influence is strong, showing itself in Nabil’s instinctual love of music, and later, in the music industry — Nabil’s chosen career path. By turns hopeful — wanting to connect with the man who passed down his genetic predisposition for musical talent — and frustrated with Roy’s continued emotional distance, Nabil struggles with how much DNA can define a family… and a person. Unable to fully connect with Roy, Nabil ultimately discovers the existence of several half-siblings as well as a paternal ancestor who was enslaved. Following these connections, Nabil meets and befriends the descendant of the plantation owner, which, strangely, paves the way for him to make meaningful connections with extended family he never knew existed. Despite his father's absence, Nabil, through sheer will and a drive to understand his roots, redefines what family truly is. Ayers will be joined in conversation by award-winning filmmaker Alicia J. Rose.
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Friday, October 14 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Daughter of Darkness (Del Rey) is the thrilling second novel of an all-new fantasy series from Terry Brooks, the legendary author behind the Shannara saga, about a human girl adapting to her place in a magical world she's only recently discovered. It’s been two years since Auris escaped from the sinister Goblin prison and learned of her heritage as one of the Fae. She is now happily partnered with her Fae lover Harrow and deeply bonded with her new family. All seems to be going perfectly — until, surprisingly, the Goblin attacks begin again. Someone, it seems, has not forgotten that Auris exists and seems determined to retrieve her… but who? And why? As Auris begins to dig deeper into the mystery, old friends and new enemies appear, and Auris begins to realize that her still-shrouded past must contain the answers she needs. But even she does not suspect how far down the rabbit hole she is about to go until Harrow is taken and an impossible ransom demand is issued. Then, with two new companions at her side, Auris must attempt to unlock the remaining secrets of her past. For if she cannot, she will never see Harrow alive again.
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Saturday, October 15 @ 2pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Many of us have heard these three words: Black Panther Party. Some know the Party's history as a movement for the social, political, economic, and spiritual upliftment of Black and indigenous people of color — but few know the story of the backbone of the Party: the women. It's estimated that six out of ten Panther Party members were women. While these remarkable women of all ages and diverse backgrounds were regularly making headlines agitating, protesting, and organizing, off-stage these same women were building communities and enacting social justice, providing food, housing, education, healthcare, and more. Comrade Sisters (ACC Art Books) is their story, combining photos by Stephen Shames, who at the time was a 20-year-old college student at Berkeley, and moving text by Ericka Huggins, an early Party member and leader along with Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, sharing what drew so many women to the Party and focusing on their monumental work on behalf of the most vulnerable citizens. Shames and Huggins will be joined in conversation by San Francisco Bay Area community leader Katherine Campbell.
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Monday, October 17 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Governor Barbara Roberts has been advocating for equity since the first time she spoke up for her autistic son’s educational rights while attending a local school board meeting. This began her career as a public speaker, leading to her political work for more than 50 years. Over the years, she has been speaking out as a strong advocate for numerous causes: disability rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, environmental concerns, death with dignity rights, equality and respect for all, and more. Today at 85 years old, Roberts continues to speak publicly, passionately, a voice for equity, whether at keynote speeches, commencement addresses, political rallies and endorsements for candidates and issues, leadership conferences, Ted X presentations, or any other gathering rallying for fairness and insight. A Voice for Equity (NewSage Press) is a collection of Roberts’s compelling speeches that span her years as a public servant, including her term as the 34th Governor of Oregon. Governor Roberts will be joined in conversation by Kerry Tymchuk, Executive Director of the Oregon Historical Society.
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Monday, October 17 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Fifty-four years have passed since Crow Tallin, the catastrophic celestial event that merged Fayün and the human world. One devastating result of that cataclysm is that most human babies are born fused with fay spirits. The Mystics of Kelt Apar, once beloved, are blamed for this worldwide phenomenon. On the island of Moth, the Barons have declared the Myst illegal and imprisoned all Mystics under house arrest. Under the watchful eyes of deadly Hunters, a much-older Pomella AnDone now lives as a prisoner at Kelt Apar with her granddaughter and apprentice Mia, as well as the rapidly declining High Mystic of Moth, Yarina Sineese. When the time comes to conduct the ceremony intended to pass the title of High Mystic from Yarina to her successor Vivianna, something goes horribly wrong, leaving the lineage of Mystics in doubt. With new rivals seeking to claim Moth for their own, Pomella must undergo a dangerous dreamwalk into the mind-bending and heart-wrenching Mystic Skies in order to learn the mystical name of the island itself. In Mystic Skies (Tor), the epic conclusion to Jason Denzel’s The Mystic Trilogy, Pomella must confront her greatest and most personal challenge yet. For the Deep mysteries of the world will reveal themselves only to the most powerful and dedicated of Mystics.
