Cheryl Strayed & Sugar Signed Copies!

We are thrilled to announce that Broadway Books will be the exclusive online source for signed (and personalized) copies of Portland author Cheryl Strayed's three books: Her novel Torch (first published in hardcover in 2006 and now available in paperback), her forthcoming memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (publishing in hardcover on March 20th), and Tiny Beautiful Things, the collection of her columns from the "Dear Sugar" internet advice column on The Rumpus (publishing in paperback on July 10th).

Read more about Cheryl's books and how to get signed copies on the Cheryl Strayed page (under "What's New) on our website.  And just to pique your interest, here's a video of Cheryl talking about Wild and about the journey that forms the basis for the book. [Please join us on Tuesday, May 15, at 7 pm when Cheryl reads at Broadway Books.]

Allen Say at Broadway Books Tonight!

We're so excited to be hosting local author, artist, and treasure Allen Say tonight at 7 pm! We last blogged about Mr. Say a little more than a year ago, with a link to a wonderful article about him by Jeff Baker of The Oregonian.

Tonight he will be here with his newest book, Drawing From Memory -- part memoir, part graphic novel, part narrative history. It is the story of the author's path to becoming the renowned artist he is today. Shunned by his father, who didn't understand his son's artistic leanings, Say was embraced by Noro Shinpei, Japan's leading cartoonist and the man he came to love as his "spiritual father." The book, accompanied by Say's wonderful illustrations, tells the complex story of the real-life relationship between a mentor and his student.

Allen Say won the Caldecott Medal for Grandfather's Journey and won a Caldecott Honor and Horn Book Award for The Boy of the Three-Year Nap. Some of his other books include The Bicycle Man, Tree of Cranes, Ericka-San, and Tea with Milk. Say came to the United States when he was 16 and moved to Portland in 1999.

We hope you can join us tonight to meet this delightful author/illustrator.

Join Us for a Spirited Spiritual Adventure

On Tuesday night (yes, that's tomorrow) we're excited to be hosting Oregon author Jessica Maxwell, who will read from and talk about her book, Roll Around Heaven: An All-True Accidental Spiritual Adventure.

Previously known for her adventure-travel writing, Maxwell was dragged kicking and screaming into the spiritual realm. She was used to adventures that involved hip waders, fly fishing rods, and putting greens -- not to experiences like seeing her father's face in the sky three days after he died or seeing Celtic visions on the Isle of Iona. But that's where she found herself, especially after the arrival of the completely-un-asked-for spiritual teacher, the Holy Pig Farmer (I'll let her tell you about him).

Called a "rollicking spiritual ride" by one reviewer, Roll Around Heaven chronicles nearly two decades of Maxwell's own spiritual adventures: "...spirituality is dangerously close to becoming another commodity, like yoga lessons and God Is My Copilot bumper stickers....If my own unexpected spiritual marathon has taught me anything, it's this: if we think we can buy -- or trivialize -- our way into the kingdom of heaven, we are in serious trouble."Another reviewer had this to say: "Maxwell knocks the pompous off their pedestals and finds inspiration in unexpected, sometimes terrifying places.”

Maxwell , who got her degree in journalism from the UO (go Ducks!), is the author of books on flyfishing, adventure travel, and golf. Her work has been included in more than two dozen anthologies, including multiple editions of Best American Travel Writing. From 1985 to 1997 she was a regular contributor to Esquire’s travel column, and she created and wrote Audubon’s in-the-field conservation column, True Nature, from 1992 to 1997. She has published adventure travel narratives for AARP the Magazine, Audubon, Esquire, Forbes, Gourmet, Islands, Lexus, More, Outside, The Discovery Channel Magazine, Town & Country Travel, and Travel & Leisure Golf.

Her article in November 2008 on Portland’s restaurant scene was nominated for a James Beard food writing award. Besides receiving a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and being a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism winner, Maxwell is one of the few female members of the Flyfisher’s Club of Oregon. She lives in Western Oregon with her husband where, as one friend put it, “they have a lot of fun correcting each other’s grammar.”

We hope you can join us Tuesday at 7 pm to for our evening with Jessica Maxwell and her accidental spiritual adventure.

Celebrating the Launch of Nadelson's Newest

Do you enjoy a fun party? Do you enjoy beautifully written short stories, albeit on the longish side? If your answers are yes, then we have the perfect Friday evening planned for you! Friday, September 9th -- yes, that's tomorrow night -- at 7 pm we join with Hawthorne Books to celebrate the launch of the newest collection of short stories from Scott Nadelson. In Aftermath, Scott's third collection of stories, his characters live in the wake of momentous events, finding new ways of forging on with their lives: "In this new collection, I’ve been drawn, as the title suggests, to write about aftermaths—the period following a significant loss or rupture rather than the moment of loss or rupture itself. What fascinates me about these periods is how people accommodate themselves to their new circumstances, how they fit loss or change into their understanding of the world and of themselves, and how, often, what starts out as rupture leads to growth."

Scott's first collection of stories, Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories, won an Oregon Book Award and his second collection, The Cantor's Daughter, was a finalist for an Oregon Book Award. Both books were published by Hawthorne Books. He is currently working on a collection of essays/stories that form a kind of loose autobiography: The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Process, will be published by Hawthorne in 2012.

