Powell’s is excited to offer virtual event programming featuring authors from around the world. We’re using Zoom Webinar as our virtual event platform (as it comes with enhanced security features). Missed an event? Watch past virtual events on our YouTube channel.
Questions about how to attend our virtual events? Click here for our FAQ.
Wednesday, May 5 @ 5pm (PT)
Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; she’s been compared to Rachel Carson, hailed as a scientist who conveys complex, technical ideas in a way that is dazzling and profound. Her work has influenced filmmakers and her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide. Now, in her first book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (Knopf), the world’s leading forest ecologist brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths — that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complicated, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own. Simard writes — in inspiring, illuminating, and accessible ways — how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they perceive one another, learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, and remember the past; how they have agency about the future; elicit warnings and mount defenses, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies — and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them. Finding the Mother Tree is a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery. Simard will be joined in conversation by Aaron Scott, host of OPB's Timber Wars podcast and a producer/reporter for Oregon Field Guide. This event is cosponsored by Oregon Public Broadcasting.
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Thursday, May 6 @ 5pm (PT)
Like a song that feels written just for you, Larissa Pham’s debut work of nonfiction captures the imagination and refuses to let go. Pop Song (Catapult) is a book about love and about falling in love — with a place, or a painting, or a person — and the joy and terror inherent in the experience of that love. Plumbing the well of culture for clues and patterns about love and loss — from Agnes Martin’s abstract paintings to James Turrell’s transcendent light works, and Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet to Frank Ocean’s Blonde — Pham writes of her youthful attempts to find meaning in travel, sex, drugs, and art, before sensing that she might need to turn her gaze upon herself. Pop Song is also a book about distances, near and far. As she travels from Taos, New Mexico, to Shanghai, China, and beyond, Pham meditates on the miles we are willing to cover to get away from ourselves, or those who hurt us, and the impossible gaps that can exist between two people sharing a bed. Pop Song is a book about all the routes by which we might escape our own needs before finally finding a way home. There is heartache in these pages, but Pham’s electric ways of seeing create a perfectly fractured portrait of modern intimacy that is triumphant in both its vulnerability and restlessness. Pham will be joined in conversation by Mary H.K. Choi, author of Emergency Contact, Permanent Record, and Yolk.
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Tuesday, May 11 @ 5pm (PT)
When award-winning, trendsetting chef Gregory Gourdet got sober, he took stock of his life and his pantry, concentrating his energy on getting himself healthy by cooking food that was both full of nutrients and full of flavor. Now, the beloved Top Chef star shares these extraordinary dishes with everyone. Gourdet’s Everyone’s Table (Harper Wave) features 200 mouthwatering, decadently flavorful recipes carefully designed to focus on superfoods — ingredients with the highest nutrient density, the best fats, and the most minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants — that will delight home cooks. Gourdet’s dishes are inspired by his deep affection for global ingredients and techniques — from his Haitian upbringing to his French culinary education, from the cuisines of Asia as well as those of North and West Africa. His unique culinary odyssey informs this one-of-a-kind cookbook, which features dynamic vegetable-forward dishes and savory meaty stews, umami-packed sauces and easy ferments, and endless clever ways to make both year-round and seasonal ingredients shine. Everyone’s Table will change forever the way we think about, approach, and enjoy healthy eating. Gourdet will be joined in conversation, Michelle Tam, food blogger and author of Nom Nom Paleo.