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Tuesday, October 18 @ 5pm (PT)
From Annie Duke, the bestselling author of Thinking in Bets, comes a toolkit for mastering the skill of quitting to achieve greater success. Business leaders, with millions of dollars down the drain, struggle to abandon a new app or product that just isn’t working. Governments, caught in a hopeless conflict, believe that the next tactic will finally be the one that wins the war. And in our own lives, we persist in relationships or careers that no longer serve us. Why? According to Duke, in the face of tough decisions, we’re terrible quitters. And that is significantly holding us back. In Quit (Portfolio), Duke teaches you how to get good at quitting. Drawing on stories from elite athletes like Mount Everest climbers, founders of leading companies like Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack, and top entertainers like Dave Chappelle, Duke explains why quitting is integral to success, as well as strategies for determining when to hold em, and when to fold em, that will save you time, energy, and money. Whether you’re facing a make-or-break business decision or life-altering personal choice, mastering the skill of quitting will help you make the best next move. Duke will be joined in conversation by David Epstein, author of Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.
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Tuesday, October 18 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
For readers of Yaa Gyasi and Imbolo Mbue, an English-language debut of a major African writer that dazzles as it devastates, offering an intimate look at three generations of a Cameroonian village as its people attempt to make sense of an inherited past and the complexities of belonging. Chronicling the beauty and turmoil of a rapidly changing Cameroon, Hemley Boum’s Days Come and Go (Two Lines Press) is the remarkable story of three generations of women both within and beyond its borders. Through the voices of Anna, a matriarch living out her final days in Paris; Abi, Anna’s thoroughly European daughter (at least in her mother’s eyes); and Tina, a teenager who comes under the sway of a militant terrorist faction, Boum’s epic is generous and all-seeing. Brilliantly considering the many issues that dominate her characters’ lives — love and politics, tradition and modernity — Days Come and Go, in Nchanji Njamnsi’s vivid translation, is a page-turner by way of Frantz Fanon and V. S. Naipaul. As passions rise, fall, and rise again, Boum's stirring English-language debut offers a discerning portrait of a nation that never once diminishes the power of everyday human connection. Boum will be joined in conversation by Kesha Ajose-Fisher, author of No God Like the Mother.
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Tuesday, October 18 @ 7:30pm (PT) / Revolution Hall
Pete Souza has spent more time in the Oval Office than almost any person in history. During the Obama administration alone, Souza was inside the presidential bubble for more than 25,000 hours and made nearly 2 million photographs. The result is an unprecedented view of how our democracy really works. Souza's The West Wing and Beyond (Voracious) takes you behind the scenes of consequential moments and introduces the people, places, and traditions that define our nation’s highest office — from the national security staff to the White House groundskeeper. It delivers a new appreciation for the Secret Service, the seriousness of the Situation Room, and even the fun of mini basketball games played in rare moments of downtime outside the Oval. Join former Obama White House Photographer Pete Souza as he presents rarely-seen photographs and tells stories from his new book, The West Wing and Beyond: What I Saw Inside the Presidency.
Please note: Tickets for this event are available in two bundles:
*One admission ticket and one hardcover copy of The West Wing and Beyond is $60 (before service charges)
*Two admission tickets and one hardcover copy of The West Wing and Beyond are $80 (before service charges)
Tickets are available at www.revolutionhall.com. Books distributed at event.