Scott has the distinction of being born on Kafka's 90th birthday; make of that what you will. He grew up in New Jersey a few miles a way from the mental hospital where Bob Dylan famously visited Woody Guthrie. Now he lives in Salem just a few miles away from the mental hospital where One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was filmed. Again, make of that what you will. Or ask Scott what he makes of it.

While in high school, listening to his dad's early Bob Dylan records turned him on to the use of language to "externalize the voiceless angst that often had me tied up in knots. He tried his hand at poetry, but soon found that short stories were his genre. "More and more what draws me to a story is the sound of its voice. Above all else, storytelling is seduction, and different readers are seduced by different voices....When I'm writing now, I spend a lot of time trying to find the right sound for a story....If the voice sounds right, then it takes me to places I couldn't have expected." Scott says that in particular he finds himself "exploring the ways in which characters' fears undermine their desires."

He teaches creative writing in the English department at Willamette University, holding the Hallie Ford Chair in Writing. "Teaching is as much a passion for me as writing, and I strongly believe that the teaching of creative writing, particularly on the undergraduate level and in a liberal arts context, complements studies in literature.  My primary aim in creative writing courses is to teach students to read closely, from a writer's perspective."

Scott's publisher, the wonderful Hawthorne Books, will be providing goodies -- solids and liquids -- as we celebrate the launch of Aftermath. We hope you can join us for the evening -- it's free, and it's sure to offer a good time for all!

Patrick deWitt on Booker Shortlist!

Canadian-born-but-Portland-based author Patrick deWitt has made it through to the shortlist for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for fiction for his novel The Sisters Brothers! The other five authors/books on the shortlist announced today are Julian Barnes for The Sense of an Ending, Carol Birth for Jamrach's Menagerie, Esi Edugyan for Half Blood Blues, Stephen Kelman for Pigeon English, and A.D. Miller for Snowdrops.

Barnes is the oddsmakers' favorite to win this year, but that doesn't always pan out. He has been shortlisted for the Booker three times. Birch has made the longlist once before. The others are first-time nominees, and Kelman and Miller are debut novelists. We wrote about the full longlist in a previous blog post last month. The prize aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The winner, who receives the equivalent of about $80,000, will be announced on October 18th. Last year's winner was Howard Jacobson for The Finkler Question.

DeWitt was also honored this week by being one of seventeen writers selected to the 2011 longlist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. The Scotiabank Giller Prize is Canada’s most distinguished literary prize, awarding $50,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English. Finalists on the shortlist receive $5,000. The award was established in 1994 by Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch in honor of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller. In September 2005, Scotiabank was proud to become the first ever co-sponsor of the prize, and it has been known as the Scotiabank Giller Prize ever since.

This year -- the eighteenth year of the prize -- the longlist was selected from 143 books submitted for consideration, a record-setting number of submissions. The shortlist for the Giller will be announced on October 4th, with the winner announced in a ceremony in Toronto on November 8th. Booker shortlister Esi Edugyan also made the longlist for the Giller, along with Alexi Zenter for Touch (gorgeous cover!), Wayne Johnston for A World Elsewhere, Michael Ondaatje for The Cat's Table (publishing in the US next month), Vancouver author Michael Christie for his debut short story collection The Begger's Garden, and Marina Endicott for The Little Shadows. You can read the full long list at the Giller Prize website.

George Estreich to Read from Memoir

We hope you can join us Tuesday night (August 2nd) at 7 pm to hear Corvallis author George Estreich read from his recently published memoir, The Shape of the Eye: Down Syndrome, Family, and the Stories We Inherit.

When his younger daughter, Laura, was born, her appearance presented a puzzle: did the shape of her eyes indicate Down Syndrome, or the fact that she has a Japanese grandmother? In this powerful memoir, Estreich tells his daughter's story, reflecting on her inheritance -- from the literal legacy of her genes, to the family history that precedes her, to the Victorian physician John Landon Down's diagnostic error of "Mongolian Idiocy." Against this backdrop, Laura Estreich takes her place in the family as a unique child, quirky and real, loved for everything ordinary and extraordinary about her.

The Shape of the Eye is predominantly about raising his youngest daughter. But, in the author's words, it is also about "fly-fishing, heart surgery, family, the history and meaning of “Mongolian idiocy,” genetic engineering, prenatal diagnosis, what it’s like to be stared at, feeding a child with a tube, made-up signs for French fries, and the way Down syndrome can become sort of ordinary."

Tracy Daugherty, author of the Oregon-Book-Award-winning biography, Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme, described the book as "a splendid, stimulating, and extremely moving account of what it means to be a family, what it means to be human.” Physician and writer Abraham Verghese (Cutting for Stone, My Own Country: A Doctor's Story, and The Tennis Partner: A Doctor's Story of Friendship and Loss) says, “This is a poignant, beautifully written and intensely moving memoir, and I think only one writer in the world, George Estreich, could possibly have pulled this off. It will become part of the canon of narratives that are studied and taught in medical humanities courses.” Kim Edwards, author of The Memory Keeper's Daughter said "The Shape of the Eye taught me a great deal. It is a story I found myself thinking about long after I'd finished the final pages.