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Thursday, May 13 @ 5pm (PT)
The First Ten Years: Two Sides of the Same Love Story (Harper Perennial) is the sometimes hilarious, occasionally heartbreaking, and always entertaining joint memoir by Joseph Fink, cocreator of Welcome to Night Vale, and his wife, writer and performer Meg Bashwiner, chronicling the first 10 years of their relationship from both sides. In 2009, 22-year-old Joseph, newly arrived to New York City from the West Coast, was juggling odd jobs to pay the rent and volunteering with a theater company in the East Village so he could snag free tickets to their shows. Meg, a 22-year-old aspiring performer and playwright, was living with her parents in New Jersey, working a desk job and commuting to her internship with that same East Village theater company. Joseph's and Meg's stories meet when they both find themselves selling tickets in a cramped box office. They quickly became friends. Within a year, they were a couple. Within five years they were touring the world, performing on some of the world's greatest and not-so-great stages. In their candid, soul-baring memoir, Joseph and Meg recount their first 10 years together, each telling their story as they remember it, without having consulted the other. We hear both sides of their first kiss, first breakup, first getting back together, the death of a father, marriage, international fame, world tours, mental illness, and discussions about having children. Sometimes, they recall things differently — neither agrees on who paid for the morning-after pill on their first date. Sometimes they remember the exact same details in the same way — but still have their own narrative on just what those details mean. Bashwiner and Fink will be joined in conversation by Symphony Sanders, actor, voice of Welcome to Night Vale's Tamika Flynn, and co-host of the Good Morning Night Vale podcast.
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Friday, May 14 @ 5pm (PT)
From celebrated national leader and bestselling author Stacey Abrams comes While Justice Sleeps (Doubleday), a gripping, complexly plotted thriller set within the halls of the U.S. Supreme Court. Avery Keene, a brilliant young law clerk for the legendary Justice Howard Wynn, is doing her best to hold her life together. When the shocking news breaks that Justice Wynn has slipped into a coma, Avery’s life turns upside down. As political wrangling ensues in Washington to potentially replace the ailing judge, Avery begins to unravel a carefully constructed, chess-like sequence of clues left behind by Wynn. While Justice Sleeps is a cunningly crafted, sophisticated novel, layered with myriad twists and a vibrant cast of characters. Drawing on her astute inside knowledge of the court and political landscape, Stacey Abrams shows herself to be not only a force for good in politics and voter fairness, but also a major new talent in suspense fiction. Abrams will be joined in conversation by Katie Couric, award-winning journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and a co-founder of Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C).
Please note: This is a ticketed event. Purchasing a signed preorder copy of While Justice Sleeps ($28) entitles you to attend our virtual event with Abrams and Couric on Friday, May 14, at 5pm (PT). After you’ve purchased the book, we will automatically register you for the Zoom event – and will send you a confirmation email two days prior to the event containing a Zoom link to the event and instructions on how to access it. A signed copy of While Justice Sleeps is available for the first 600 ticket buyers.
Buy the Book-Inclusive Event Ticket
Tuesday, May 18 @ 5pm (PT)
From Suyi Davies Okungbowa, one of the most exciting new storytellers in epic fantasy, comes Son of the Storm (Orbit), a sweeping tale of violent conquest and forgotten magic set in a world inspired by the precolonial empires of West Africa. In the ancient city of Bassa, Danso is a clever scholar on the cusp of achieving greatness — only he doesn’t want it. Instead, he prefers to chase forbidden stories about what lies outside the city walls. The Bassai elite claim there is nothing of interest. The city’s immigrants are sworn to secrecy. But when Danso stumbles across a warrior wielding magic that shouldn’t exist, he’s put on a collision course with Bassa’s darkest secrets. Drawn into the city’s hidden history, he sets out on a journey beyond its borders. And the chaos left in the wake of his discovery threatens to destroy the empire. Okungbowa will be joined in conversation by S. A. Chakraborty, author of The Daevabad Trilogy.
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Wednesday, May 19 @ 5pm (PT)
At 51 years old, twins Jeanie and Julius still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation in the English countryside. The cottage they have shared their entire lives is their only protection against the modernizing world around them. Inside its walls, they make music, and in its garden, they grow everything they need to survive. To an outsider, it looks like poverty; to them, it is home. But when Dot dies unexpectedly, the world they’ve so carefully created begins to fall apart. The cottage they love, and the security it offered, is taken back by their landlord, exposing the twins to harsh truths and even harsher realities. Seeing a new future, Julius becomes torn between the loyalty he feels towards his sister and his desire for independence, while Jeanie struggles to find work and a home for them both. And just when it seems there might be a way forward, a series of startling secrets from their mother’s past come to the surface, forcing the twins to question who they are, and everything they know of their family’s history. In her stunning novel, Unsettled Ground (Tin House), Claire Fuller — the award-winning author of Our Endless Numbered Days, Swimming Lessons, and Bitter Orange — masterfully builds a tale of sacrifice and hope, of homelessness and hardship, of love and survival, in which two marginalized and remarkable people uncover long-held family secrets and, in their own way, repair, recover, and begin again. Fuller will be joined in conversation by Ron Rash, author of Serena and Above the Waterfall.