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Thursday, October 20 @ 5pm (PT)
September, 1940: Three women of the Checquy, the secret organization tasked with protecting Britain from supernatural threats, stand in the sky above London and see German aircraft approach. Forbidden by law to interfere, all they can do is watch as their city is bombed. Until Pamela, the most sensible of them, breaks all the rules and brings down a Nazi bomber with her bare hands. The three resolve to tell no one about it, but they soon learn that a crew member is missing from the downed bomber. Charred corpses are discovered in nearby houses and it becomes apparent that the women have unwittingly unleashed a monster. Through a city torn by the Blitz, the friends must hunt the enemy before he kills again. Their task will take them from the tunnels of the Underground to the halls of power, where they will discover the secrets that a secret organization must keep even from itself. Today: Lynette Binns, a librarian with a husband and child, is a late recruit to the Checquy, having discovered only as an adult her ability to electrify everyday objects with her touch. After completing her training, she is assigned to examine a string of brutal murders and quickly realizes that all bear the unmistakable hallmark of her own unique power. Unable to provide an alibi and determined to prove her innocence, she flees, venturing into the London underworld to find answers. But now she is prey, being tracked by her own frighteningly capable comrades. As Lyn fights off powered thugs and her own vengeful colleagues, she will find that the solution to the murders and to the mystery of her own past lies in the events of World War II, and the covert actions of three young women during the Blitz. Daniel O’Malley’s Blitz (Little, Brown) is the riveting new thriller in his Rook Files series. O’Malley will be joined in conversation by Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse and Midnight, Texas fantasy/mystery series.
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Thursday, October 20 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
The 85-mile-long Columbia Gorge forms part of the border between Oregon and Washington and is one of the nation’s most historic and scenic landscapes. Many of the region’s cultural divisions boil over here — urban versus rural, west of the mountains versus east — as well as clashes over private property rights, management of public lands, and tribal treaty rights. In the early 1980s, as a new interstate bridge linked the City of Portland to rural counties in Washington, the Gorge’s renowned vistas were on the brink of destruction. Nancy Russell, 48 years old and with no experience in advocacy, fundraising, or politics, built a grassroots movement that overcame 70 years of failed efforts and bitter opposition from both Oregon and Washington governors, five of the six Gorge counties, 41,000 Gorge residents, and the Reagan administration. While building her campaign, Russell stopped subdivisions, factories, and government neglect through litigation brought by her organization, Friends of the Columbia Gorge, and last-second land purchases by the Trust for Public Land (TPL). Initially ignored, then demonized, Russell’s tires were slashed and her life threatened. The Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act barely passed — on the last day of the congressional session in 1986 — and was signed by a reluctant President Reagan hours before the bill would die. Russell positioned the Friends to be a watchdog and orchestrated the purchase of thousands of acres of land for the public. In A Force for Nature (Oregon State University), Bowen Blair, an attorney, former executive director of Friends of the Columbia Gorge, and TPL senior vice president, brings an insider’s perspective to the tumultuous and inspiring story of this conservation battle. Blair will be joined in conversation by Kevin Gorman, executive director of Friends of the Columbia Gorge.
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Thursday, October 20 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. Her first choice, the dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence, agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man — one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him. By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to. Set in a dark-mirror version of post-war England, Caitlin Starling crafts a new kind of gothic horror from the bones of the beloved canon. The Death of Jane Lawrence (St. Martin’s Griffin) is a Crimson Peak-inspired story assembling, then upending, every expectation set in place by Shirley Jackson and Rebecca, and will leave readers shaken, desperate to begin again as soon as they are finished. Starling will be joined in conversation by Madeleine Roux, author of The Book of Living Secrets.
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Monday, October 24 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
As wildfires char the American West, extreme weather transforms landscapes, glaciers retreat, and climate zones shift, we are undeniably experiencing the effects of the climate crisis in more and more destructive ways. Climate change is impacting every inhabited region of the world, but there is much we can still do. Unsettling (Broadleaf) explores human impacts on the environment through science, popular culture, personal narrative, and landscape. Using the stories of animals, landscapes, and people who have exhibited resilience in the face of persistent colonization across the North American continent, science writer Elizabeth Weinberg explores how climate change is a direct result of white supremacy, colonialism, sexism, and heteronormativity. Travel through the deep sea; along Louisiana's vanishing bayous; down the Colorado, Mississippi, and Potomac rivers; and over the Cascade Mountains, and examine how we as humans, particularly white humans, have drawn a stark line between human and animal, culture and nature, in order to exploit anything and anyone we find useful. With gorgeous and pointed prose, Weinberg weaves together science, personal essay, history, and pop culture to propose a new way of thinking about climate change — one that is rooted in queerness and antiracism. Weinberg will be joined in conversation by Chelsea Biondolillo, author of The Skinned Bird.