Estreich's first book was a collection of poems, Textbook Illustrations of the Human Body, which won the Rhea and Seymour Gorsline Prize from Cloudbank Books in 2003.

He was born in New York City and received a BA from the University of Virginia and an MFA in poetry from Cornell. After years of teaching freshman composition, he quit to become a full-time stay-at-home dad. He and his wife, an associate professor in the College of Pharmacy at Oregon State University, have two daughters and a dog named Jet.

Please join us on Tuesday if you can!

Comma Features Bridges and Skye

It's almost the third Thursday of the month, which means it's time for our monthly Comma reading series! Joining us this month are Sharon Wood Wortman and Skye Leslie. Sharon is the author of The Portland Bridge Book, as well as a book of poetry, Walking Bridges Using Poetry as a Compass: Poems about Bridges Real and Imagined. Skye is a member of Tom Spanbauer's group of Dangerous Writers and has been published in The Comstock Review and The Criterion. She is currently at work on memoir, short stories, and poetry.

Each month, the Comma reading series brings together two regional writers from different genres who are free to read from new projects, published pieces, or ongoing works-in-progress. And then discuss. With your participation. If you've attended before you know just how great an evening it is. Please join us! The fun starts at 7 pm the third Thursday each month. Which this month means tomorrow, July 21.

Suzanne Sigafoos Reads from Held in the Weave

One of the saddest parts of editing the video clips from author events at Broadway Books is deciding what stays in and what gets left on the cutting room floor. Given that the videos range from ten to fifteen minutes, and most authors read and/or take questions for close to an hour, clearly a lot gets left on the floor -- all stuff that you really shouldn't miss. But then you would have had to be there. The good news, though, is that the clips give you a flavor of the night, and hopefully inspire you to want to read the book yourself.

I had to take several passes at this video before I could get it under the time limit -- there were so many moments I wanted to share with everyone! Suzanne Sigafoos recently had her first collection of poems published by Finishing Line Press, and we were delighted to celebrate the launch of her book with her. Held in the Weave is a beautiful collection of poems, most of which are quite short but pack power loads of thought and vision. Some will prompt tears, some laughter, and some will leave you holding your breath with awe. I wish you ALL could have been there that night; it was magical. But for those of you who couldn't make it, here's a taste of what you missed. [PS: Copious apologies for the frog that was living in my throat that day, which made for a somewhat raspy/squeaky introduction!]

Mink River Wins Editor's Choice Prize

At a ceremony during the recent American Library Association Conference in New Orleans, the 215 Book of the Year Award winners in 60 categories were honored. These books, representing the best independently published books from 2010 were selected by a panel of librarian and bookseller judges. The award is sponsored by ForeWord Reviews.


Two books were also named Editor’s Choice Prize winners: The fiction prize went to Oregon State University Press for Mink River, written by Portland's very own Brian Doyle. The nonfiction prize went to Welcome Books for The Last Good War, with photographs by Thomas Sanders and written by Veronica Kavass.  

 "Mink River is one of the most generous books I've ever read. From the schoolteacher to the sculptor, the cop to the child beater, the humanity of its characters soils every inch of ground and perfumes each molecule of air in a remote place we're lucky to pause in for a while. Brian Doyle breathes new life into the novel of small-town America,” said ForeWord Book Review Editor Julie Eakin.

McPherson & Company was named ForeWord's Independent Publisher of the Year. McPherson & Company published this year's National Book Award winner for fiction, Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon. 

 ForeWord Reviews' Book of the Year Awards were established to bring increased attention to librarians and booksellers of the literary and graphic achievements of independent publishers and their authors. ForeWord Reviews, established in 1998, is the only review trade journal devoted exclusively to books published by independent houses.

Check Out the Three Events at BB This Week!

We promised you more events at Broadway Books -- how does three this week sound for you? We start tonight with an event in honor of Father's Day (more on that in a second post), which is this Sunday. Local author Kevin Renner will be here tonight at read from and discuss his newly published book, In Search of Fatherhood: A Mother Lode of Wisdom from the World of Daughters.

Renner spent more than a year traveling around the world and interviewing women (50 are presented in this book), asking them to reflect on what they had absorbed from their fathers and what they didn't get that they still yearned for. His goal was to better understand the father-daughter relationship so that he could do a better job with his own daughters. He talked to women from across cultures, economic strata, professions -- those who felt loved by their fathers and those who felt abandoned or abused. In the book he presents the stories of their relationships, along with his own story.

Renner is the founder and president of B2B Market Strategies. He divides his time among his family, writing, and his work as a marketing and brand strategist to emerging companies. He lives in Portland with his wife Meg, daughters Julia and Katherine, and an ever evolving animal population. Renner received his social science degree from UC-Santa Cruz before beginning his career as a business journalist. Later he completed an MBA at UC- Berkeley, where he lived with 600 women and men from around the world at The International House.