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Tuesday, May 25 @ 5pm (PT)
Jonathan Taplin’s extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half century: he was tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band in the ’60s, producer of major films in the ’70s, an executive at Merrill Lynch in the ’80s, creator of the Internet’s first video-on-demand service in the ’90s, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium. His is a lifetime marked not only by good timing but by impeccable instincts — from the folk scene to Woodstock, Hollywood’s rebellious film movement, and beyond. Taplin is not just a witness but a lifelong producer, the right-hand man to some of the greatest talents of both pop culture and the underground. With cameos by Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Martin Scorsese, and countless other icons, The Magic Years (Heyday) is both a rock memoir and a work of cultural criticism from a key player who watched a nation turn from idealism to nihilism. Taplin offers a clear-eyed roadmap of how we got here and makes a convincing case for art’s power to deliver us from “passionless detachment” and rekindle our humanism. Taplin will be joined in conversation by Robbie Robertson, guitarist and principal songwriter in The Band.
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Wednesday, May 26 @ 5pm (PT)
Daniel Barbarisi’s Chasing the Thrill (Knopf) is a full-throttle, first-person account of the treasure hunt created by eccentric millionaire art dealer — and, some would say, robber baron — Forrest Fenn that became the stuff of contemporary legend. When Fenn was given a fatal cancer diagnosis, he came up with a bold plan: He would hide a chest full of jewels and gold in the wilderness, and publish a poem that would serve as a map leading to the treasure's secret location. But he didn't die, and after hiding the treasure in 2010, Fenn instead presided over a decade-long gold rush that saw many thousands of treasure hunters scrambling across the Rocky Mountains in pursuit of his fortune. Barbarisi first learned of Fenn's hunt in 2017, when a friend became consumed with decoding the poem and convinced Barbarisi, a reporter, to document his search. What began as an attempt to capture the inner workings of Fenn's hunt quickly turned into a personal quest that led Barbarisi down a reckless and potentially dangerous path, one that found him embroiled in searcher conspiracies and matching wits with Fenn himself. Over the course of four chaotic years, several searchers would die, endless controversies would erupt, and one hunter would ultimately find the chest. But the mystery didn't end there. Full of intrigue, danger, and breakneck action, Chasing the Thrill is a riveting tale of desire, obsession, and unbridled adventure. Barbarisi will be joined in conversation by Jason Gay, The Wall Street Journal’s sports columnist.
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Tuesday, June 3 @ 5pm (PT)
It began with a comet… At first, people gazed in wonder at the radiant tear in the sky. A year later, the celestial marvel became a planetary crisis when Earth spun through the comet's debris field and the sky rained fire. The town of Northfall, Minnesota, will never be the same. Meteors cratered hardwood forests and annihilated homes, and among the wreckage a new metal was discovered. This "omnimetal" has properties that make it world-changing as an energy source… and a weapon. John Frontier — the troubled scion of an iron-ore dynasty in Northfall — returns for his sister's wedding to find his family embroiled in a cutthroat war to control mineral rights and mining operations. His father rightly suspects foreign leaders and competing corporations of sabotage, but the greatest threat to his legacy might be the U.S. government. Physicist Victoria Lennon was recruited by the Department of Defense to research omnimetal, but she finds herself trapped in a laboratory of nightmares. And across town, a rookie cop is investigating a murder that puts her own life in the crosshairs. She will have to compromise her moral code to bring justice to this now lawless community. In his gut-punch of a novel, The Ninth Metal (Houghton Mifflin), the first in his Comet Cycle, Benjamin Percy (author of Red Moon and The Wilding) lays bare how a modern-day gold rush has turned the middle of nowhere into the center of everything, and how one family — the Frontiers — hopes to control it all. Percy will be joined in conversation by Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling and The Ballad of Black Tom.