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Tuesday, October 25 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Edited by author, actress, and activist Amber Tamblyn, Listening in the Dark (Park Row) is an anthology on women’s intuition, with essays by Amy Poehler, Samantha Irby, Jia Tolentino, Jessica Valenti, US Poet Laureate Ada Limón, America Ferrera, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, and others. Have you ever had a feeling about something that you just couldn’t explain? Something that was telling you in your gut what decision to make, which direction to go in, or what to believe. Most women are taught from an early age to ignore their intuition in favor of making logical, evidence-based decisions. But what if that small voice or deeper knowing was your greatest power? In a time when women are revolutionizing politics, entertainment, healthcare, and other industries, it’s critical to reclaim intuition as a vital and sustainable tool. Listening in the Dark is a compilation of some of the most striking women visionaries in literature, science, art, education, medicine, and politics, sharing their insights and reflections on learning how to follow their own gut reactions in pivotal, crossroad moments. Filled with deeply personal and revelatory stories by some of today’s greatest minds, Listening in the Dark will empower readers to reconnect with their intuition as a precious resource in becoming their best selves. Tamblyn will be joined in conversation by Listening in the Dark contributors Lidia Yuknavitch, Dr. Mindy Nettifee, and Dr. Nicole Apelian.
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Tuesday, October 25 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Christopher M. Hood’s The Revivalists (Harper) is a stunning debut novel about a couple’s harrowing journey across a ravaged America to save their daughter. Bill and Penelope are the lucky ones. Not only do they survive the Shark Flu emerging from the melting Icelandic permafrost to sweep like a scythe across the world, but they begin to rebuild a life in the wreckage of the old. A garden to feed themselves planted where the lawn used to be, a mattress pulled down to the living room fireplace for warmth. Even Bill’s psychology practice endures the collapse of the social order, the handful of remaining clients bartering cans of food for their sessions. But when their daughter’s voice over the radio in the kitchen announces that she’s joined a cult three thousand miles away in Bishop, California, they leave it all behind to embark on a perilous trek across the hollowed-out remains of America to save her. Their journey is an unforgettable odyssey through communities scattered across the continent, but for all the ways that the world has changed, the hopes and fears of this little family remain the same as they always have been. In The Revivalists, Hood creates a haunting, moving, darkly funny, and ultimately hopeful portrait of a world and a marriage tested by extraordinary circumstances.
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Wednesday, October 26 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Shane Burley’s ¡No Pasarán! (AK Press) is an anthology of antifascist writing that takes up the fight against white supremacy and the far-right from multiple angles. From the history of antifascism to today's movement to identify, deplatform, and confront the right, and the ways an insurgent fascism is growing within capitalist democracies, a myriad of voices come together to shape the new face of antifascism in a moment of social and political flux. Burley will be joined in conversation by contributors Mic Crenshaw, independent hip hop artist, emcee, poet, educator, and activist; Alexander Reid Ross, geographer, executive committee member of the Global Network for Research on the Far Right, and adjunct professor at Portland State University; and Abner Hauge, founder/editor of Left Coast Right Watch (LCRW).
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Thursday, October 27 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Over the last two decades, a fringe plan to call a convention under the Constitution's amendment mechanism — the nation's first ever — has inched through statehouses. Delegates, like those in Philadelphia two centuries ago, would exercise nearly unlimited authority to draft changes to our fundamental law, potentially altering anything from voting and free speech rights to regulatory and foreign policy powers. Such a watershed moment would present great danger, and for some, great power. In their important new book, The Constitution in Jeopardy (PublicAffairs), former U. S. Senator Russ Feingold and legal scholar Peter Prindiville distill extensive legal and historical research and examine the grave risks inherent in this effort. But they also consider the role of constitutional amendment in modern life. Though many focus solely on judicial and electoral avenues for change, such an approach is at odds with a cornerstone ideal of the Founding: that the People make constitutional law, directly. In an era defined by faction and rejection of long-held norms, The Constitution in Jeopardy examines the nature of constitutional change and asks urgent questions about what American democracy is, and should be.