On Tuesday night we welcome the editor of and several contributors to Volume V of Drash: Northwest Mosaic, just recently published. Drash is a Seattle-based annual literary magazine that features an ecumenical embrace of poetry and prose with a Northwest and Jewish tilt. Scheduled to read tomorrow night are Akiva Miller, David Fuks, Jeanne Krinsley, Hanna Goldbaum, Carolyn Martin, and the editor, Wendy Marcus.


Thursday night we host our monthly Comma reading series, moderated by Kirsten Rian. On the third Thursday of each month,Comma features two regional authors, representing a variety of literary genres.  Each author reads for 20 to 25 minutes from new projects, established pieces, or ongoing works in progress and then engages in discussion with each other and with the audience.

This month Comma presents Barry Sanders and Tim DuRoche. Sanders is a professor emeritus of Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He is currently writer-in-residence at Pacific Northwest College of Art. He is also a social activist and the author of two recent books: The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism and Unsuspecting Souls: The Disapperance of the Human Being -- both of which were nominated for this year's Oregon Book Award for General Nonfiction. He loves teaching at PNCA and brings his students to the Donald E. Long detention center in Portland to teach reading and writing.

DuRoche is a writer, jazz musician, artist, and curator. His writing about visual culture, jazz and performance, planning, urban history, and cultural policy have appeared in a number of print and online venues. Since moving to Portland in 2000, he's worked with a number of creative cultural institutions including Northwest Film Center and Portland Center Stage. Currently he is the Director of Programs for the World Affairs Council of Oregon. He is a frequent public speaker and moderator for cultural organizations across the state and hosts a weekly jazz program on KMHD-89.1 FM.

Each of these events will begin at 7pm. Please join us for one, two, or all three events -- it's always a pleasure to see you!

Marjorie Sandor to Read from New Memoir

Tonight we are excited to be hosting Corvallis author and professor Marjorie Sandor, reading from her recently published memoir The Late Interiors: A Life Under Construction, published by Arcade Publishing. The book tells the story of five seasons of change and renewal in a woman's life, braiding entries from a garden journal with lyric meditations and full-blown essays on our eternal -- and contradictory -- hunger for adventure and refuge.

At a time in her life when she once thought a person should have been well settled in for the long haul, she falls in love with a colleague, leaves her husband, and co-parents a daughter through adolescence. As they are building a home and a life together, her partner undergoes sudden emergency heart surgery, reminding them vividly of the frailty of life. Then they learn that a developer plans to build a multistory student apartment complex just behind their small, nascent, back garden, threatening their new-found haven.

Through it all, as a recent review in The New York Times notes, Sandor gardens, proffering "nimble meditations on healing, friendship, literature, architecture, and music." And her gardening mirrors her writing habits. "Over the centuries, around the world, we have always come home to one truth: Gardening sustains life, love and happiness."

Booklist says about her writing, "Whether she is writing essays...or fiction, Sandor's prose is as tangy and luscious as just-plucked fruit."

Sandor is the author of four books and the 2004 winner of the National Jewish Book Award in Fiction for Portrait of my Mother, Who Posed Nude in Wartime: Stories. Her earlier book of personal essays, The Night Gardener: A Search for Home, won the 2000 Oregon Book Award for Literary Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in magazines such as The Georgia Review and TriQuarterly and in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Twenty Under Thirty, The Best American Spiritual Writing, and other anthologies. She teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing at Oregon State University.

Tonight's reading starts at 7 pm -- we hope you can join us!

Lidia Yuknavitch Reads from Her Memoir

I have some idiosyncrasies when it comes to my reading habits. For instance, I tend to avoid Irish novels and memoirs about abuse or addiction. I also tend to use an overly large brush when painting books with these stripes. I can't explain this bias, and I certainly can't justify it. It's just one of my reading tics.

So when I first started hearing about The Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavitch, my first thought was "probably not my cup of tea," because I had slapped it with the brush "abuse memoir."  But I decided to check it out anyway because the book is published by Hawthorne Books, a Portland-based publisher.  Hawthorne is a small press, publishing just a few books each year, so they are very selective in what they choose to publish. And then they work closely with their authors and designers to produce books that are of excellent quality, both in terms of content and design. So I figured I'd try just a taste.

I had no idea what I was in for. Three days later I came up for air. Once I started reading The Chronology of Water, I had to force myself to go to work and to sleep and anything else that required putting the book down.

You know you're in for an emotional ride when a memoir begins "The day my daughter was stillborn...."  But I was not prepared for such a breathtaking combination of heartbreak and stoicism. It is intense. Powerful.  Fearless. Honest.  It makes you mad, and it makes you weep. It takes turns you do not see coming. But don't just take my word for it.

Cheryl Strayed calls the book "a brutal beauty bomb and a true love song," saying it is "alive with emotion, both merciful and utterly merciless....This is the book I'm going to press into everyone's hands for years to come." Chuck Palahniuk calls the book extraordinary and says he's read it a dozen times: "And I will, most likely, return to it for inspiration and ideas, and out of sheer admiration, for the rest of my life."

And those are just the pre-pub reviews. Since the book was published, the reviews have been almost as stunning as the book itself; this memoir is definitely resonating powerfully with its readers. Here's a snippet from one: "Reading The Chronology of Water is like reading while swimming weightless under water with no need to come up for air. It's that different, that remarkable."