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Tuesday, June 8 @ 5pm (PT)
When Trystan Reese was just a year into his relationship with Biff (now his husband), the couple learned that Biff’s niece and nephew were about to be removed from their home by Child Protective Services. Immediately, Trystan and Biff took in one-year-old Hailey and three-year-old Lucas, becoming caregivers overnight to two tiny survivors of abuse and neglect. From this surprising start, Trystan and Biff built a loving marriage and happy home — learning to parent on the job. They adopted Hailey and Lucas, and soon decided to grow their family biologically with a child that Trystan, who is transgender, would carry. Trystan’s groundbreaking pregnancy attracted media fanfare, and the family welcomed baby Leo in 2017. In How We Do Family: From Adoption to Trans Pregnancy, What We Learned About Love and LGBTQ Parenthood (The Experiment), Trystan shares their unique story and what he’s learned about being the best parent, partner, and person you can be. Through crisis, adoption, pregnancy — and all the usual challenges of parenting — Trystan shows that more important than getting things right is doing them with love. Reese will be joined in conversation by Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon and Far from the Tree.
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Thursday, June 10 @ 5pm (PT)
Dave Cartwright used to be good at a lot of things: good with his hands, good at solving problems, good at staying calm in a crisis. But on the heels of his third tour in Iraq, the fabric of Dave's life has begun to unravel. Gripped by PTSD, he finds himself losing his home, his wife, his direction. Most days, his love for his seven-year-old daughter, Bella, is the only thing keeping him going. When tragedy strikes, Dave makes a dramatic decision: the two of them will flee their damaged lives, heading off the grid to live in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. As they carve out a home in a cave in that harsh, breathtaking landscape, echoes of its past begin to reach them. Bella retreats into herself, absorbed by visions of a mother and son who lived in the cave thousands of years earlier, at the end of the last ice age. Back in town, Dave and Bella themselves are rapidly becoming the stuff of legend — to all but those who would force them to return home. As winter sweeps toward the North Cascades, past and present intertwine into a timeless odyssey. Poignant and profound, Legends of the North Cascades (Algonquin) brings Jonathan Evison's trademark vibrant, honest voice to bear on an expansive story that is at once a meditation on the perils of isolation and an exploration of the ways that connection can save us. Evison will be joined in conversation by Thomas Kohnstamm, author of Lake City.
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Tuesday, June 15 @ 5pm (PT)
Growing up in a New Jersey factory town in the 1980s, Daisy Hernández believed that her aunt had become deathly ill from eating an apple. No one in her family, in either the United States or Colombia, spoke of infectious diseases, and even into her thirties, she only knew that her aunt had died of a rare illness called Chagas. But as Hernández dug deeper, she discovered that Chagas — or the kissing bug disease — is more prevalent in the United States than the Zika virus. Today, more than 300,000 Americans have Chagas. Why do some infectious diseases make headlines and others fall by the wayside? After her aunt’s death, Hernández begins searching for answers about who our nation chooses to take care of and who we ignore. Crisscrossing the country, she interviews patients, epidemiologists, and even veterinarians with the Department of Defense. Hernández’s The Kissing Bug (Tin House) tells the story of how poverty, racism, and public policies have conspired to keep this disease hidden — and how the disease intersects with Hernández’s own identity as a niece, sister, and daughter; a queer woman; a writer and researcher; and a citizen of a country that is only beginning to address the harms caused by Chagas, and the dangers it poses. A riveting and nuanced investigation into racial politics and for-profit healthcare in the United States, The Kissing Bug reveals the intimate history of a marginalized disease and connects us to the lives at the center of it all. Hernández will be joined in conversation by Amy Stewart, author of the Kopp Sisters series and The Drunken Botanist.