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Friday, October 28 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
When wellness teachers and husband-wife duo Chelsey Luger and Thosh Collins founded their Indigenous wellness initiative, Well for Culture, they extended an invitation to all to honor their whole self through Native wellness philosophies and practices. In reclaiming this ancient wisdom for health and wellbeing — drawing from traditions spanning multiple tribes — they developed the Seven Circles, a holistic model for modern living rooted in timeless teachings from their ancestors. Luger and Collins have introduced this universally adaptable template for living well to Ivy league universities and corporations like Nike, Adidas, and Google, and now make it available to everyone in their wise guide. In The Seven Circles (HarperOne), Luger and Collins share intimate stories from their life journeys growing up in tribal communities, from the Indigenous tradition of staying active and spiritually centered through running and dance, to the universal Indigenous emphasis on a light-filled, minimalist home to create sacred space. The Seven Circles teaches us how to connect with nature, with our community, and with ourselves, and to integrate ancient Indigenous philosophies of health and wellbeing into our own lives to find healing and balance. Luger and Collins will be joined in conversation by Sam McCracken, General Manager of Nike N7.
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Tuesday, November 1 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Toad (MCD) is a previously unpublished novel of the reflections of a deeply scarred and reclusive woman, from cult icon Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love. Sally Gunnar has been in love, has been mad, has been an agent of destruction, has been spurned; and now she has retreated from the world. She lives in isolation in her small house, where her only companions are a vase of goldfish, a garden toad, and the door-to-door salesman who sells her cleaning supplies once a month. From her comfortable perch, she broods over her deepest regrets: her wayward, weed-hazy college days; her blighted romance with a scornful poet; a tragically comic accident involving a paper cutter; a suicide attempt; and her decision to ultimately relinquish a conventional life. Colorful, crass, and profound, Toad is Dunn’s ode to her time as a student at Reed College, filled with the same keen observations, taboo-shirking verve, and singular characters that made Geek Love a cult classic. Daring and bizarre, Toad is a brilliant precursor to the book that would make Dunn a misfit hero — even 50-some years after it was written, it’s a refreshing take on the lives of young outsiders treading the delicate lines between isolation and freedom, love and insanity, hatred and friendship. This special book launch event will feature a conversation between Toad editor Naomi Huffman and Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State. This event is cosponsored by Lewis & Clark Special Collections and Archives.
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Tuesday, November 1 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Alison Cochrun, author of the “swoon-worthy debut” (Harper’s Bazaar), The Charm Offensive, returns with a festive romantic comedy about a woman who fakes an engagement with her landlord… only to fall for his sister. One year ago, recent Portland transplant Ellie Oliver had her dream job in animation and a Christmas Eve meet-cute with a woman at a bookstore that led her to fall in love over the course of a single night. But after a betrayal the next morning and the loss of her job soon after, she finds herself adrift, alone, and desperate for money. Finding work at a local coffee shop, she’s just getting through the days — until Andrew, the shop’s landlord, proposes a shocking, drunken plan: a marriage of convenience that will give him his recent inheritance and alleviate Ellie’s financial woes and isolation. They make a plan to spend the holidays together at his family cabin to keep up the ruse. But when Andrew introduces his new fiancée to his sister, Ellie is shocked to discover it’s Jack — the mysterious woman she fell for over the course of one magical Christmas Eve the year before. Now, Ellie must choose between the safety of a fake relationship and the risk of something real. Cochrun’s new novel, Kiss Her Once for Me (Atria), is the queer holiday rom-com that you’ll want to cozy up with next to the fire. Cochrun will be joined in conversation by Anita Kelly, author of Love & Other Disasters.