Or this: "If this isn't the most authentic, honest, attempt at a memoir from someone who's not protecting herself in the slightest, then Lidia has sold her soul to the devil. Again and again, I found myself thinking, 'I can't believe she's actually telling me this.' And there is no shallow end. It starts with gruesome, excruciating pain, and goes on from there." Another reviewer described her prose as "witty, jarring, worthy of dogearing," saying it alternates between "gleeful postmodern exercise and wrenching elegy."

I'm reluctant to describe the specifics of the book or Lidia's life; you really need to read the book for yourself. But I will say that it's about relationships, and creating, and water, and sex -- lots and lots of sex. My mom tried to buy a copy of The Chronology of Water when she was in the store this week, but I stopped her. Because the copy on the front jacket flap begins 'This is not your mother's memoir." Sorry, Mom! But for everyone else, dig in!

Lidia will be reading from her memoir at Broadway Books tomorrow night (Thursday, June 2) at 7 pm. I hope you can join us. It is likely to be a night that won't soon leave your brain.

Mary Rechner on Frank O'Connor Long List

Congratulations to Portland's own Mary Rechner and her Portland-based publisher Propeller Books for being named to the long list for the 2011 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, for her collection Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women. You can read what we wrote about Mary's book when she read at Broadway Books last October.

The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award is the world’s richest and most prestigious prize for the form and is sponsored by the Cork City Council. It is awarded to the best new collection of short stories each year. The short list will be announced in July, with the award ceremony taking place in September.

This year's group of long listees includes twelve authors from the UK, twenty-six from the US, eight from Canada, four from Ireland, three from India, two from Bulgaria, and one each from Japan, Nigeria, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, China, and Spain. Joining Mary on this year's long list are Colm Toibin (The Empty Family), Danielle Evans (Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self), Anthony Doerr (Memory Wall), Siobhan Fallon (You Know When the Men Are Gone), and Yiyun Li (Gold Boy, Emerald Girl), among others. You can read the full list here.

Last year's winner of the Frank O'Connor award was Ron Rash, for his collection Burning Bright.  The award in '09 went to Simon Van Booy for Love Begins in Winter, the '08 award to Jhumpa Lahiri for Unaccustomed Earth, and the '07 to Miranda July for No One Belongs Here More Than You.

Congratulations, Mary, on this well-deserved honor!

A Little Something for Everyone This Week

Looking for great evening activities this week? Look no further than Broadway Books, as we've got three wonderful readings lined up for you this week: Kelly Rodgers will be here to talk about Portland's food cart revolution and the book Cartopia on Tuesday;  Jim Shepard will read from his newest collection of stories, You Think That's Bad on Wednesday; and Molly Gloss and Bette Husted will be here Thursday night as part of our monthly Comma reading series. All events start at 7 pm and are free.

Kelly Rodgers and Kelley Roy, and their aptly named Roy Rodgers Press, are the creators of Cartopia: Portland's Food Cart Revolution. Through stories and photography, the book documents Portland's independent culture, artisan economy, and "foodie" scene that created the food cart revolution. As the authors explore the factors that have placed Portland in the street food spotlight, they also document the personality and character of the Portland carts, and, by extension, of Portland itself. With photography by Andrew Burdick, Cartopia is a visual feast and a celebration of food, architecture, creative entrepreneurship, and civic spirit.

The two Kell(e)ys have been collaborating on projects since they met in 2001. Since moving to Portland in 1995, Kelly without the "e" has worked in a variety of areas to support the development of a sustainable city, including neighborhood planning, green infrastructure, community design, renewable energy, and sustainable transportation. She is the principal of Confluence Planning. Her passion is working to create cities where people know their neighbors, where resources are used efficiently, where people don’t have to get in the car to meet their basic needs, and where it’s possible to work collaboratively on creative energy, food, and housing solutions. Kelley with the "e" is the Director of ADX, a membership-based art and design facility in the heart of Portland’s Central Eastside. Her passion is all things Portland, and she provides business and marketing consulting services for Portland artists and designers who want to make a living doing what they love.

I think I'm going to dedicate my summer to exploring in greater depth the Portland food cart culture - what a yummy way to spend the summer!

Jim Shepard is the author of six novels and four story collections. His previous collection, Like You'd Understand Anyway, won the 2008 Story Prize and was nominated for a National Book Award. His stories are published regularly in such publications as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, McSweeney's, Tin House, and Zoetrope: All-Story, among others. In his newest collection, You Think That's Bad, Shepard offers us an even more wildly diverse collection of astonishingly observant stories. Like an expert curator, he populates the vastness of human experience—from its bizarre fringes and lonely, breathtaking pinnacles to the hopelessly mediocre and desperately below average—with brilliant scientists, reluctant soldiers, workaholic artists, female explorers, depraved murderers, and deluded losers, all wholly convincing and utterly fascinating.

