Literopolis: A Weekly Look at Portland Literary Events, September 7-13

Monday, September 07, 2015

Photo Credit: Marian Wood Kolisch (cropped)

This week, three of the most celebrated modern authors, Jonathan Franzen, Salman Rushdie, and Ursula K. Le Guin, will be giving readings at Powell’s Books.

Purity, Franzen’s latest novel, tells the multilayered story of a woman named Purity but called by a completely different name as she sets out on an unbelievable journey to figure out her origins, and Franzen will be giving a reading on Tuesday at Powell’s at Cedar Hills. Later in the week on Sunday, Salman Rushdie will be reading from his new novel Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights in which a group of disparate individuals discover they are all descendents of jinn, and they all have a role to play in an epic, ongoing war between light and dark. 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., 7pm, FREE

Meanwhile at Powell’s City of Books on Thursday, Ursula K. Le Guin will be presenting her new guidebook on the craft of writing titles Steering the Craft: A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, containing advice, examples, and commentary in turn. 1005 W Burnside St., 7:30pm, FREE

And now the rest of the week...

TUESDAY
Annie Bloom’s Books will be hosting a reading featuring eleven contributors to the debut issue of Oregon’s newest literary journal The Timberline Review, published by Willamette Writers. The contributors are as follows: Brittney Corrigan, Jack Estes, Jennifer Foreman, Rick George, Christa Kaainoa, Jill Kelly, Jennie Kiffmeyer, Sherri Levine, Liz Nakazawa, Kate Ristau, and Steve Theme. 7834 SW Capitol Hwy, 7-8pm, FREE

At Powell’s City of Books, Author Kate Harding and cofounder and editor of Bitch Magazine Andi Zeisler will be discussing rape culture, what is, how it’s perpetrated, and what can be done about it, using Harding’s book Asking for It and the results of Harding’s in-depth research to foreground the discussion. 1005 W Burnside St., 7:30pm, FREE

WEDNESDAY
Street Books, the bicycle-powered mobile library serving people who live outside in Portland, is holding their annual celebration and fundraiser on Ecotrust Rooftop Terrace. Rene Denfeld will be giving a reading and there will be another round of the Mystery Book Parlor game. You can purchase tickets here. 721 NW 9th Ave., 6-7:30pm, $20

Epic fantasy author Robin Hobb will be at Powell’s at Cedar Hills reading from the second book in her new trilogy titled Fool’s Quest, furthering the adventures of the now-reunited Fitz and the Fool. 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., 7pm, FREE

At Powell’s City of Books, environmentalists Denis and Gail Boyer Hayes take a look at how humanity’s relationship with cows evolved over the ages from being mutually beneficial to destructive to the environment, the cows themselves, and us in their book Cowed. 1005 W Burnside St., 7:30pm, FREE

THURSDAY
Megan Levad will be giving a reading at Literary Arts of her debut poetry collection Why We Live in the Dark Ages, an exploration of information and understanding of science and history are transmitted through language compared to experience. Levad’s collection is the selection for Tavern Books’ first annual Wrolstad Contemporary Poetry Series, dedicated to championing exceptional poetry by young female poets through book publication. She will also be giving a craft talk this Sunday. 925 SW Washington St., 7pm, FREE

At Powell’s at Cedar Hills, Sara Donati will be sharing her new novel Into the Wilderness, about two nineteenth-century female doctors living in New York confronting their pasts through the course of their work. 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., 7pm, FREE

T. Geronimo Johnson will be at Powell’s on Hawthorne reading from his new novel, a Southern comedy titled Welcome to Braggsville in which four misfit Berkeley college students travel back to one of the members’ hometown to stage a dramatic protest during the town’s annual Civil War reenactment. 3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 7:30pm, FREE

FRIDAY
William Shakespeare meets Star Wars once again in Ian Doscher’s latest literary crossover titled William Shakespeare’s Tragedy of the Sith’s Revenge, which he will be presenting at Powell’s at Cedar Hills. 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., 7pm, FREE

At Powell’s City of Books, Nancy Singleton Hachisu will be sharing with the audience easy Japanese methods of preserving food through salting, pickling, and fermenting and how to integrate them into Western cooking, as explained in her cookbook Preserving the Japanese Way. 1005 W Burnside St., 7:30pm, FREE

SATURDAY
Graphic novelist Craig Thompson is back with a new graphic novel, this time geared especially towards kids. He, along with comics artist Matthew Holm, will be at Bridge City Comics celebrating the release of their newest works, Space Dumplins (the story of girl named Violet who lives in space and embarks on a journey across the universe with her friends to find her missing dad) and Sunny Side Up (a middle-grade semi-autobiographical novel about Matthew and Jennifer L. Holm that’s part “problem novel” and part love letter to comic books. 5725 N Mississippi Ave., 11am, FREE

Craig Thompson will also be giving a reading of Space Dumplins later in the day at Powell’s City of Books. 1005 W Burnside St., 2pm, FREE

Megan Levad, whose poetry collection Why We Live in the Dark Ages was selected for the 2015 Wrolstad Contemporary Poetry Series, will be giving a craft talk titled Nanobots Exist: A History of Humanism in Lists at Literary Arts. She will be discussing the poetry behind listmaking, its history, and how they informed her writing in her debut collection.925 SW Washington St., 2-4pm, FREE

SUNDAY
Powell’s City of Books will be hosting Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Héctor Tobar, author of Deep Down Dark, the collected harrowing stories of the thirty-three Chilean miners trapped underground for sixty-nine following the collapse of the mine in August 2010. 1005 W Burnside St., 7:30pm, FREE