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Wednesday, November 2 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
From Penn Jillette — of the legendary magic duo Penn & Teller — comes a rollicking crime caper that will bend your mind like a spoon. Two weeks before his 21st birthday, Las Vegas native Bobby Ingersoll finds out he’s inherited a crushing gambling debt from his scumbag father. The debt is owed to an even scummier bag named Fraser Ruphart, who oversees his bottom-rung criminal empire from the classy-adjacent Trump International Hotel. Bobby’s prospects of paying off the note, which comes due the day he turns 21, are about as dim as the sign on the hotel’s facade. The two weeks pass in the blink of a (snake) eye, but before Bobby’s luck runs out, he stumbles upon enough cash to pay off Ruphart and change his family’s fortune. More importantly, he finds himself with a new, for lack of a better word, faith. Bobby does not consign his big break to a “higher power” — what Penn Jillette hero ever could? Instead, he devises and devotes himself to Random, a philosophy where his life choices are based entirely on the roll of his “lucky” dice. What follows is a rollicking exploration into not so much what defines us as what divines us when we give over every decision — from what to eat to whom to marry to how or when to die — to the random fall of two numbered cubes. Random (Akashic) combines the intellectual curiosity of Richard Dawkins with the humor and grit of an Elmore Leonard antihero. Jillette’s up-on-his-luck Ingersoll is the character we need to help us navigate the chaos of the post-truth era. Well, unless his roll runs cold.
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Friday, November 4 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
It’s almost a decade after the Great Recession, and in Colorado, St. Anthony Sausage has not recovered. Neither have its employees: a laid-off railway engineer, an exiled computer whiz, a young woman estranged from her infant daughter, an older man with cancer who lacks health care. As these low-wage workers interact under the supervision of the factory’s owner and his quietly rebellious daughter, they come to understand that in America’s postindustrial landscape, although they may help or comfort each other, they also have to do what’s best for themselves. Over the course of twelve interrelated stories in Bratwurst Haven (West Virginia University), Rachel King gives life to diverse, complex, and authentic characters who are linked through the sausage factory and through their daily lives in a vividly rendered small town in Boulder County. The internal and external struggles of Bratwurst Haven’s population are immediately and intimately relatable and resonant: these people seek answers within the world they inhabit while questioning what it means to want more from their lives. King will be joined in conversation by Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light.
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Thursday, November 10 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
June 1941. Hitler’s armies race toward vulnerable Leningrad. In a matter of weeks, the Nazis surround the city, cut off the food supply, and launch a vicious bombardment. Widowed violinist Sofya Karavayeva and her teenage granddaughter, Yelena, are cornered in the crumbling city. On Leningrad’s outskirts, Admiral Vasili Antonov defends his homeland and fights for a future with Sofya. Meanwhile, Yelena’s soldier fiancé transports food across the Ice Road — part of the desperate effort to save Leningrad. With their help, the two women inch toward survival, but the war still exacts a steep personal price, even as Sofya’s reckoning with a family secret threatens to finish what Hitler started. Equal parts war epic, family saga, and love story, Suzanne Parry’s Lost Souls of Leningrad (She Writes Press) brings to vivid life this little-known chapter of World War II in a tale of two remarkable women — grandmother and granddaughter — separated by years and experience but of one heart in their devotion to each other and the men they love. Neither the oppression of Stalin nor the brutality of Hitler can destroy their courage, compassion, or will in this testament to resilience. Parry will be joined in conversation by Laura Stanfill, author of Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary and the publisher of Forest Avenue Press, and Suzy Vitello, author of Faultland.
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Tuesday, November 15 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
In her debut work, Where We Call Home: Lands, Seas, and Skies of the Pacific Northwest (Ooligan Press), Josephine Woolington turns back the clock to review the events that have challenged Pacific Northwest wildlife in an effort to provide a deeper sense of place. Only then can we imagine how these imperious effects might be overcome. Join Woolington as she sheds light on the diverse species whose populations are slowly declining from the lands, seas, and skies of the Pacific Northwest. Only by acknowledging this truth can we understand that our impact on the Earth is deeper and far more significant than we ever imagined. Through interviews with local educators, Indigenous leaders, scientists, and artists from the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, the Haida Nation, the Yakama Nation, the Makah Tribe, and beyond, we are invited to decenter our singular perspective in favor of a more empathic, collective approach. The flora and fauna of the Pacific Northwest are resilient. As they adapt to a world far removed from its wonders, we must realize our own interconnectedness to nature and to one another. Woolington colors the rich history of the Pacific Northwest within the eye of its beholder so that society can learn to live intentionally in the land that sustains us all. From the coastal tailed frog to the sandhill crane, the yellow-cedar to the camas flower, these stories reimagine what it means to live mindfully in the colorful region we call home. Woolington and Where We Call Home illustrator Ramon Shiloh will be joined in conversation by Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts.