One reviewer described Shepard as a writer who "thinks big and writes short," whose short stories "do the work of entire novels in capturing different places and times." And the author Richard Ford says that "His instinct around a sentence is virtuosic and masterful." In an article about writing, Shepard wrote, "We need to do everything we can, when writing, to stay in touch with pleasure. With fun. With the passionate engagement that we all manage, as children. Not only because that will keep us going but also because it will generate the freedom and the energy that allow us to exhilarate ourselves, and so exhilarate others." He lives in Willamstown, Massachusetts, where he teaches at Williams College and in the Warren Wilson MFA program.

On Thursday it's time once again for our monthly reading series Comma, hosted by Kirsten Rian. This month we are honored to welcome Oregon authors Molly Gloss (Portland) and Bette Lynch Husted (Pendleton). Gloss, a fourth-generation Oregonian, is the author of five novels, the most recent being The Hearts of Horses. Her writing has won numerous awards, locally and nationally. She says her life of writing began with motherhood: "I might have become a writer eventually without first having become a mother, but it's hard for me to imagine it."

 

Husted's stories, essays, and poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Northern Lights, Northwest Review, Fourth Genre, and Best Essays NW. She is the author of a collection of memoir essays (Above the Clearwater: Living on Stolen Land) published in 2004 and a full-length collection of poems (At This Distance) published in 2010. In an interview, Husted said personal essays and poems aren't as different as they might seem: "Of course, poetry is more condensed -- like freeze-dried backpacking food, I used to tell students, a poem offers the crystallized essence, and the reader's mind adds the water."

Each of the writers at the Comma event will read from current work and engage in dialogue with each other and with the audience about their writing.

Pick one or two or come to all three -- it's a great week of literary entertainment at Broadway Books!

Kevin Desinger to Read from Debut Novel

In Kevin Desinger's debut novel, The Descent of Man, we meet Jim Sandusky, a quiet wine steward who lives in Portland with his wife, Marla. One night they wake to hear two men trying to steal his car. Jim makes a bad decision and ends up over his head, mired in a sinister situation and estranged from his wife.

The unfolding events of the story challenge the reader with a number of ethical issues that lead to the recurring question, “What would I do if faced with a similar situation?" The book is a suspenseful page-turner that will force you to consider how quickly it can all go bad and spiral out of control.

Author Bob Shacochis said this about Desinger's novel: "There are books that you can't put down, and there are books that won't go away even after you put them down, the force of their moral conundrums haunting the stories of our own lives. The Descent of Man is a spectacular showcase for both literary virtues—the riveting tale of a modest but perfect life under assault, and a resonating challenge to our own self-knowledge, the authenticity of that knowledge, which can only be confirmed through crisis." 

Kevin Desinger spent his first seventeen years in Coos Bay, Oregon, finished high school in Fairbanks, Alaska, and worked summers on the Alaska Railroad to pay for college. After graduating from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he moved to Portland, where he has lived for the past thirty years. In the '80s he wrote for Willamette Week, the Oregonian, and a number of regional publications.

Desinger will read from his new novel at Broadway Books on Tuesday, May 10th, at 7 pm. We hope you can join us for the event.

Avel Gordly to Read from Memoir

We hope you can join us on Tuesday, May 3, to hear Avel Gordly -- the first African-American woman elected to the Oregon State Senate -- read from her memoir Remembering the Power of Words: The Life of an Oregon Activist, Legislator, and Community Leader, co-written with her Portland State University colleague Patricia A. Schechter and recently published by Oregon State University Press.

Avel Louise Gordly was born in Portland shortly after WWII, to a father who was a Pullman porter with the Union Pacific Railroad and a mother who had worked in the shipyards during the war. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in the Administration of Justice from PSU and has completed the Program for Senior Executives at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

She began her working life operating business machines for Pacific Northwest Bell, and, after earning her bachelor's degree, worked as an adult parole and probation office for the Oregon Department of Corrections. She then worked as the Director of Youth Services for The Urban League and as the Community Liaison for the Multnomah County Health Department.

In 1991 the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners appointed Gordly to fill a vacancy in the Oregon House of Representatives, beginning a long career in the Oregon legislature. She won the general election in 1992 and re-election in 1994 before winning a Senate seat in 1996. She served three terms in the Senate. In 2007, the city officially honored her many years of public service as a state legislator with an official proclamation from then-Mayor Tom Potter.

Currently, Gordly is an associate professor in the Black Studies Department at PSU. She has made numerous trips to African nations during her career and led an official mission to increase trade between Oregon and South Africa. She has received numerous awards and honors for her work over the years.

Gordly has earned a reputation as a bridge builder who puts principles above politics, consistently forming bipartisan coalitions to work on key issues. In 2006 she officially switched her party affiliation from democrat to independent. She is a long-time advocate for pre-school and for quality education for all children; a tireless worker on environmental, economic, and social justice issues; and someone who believes in the need for transparency in government. Not too surprising -- and music to our ears -- she is also an avid reader.



In her memoir, Gordly addresses the challenges she faced growing up Black in Portland in the '50s and '60s, as well as her long career as a legislator and community activist. "If you ever wondered how a principled woman lives a public life, read Remembering the Power of Words," writes professor and author Nell Irvin Painter. "Writing as a black female pioneer, she combines the personal with the political in a fascinating way that speaks to all of us."


We hope you can join us for what is sure to be an inspiring and interesting evening. The fun begins at 7 pm.