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Wednesday, June 16 @ 5pm (PT)
Matthew Clark Davison’s Doubting Thomas (Amble Press) chronicles a challenging and disruptive year in the life of a young, gay teacher in the waning years of Obama’s America. Thomas McGurrin is a fourth-grade teacher and openly gay man at a private primary school serving Portland, Oregon's wealthy progressive elite when he is falsely accused of inappropriately touching a male student. The accusation comes just as Thomas is thrust back into the center of his unusual family by his younger brother's battle with cancer. Although cleared of the accusation, Thomas is forced to resign from a job he loves during a potentially life-changing family drama. Davison's novel explores the discrepancy between the progressive ideals and persistent negative stereotypes among the privileged regarding social status, race, and sexual orientation and the impact of that discrepancy on friendships and family relations. By turns rueful, humorous, angry, and wise, Doubting Thomas marks the debut of an important writer. Davison will be joined in conversation by T Kira Mahealani Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls.
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Wednesday, July 7 @ 5pm (PT)
A Black man’s life, told in scenes — through every time he’s been called nigger. A Black son who visits his estranged white father in Los Angeles just as the ’92 riots begin. A Black Republican, coping with a skin disease that has turned him white, is forced to reconsider his life. A young Black man, fetishized by a married white woman he’s just met, is offered a strange and tempting proposal. The nine tales in Chris Stuck’s Give My Love to the Savages (Amistad) illuminate the multifaceted Black experience, exploring the thorny intersections of race, identity, and Black life through an extraordinary cast of characters. From the absurd to the starkly realistic, these stories take aim at the ironies and contradictions of the American racial experience. Stuck traverses the dividing lines, and attempts to create meaning from them in unique and unusual ways. Each story considers a marker of our current culture, from uprisings and sly and not-so-sly racism, to Black fetishization and conservatism, to the obstacles placed in front of Black masculinity and Black and interracial relationships by society and circumstance. Ultimately, Give My Love to the Savages is the story of America. With biting humor and careful honesty, Stuck riffs on the dichotomy of love and barbarity — the yin and yang of racial experience — and the difficult and uncertain terrain Black Americans must navigate in pursuit of their desires. Stuck will be joined in conversation by Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light.
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Tuesday, July 27 @ 5pm (PT)
Like many of us, Lisa Wells has spent years overwhelmed by news of apocalyptic-scale climate change and a coming sixth extinction. She did not need to be convinced of the stakes. But what can be done? Wells embarked on a pilgrimage, seeking answers in dedicated communities — outcasts and visionaries — on the margins of society. Wells meets Finisia Medrano, an itinerant planter and misanthrope leading a group of nomadic activists to rewild the American desert. She finds a group of environmentalist Christians practicing "watershed discipleship" in New Mexico; another group in Philadelphia turning the tools of violence into tools of farming — guns into plowshares. She watches the world’s greatest tracker teach how to read a trail, and visits botanists who are restoring land overrun by invasive species and destructive humans. She talks with survivors of catastrophic wildfires in California as they try to rebuild in new ways that acknowledge the fires will come again. Blending reportage, memoir, history, and philosophy, Wells opens up seemingly intractable questions about the damage we have done and how we might reckon with our inheritance. “Brilliant in its quest…[and] an essential document of our time” (Charles D’Ambrosio), Wells’s new book, Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), demands transformation: If the Earth is our home, if our home is being destroyed — how then shall we live? Wells will be joined in conversation by Lydia Millet, author of A Children's Bible.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How do I attend a Powell’s virtual event?
You’ll be able to access our virtual event programming via your home computer, laptop, tablet, mobile phone, or other Internet-ready device. If you’re new to Zoom, please visit their Getting Started guide.
Are Powell’s virtual events free to attend?
As with our prior in-store programming, nearly all of our events are free to attend. On occasion, we will host a special event for which tickets or a book purchase are required for virtual admission — but details will be shared for those specific events separately.
How do I buy an event author’s new book?
Each event listing will include a link to purchase a copy of an author’s new book. A purchase link will be shared by us during the event itself, as well. Purchasing a copy of an author’s new book helps support both the author and Powell’s event programming.
Will I be able to get my book signed?
Unfortunately, we’re not able to offer signed editions or personalizations at this time. In some cases, signed bookplates will be available on a limited first come, first served basis.
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When will you have in-store events again?
We don’t yet know when we’ll be able to host authors in our stores again, but hope to do so as soon as we can. We are continuing to review CDC guidelines and evaluating the information shared by city and state officials regarding public events. Updates, when available, will be posted on our website.