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Thursday, November 17 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
In 1990, though no one knew it then, a fearless group of players changed the sport of soccer in the United States forever. Young, bronzed, and mulleted, they were America’s finest athletes in a sport that America loved to hate. Even sportswriters rooted against them. Yet this team defied massive odds and qualified for the World Cup, making possible America’s current obsession with the world’s most popular game. In this era, a U.S. Soccer Federation head coach had a better-paying day job as a black-tie restaurant waiter. Players earned $20 a day. The crowd at home games cheered for their opponent, and the fields were even mismarked. In Latin America, the U.S. team bus had a machine gun turret mounted on the back, locals would sabotage their hotel, and in the stadiums spectators would rain coins, batteries, and plastic bags of urine down on the American players. The world considered the U.S. team to be total imposters — the Milli Vanilli of soccer. Yet on the biggest stage of all, in the 1990 World Cup, this undaunted American squad and their wise coach earned the adoration of Italy’s star players and their fans in a gladiator-like match in Rome’s deafening Stadio Olimpico. From windswept soccer fields in the U.S. heartland to the CIA-infested cauldron of Central America and the Caribbean, behind the recently toppled Iron Curtain and into the great European soccer cathedrals, award-winning journalist and editor Adam Elder’s New Kids in the World Cup (University of Nebraska Press) is the origin story of modern American soccer in a time when power ballads were inescapable and mainstream America was discovering hip-hop. It’s the true adventure of America’s most important soccer team, which made possible everything that’s come since — including America finally falling in love with soccer. Elder will be joined in conversation by Shawn Levy, author of In on the Joke. This event is cosponsored by Booked! A 107ist Library.
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Saturday, November 19 @ 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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Sunday, November 20 @ 2pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Leanne Grabel’s Brontosaurus Illustrated (Opiate Books) is the story of a rape, now 50 years old, and its effects over five decades. Nina Gold was a 19-year-old Stanford sophomore riding a full math scholarship to the American dream. But her avid quest was trampled one spring break — like an ant by a boot — when she was kidnapped and raped at gunpoint on a Baja beach, a trauma the size of a brontosaurus. It began when two armed men in ski masks slithered out of the shrubbery as Nina and her friends were enjoying a joint and the sunset. They were tied up and stowed in the back of their own van, then raped on the sand. Of course, everything was different after that. Or was it? How could she know? Brontosaurus Illustrated is a graphic rendition of this story and Nina's consequent spin-out that lasted for decades as she searched for reasons, meanings, antidotes. And a way forward. Grabel’s other new book, My Husband’s Eyebrows (The Poetry Box), is a humorous examination and honest celebration of Grabel’s long marriage — its good, its bad, its ugly — told through a collection of prose poems and poetry, punctuated by the author’s richly colored, exuberant, exaggerated illustrations. Grabel will be joined in conversation by Jackie Shannon Hollis, author of This Particular Happiness, and Shawn Aveningo Sanders, author of What She Was Wearing.
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Monday, November 28 @ 7pm (PT) / Powell’s City of Books
Years before he wrote his National Book Award–winning novel Middle Passage, Charles Johnson created sidesplitting and subversive gag comics about Black life in America, now collected for the first time in nearly half a century. Taught via mail correspondence course by the comics editor Lawrence Lariar, mentored by the New Yorker cartoonist Charles Barsotti, and inspired by the call of poet Amiri Baraka to celebrate and depict Black life in America, Johnson crafted some of the fiercest and funniest cartoons of the 20th century. Reimagining the gag comic as a powerful and incendiary tool, Johnson tackled America’s mid-century afflictions — segregation, inner-city poverty, police brutality, and white supremacy — by craftily subverting stale gag tropes. He populated them with bullet-dodging Black Panthers, doubt-filled Klansmen, militant babies, self-serving politicians, and complacent suburban liberals. All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End (New York Review Comics) brings together work from across Johnson’s career: college newspaper gags, selections from his books, Black Humor and Half-Past Nation Time, his unpublished manuscript, Lumps in the Melting Pot, and uncollected pieces. Taken together, this volume reveals Johnson as long overdue for appreciation as a cartoonist of the first order. Johnson will be joined in conversation by Daniel Duford, artist, writer, and Visiting Professor of Art at Reed College.
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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 @ 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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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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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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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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