It's Raining Back Up at Broadway Books

Please join us Tuesday, April 26th, at 7pm for a free performance of poetry and music entitled Raining Back Up.  Local poet John Sibley Williams has coordinated a multi-media blend of contemporary poetry and experimental music that includes Anatoly Molotkov, David Cooke, Ragon Linde, and Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk.

John Sibley Williams is a poet and agent/publicist in Portland. He has two Master’s Degrees (Creative Writing and Book Publishing) and has served as Acquisitions Manager of Ooligan Press and as freelance agent/publicist for Three Muses Press, Carpe Articulum Literary Review, HoboEye, and individual authors. He has also worked with organizations, such as the Regional Arts and Culture Council.

Williams’ poetry was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize and won the 2011 Heart Poetry Award.  His debut chapbook, A Pure River, was published in 2010 by The Last Automat Press.  Anatoly Molotkov is a writer, composer and co-founder of the Inflectionist poetry movement (Inflecionism.com).  He is the author of several novels and short story and poetry collections and won the 2010 New Millennium Writings and the 2008 E.M. Koeppel Awards for fiction.  Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk has recently finished her second book, Only Ghosts, about the clash of the mystic and the modern in Nepal.  David Cooke’s debut poem, Edges, won the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize and was nominated for the 2010 Pushcart prize.  Ragon Linde is a musician specializing in eclectic jazz and has played in a wide range of musical groups over the last 35 years.

Oregon Book Awards Were Rockin'!

Last night's Oregon Book Awards kicked off with a performance by novelist and singer/songwriter Willy Vlautin, an especially appropriate way to launch an evening in which Willy took home two awards: The Ken Kesey Award for Fiction and the first-ever Readers' Choice Award, sponsored by The Oregonian, in which more than 4000 Oregonians voted for their favorite of the books across all categories.

The event was hosted by Kurt Andersen, host of NPR's Studio 360 and the author of the novels Heyday and Turn of the Century, as well as the nonfiction book Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore our Values and Renew America. He is also one of the founders of Spy magazine and the co-founder of the "Portland Brooklyn Project," which nurtures connections, partnerships, and new opportunities for the arts, education, and private businesses between Portland and Brooklyn.

You can read about all of the finalists at our previous blog posting or at the Literary Arts site, sponsors of the Oregon Book Awards. Here are last night's winners:

As previously mentioned, Willy Vlautin took home the prize for fiction (presented by our very own Roberta Dyer!)  for his novel Lean on Pete (Harper Perennial), about fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson and a failing racehorse from Portland Meadows named Pete. Willy, who lives in Scappoose, is the author of two previous novels: The Motel Life (which has just been made into a movie starring Emile Hirsch and Dakota Fanning) and Northline (which comes with its own CD soundtrack). Willy is the lead singer/songwriter for the band Richmond Fontaine, which has a new CD coming out this summer.

The Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry went to David Biespiel for his collection The Book of Men and Women, published by the University of Washington Press. David is the founding director of the Attic Institute ("a haven for writers") and was the editor of Poetry Northwest from 2005 to 2010. His most recent book, Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces, published by Kelson Books, cracks open the creative process and takes a fresh look at the mysterious pathways of the imagination.

Paul VanDevelder from Corvallis won the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction for his book Savages and Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America's Road to Empire through Indian Territory (Yale University Press), a "profound dismantling of the whole mythical edifice surrounding the westward expansion that shaped the republic." Paul's previous book, Coyote Warrior: One Man, Three Tribes, and the Trial that Forged a Nation, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award.

John Daniel, who lives in the foothills of the Coast Range outside of Eugene, won his third Oregon Book Award by winning the Sarah Winnemucca Award for Creative Nonfiction for his book of essays, The Far Corner:  Northwestern Views on Land, Life, and Literature. He previously won for The Trail Home and Looking After (the "momoir" accompaniment to his "popoir," Rogue River Journal -- two of my favorite books).

The Angus L. Bowmer Award for Drama went to Susan Mach of Portland for her play, The Lost Boy. Susan teaches writing and literature at Clackamas Community College and has had plays produced by Theatre for the New City in Manhattan, Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble, Portland Repertory Theatre, and Icarus Theatre Ensemble.

The awards for books for younger readers went to a debut novelist and a five-time Oregon Book Award winner. Scott William Carter received the Leslie Bradshaw Award for Young Adult Literature for his debut novel, The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys. His second novel, a fantasy called Wooden Bones chronicling the untold story of Pinocchio, is scheduled to be published in 2012. Scott lives in Salem.

Winning his fifth Oregon Book Award -- a record for individuals -- was Graham Salisbury for his book Calvin Coconut: The Zippy Fix. Before he started his Calvin Coconut series, which targets middle readers, Graham's previous books were written for young adults. Graham grew up in Hawaii, where the Calvin Coconut books are set, but now lives in Portland.

George Hitchcock was a poet, teacher, playwright, and painter who was born in Hood River and who died last September in Eugene at age 96. George was the founder of Kayak magazine and served as its editor for twenty years, publishing the early work of Raymond Carver, James Tate, and Philip Levine. He received the C.E.S. Wood Distinguished Writer Award from Literary Arts in 2003. Last night Joseph Bednarik of Copper Canyon Press read a tribute to George, who lived quite the life (I'm linking to his NY Times obit here so you can see for yourself) . His long-time companion Marjorie Simon was also in attendance.

The Walt Morey Young Readers Literary Legacy Award went given to The Children's Book Bank of Portland, a nonprofit that strives to  improve the literacy skills of low-income children by giving them books of their own before they reach kindergarten. The Book Bank also administers the Leading for Reading program, an internship program for high school students.

The Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award, which is presented to a person or persons in recognition of outstanding long-term support of Oregon's literary community, was awarded to John Laursen of Portland, with John Daniel doing the presenting. Most recently John is probably best known for the book he produced with the late Terry Toedtemeier, Wild Beauty: Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge: 1867-1957, one of the most gorgeous books I have ever seen. John is a designer, typographer, writer, editor, and publisher. For four decades he has run Press-22, a studio specializing in the design and production of high-quality books and text-based public art projects. His design imprint can be found throughout the Portland area.

Also acknowledged at last night's gala were the recipients of Literary Arts' most recent fellowships: the writers Jennifer Richter, Crystal Williams, Michelle Penaloza, Brenden Willey, Gretchen Icenogle, Michael McGregor, Claire Willett, and Barbara Liles and the publishers The Grove Review and Octopus Books, both of Portland.

A big round of applause for Literary Arts for another great awards show but especially for all of the wonderful and important work they do in our state. Since 1987, Literary Arts has distributed $680,000 and honored more than 574 writers -- and counting! Keep up the good work. Congratulations to all of the winners and finalists. We've got copies of most of the books -- some of them signed -- at the store, in case you weren't able to make it to last night's event.

John Daniel and Ehud Havazelet for Comma

We're loving the Comma monthly reading series that local writer Kirsten Rian is hosting with Broadway Books on the third Thursday of each month. This month features John Daniel and Ehud Havazelet reading on Thursday, April  21, at 7 pm. Regional authors scheduled to join us for upcoming Comma readings include Barry Sanders, Bette Husted, Paulann Petersen, Paul Merchant, Molly Gloss, BT Shaw, and others. Comma readings offer an opportunity to hear two regional authors read from their work and engage in conversation about writing. You won't want to miss a one!

John Daniel's most recent book, The Far Corner: Northwestern Views on Land, Life, and Literature, is a finalist for the 2010/2011 Oregon Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. (Awards will be announced on Monday, April 25th.) The author of nine books of poetry, essays, and a memoir, Daniel won a 2006 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, as well as two Oregon Book Awards and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Ehud Havazelet is the author of two story collections and most recently the novel Bearing the Body, which won the Oregon Book Award for Fiction in 2008. Recent work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, Tin House, and The New York Times. He has been awarded fellowships from Stanford and the Guggenheim, Whiting, and Rockefeller Foundations. Havazelet teaches creative writing at the University of Oregon (but lives in Corvallis).

This is sure to be a great evening -- come early for a good seat!

Two Local Poets to Read on Tuesday

On Tuesday at 7 pm we have the pleasure of hosting two local poets, both former writers for The Oregonian: Don Colburn and Oz Hopkins Koglin.

Don Colburn was born in Georgia and grew in Massachusetts. A long-time reporter for The Washington Post and The Oregonian, Don was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. He is a graduate of Amherst College and has an MA in journalism from American University and an MFA in creatvie writing from Warren Wilson College.

His first two collections of poetry, Another Way to Begin and As If Gravity Were a Theory, won national poetry manuscript contests. He has just published a third collection, Because You Might Not Remember, from Finishing Line Press. His poems have appeared in anthologies and magazines such as Alaska Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Cloudbank, and Hubbub. Don has received numerous fellowships and poetry awards and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is a board member of Friends of William Stafford.

About his newly published collection, author Naomi Shihab Nye had this to say: "Don Colburn's richly rooted, well-hewn poems are intensely pleasurable to read and absorb. The wide span of their attention has room for human foibles and flaws as well as fun."

Oz Hopkins Koglin was born in North Carolina, the great graddaughter of slaves, and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where she was a community organizer and was selected as a Danforth Foundation Metropolitan Fellow.  Her reporting career began in 1960 at The St. Louis Argus, one of the oldest African-American publications in the country. Oz is a graduate of Reed College. She was a journalist for The Oregonian for thirty years --  the first female African-American reporter to work for the newspaper full-time -- writing for many years on issues of health, medical research, and science.

Much of her writing is inspired by issues of civil rights, racism, and inequality, growing up during the time when America was experiencing the end of the Jim Crow era and the civil rights movement was in full swing.

Her poem have appeared in The Oregonian, Hubbub, VoiceCatcher, and Poetry Southwest. In celebration of Oregon's Sesquicentennial, Poetry Northwest and the Oregon State Library named her first chapbook, Gardens for Everyone, one of 150 outstanding Oregon poetry books. "Each poem in Gardens for Everyone is a gem," says Vern Rutsala, "with many making a u-turn at the end that gives the reader a sudden new insight into the subject."

Please come join us for an evening with two wonderful local poets!